Part 6

But really it is well for us, the poet’s elect lovers, to remember that he once had faults, however few he may now retain; for the perverse generation who dance not when the poet pipes to them, nor mourn when he weeps, have turned upon Tennyson with the cry that he “is all fault who has no fault at all”—they would have us regard him as a kind of Andrea del Sarto, a “blameless” artistic “monster, “a poet of unimpeachable technical skill, but keeping a certain dead level of moderate merit. It is as well to be reminded that this at all events is false. The dawn of his young art was beautiful; but the artist had all the generous faults of youthful genius—excess, vision confused with gorgeous color and predominant sense, too palpable artifice of diction, indistinctness of articulation in the outline, intricately-woven cross-lights flooding the canvas, defect of living interest; while Coleridge said that he began to write poetry without an ear for metre. Neither Adeline, Madeline, nor Eleanore are living portraits, though Eleanore is gorgeously painted. “The Ode to Memory” has isolated images of rare beauty, but it is kaleidoscopic in effect; the fancy is playing with loose foam-wreaths, rather than the imagination “taking things by the heart.” But our great poet has gone beyond these. He has himself rejected twenty-six out of the fifty-eight poems published in his first volume; while some of those even in the second have been altogether rewritten. Such defects are eminently present in the lately republished poem written in youth, “The Lover’s Tale,” though this too has been altered. As a storehouse of fine imagery, metaphor, and deftly moulded phrase, of blank verse also whose sonorous rhythm must surely be a fabric of adult architecture, the piece can hardly be surpassed; but the tale as tale lingers and lapses, overweighted with the too gorgeous trappings under which it so laboriously moves. And such expression as the following, though not un-Shakspearian, is hardly quarried from the soundest material in Shakspeare—for, after all, Shakspeare was a euphuist now and then—

“Why fed we from one fountain? drew one sun? Why were our mothers branches of one stem, if that same nearness Were father to this distance, and that _one_ Vaunt courier to this _double_, if affection Living slew love, and sympathy hewed out The bosom-sepulchre of sympathy?”

Yet “Mariana” had the virtue, which the poet has displayed so pre-eminently since, of concentration. Every subtle touch enhances the effect he intends to produce, that of the desolation of the deserted woman, whose hope is nearly extinguished; Nature hammering a fresh nail into her coffin with every innocent aspect or movement. Beautiful too are “Love and Death” and “The Poet’s Mind;” while in “The Poet” we have the oft-quoted line: “Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love.”

Mr. G. Brimley was the first, I believe, to point out the distinctive peculiarity of Lord Tennyson’s treatment of landscape. It is treated by him dramatically; that is to say, the details of it are selected so as to be interpretative of the particular mood or emotion he wishes to represent. Thus in the two Marianas, they are painted with the minute distinctness appropriate to the morbid and sickening observation of the lonely woman, whose attention is distracted by no cares, pleasures, or satisfied affections. That is a pregnant remark, a key to unlock a good deal of Tennyson’s work with. Byron and Shelley, though they are carried out of themselves in contemplating Nature, do not, I think, often take her as interpreter of moods alien to their own. In Wordsworth’s “Excursion,” it is true, Margaret’s lonely grief is thus delineated though the neglect of her garden and the surroundings of her cottage; yet this is not so characteristic a note of his nature-poetry. In the “Miller’s Daughter” and the “Gardener’s Daughter” the lovers would be little indeed without the associated scene so germane to the incidents narrated, both as congenial setting of the picture for a spectator, and as vitally fused with the emotion of the lovers; while never was more lovely landscape-painting of the gentle order than in the “Gardener’s Daughter.” Lessing, who says that poetry ought never to be pictorial, would, I suppose, much object to Tennyson’s; but to me, I confess, this mellow, lucid, luminous word-painting of his is entirely delightful. It refutes the criticism that words cannot convey a picture by perfectly conveying it. _Solvitur ambulando_; the Gardener’s Daughter standing by her rose-bush, “a sight to make an old man young,” remaining in our vision to confound all crabbed pedants with pet theories.

In his second volume, indeed, the poet’s art was well mastered, for here we find the “Lotos-eaters,” “Œnone,” “The Palace of Art,” “A Dream of Fair Women,” the tender “May-Queen,” and the “Lady of Shalott.” Perhaps the first four of these are among the very finest works of Tennyson. In the mouth of the love-lorn nymph Œnone he places the complaint concerning Paris into which there enters so much delightful picture of the scenery around Mount Ida, and of those fair immortals who came to be judged by the beardless apple-arbiter. How deliciously flows the verse!—though probably it flows still more entrancingly in the “Lotos-eaters,” wandering there like clouds of fragrant incense, or some slow heavy honey, or a rare amber unguent poured out. How wonderfully harmonious with the dream-mood of the dreamers are phrase, image, and measure! But we need not quote the lovely choric song wherein occur the lines—

“Music that gentlier on the spirit lies Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes,”

so entirely restful and happy in their simplicity. If Art would always blossom so, she might be forgiven if she blossomed only for her own sake; yet this controversy regarding _Art for Art_ need hardly have arisen, since Art may certainly bloom for her own sake, if only she consent to assimilate in her blooming, and so exhale for her votaries, in due proportion, all elements essential to Nature, and Humanity: for in the highest artist all faculties are transfigured into one supreme organ; while among forms her form is the most consummate, among fruits her fruit offers the most satisfying refreshment. What a delicately true picture have we here—

“And like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall, and pause and fall did seem,”

where we feel also the poet’s remarkable faculty of making word and rhythm an echo and auxiliary of the sense. Not only have we the three cæsuras respectively after “fall,” and “pause” and “fall,” but the length, and soft amplitude of the vowel sounds with liquid consonants aid in the realization of the picture, reminding of Milton’s beautiful “From morn to noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, a summer’s day.” The same faculty is notable in the rippling lilt of the charming little “Brook” song, and indeed everywhere. In the “Dream of Fair Women” we have a series of cabinet portraits, presenting a situation of human interest with a few animating touches, but still chiefly through suggestive surroundings. There occurs the magnificent phrase of Cleopatra: “We drank the Lybian sun to sleep, and lit lamps which outburned Canopus.” The force of expression could be carried no further than throughout this poem, and by “expression” of course I do not mean pretty words, or power-words for there own sweet sake, for these, expressing nothing, whatever else they may be, are not “expression;” but I mean the forcible or felicitous presentment of thought, image, feeling, or incident, through pregnant and beautiful language in harmony with them; though the subtle and indirect suggestion of language is unquestionably an element to be taken into account by poetry. The “Palace of Art” is perhaps equal to the former poem for lucid splendor of description, in this instance pointing a moral, allegorizing a truth. Scornful pride, intellectual arrogance, selfish absorption in æsthetic enjoyment, is imaged forth in this vision of the queen’s world-reflecting palace, and its various treasures—the end being a sense of unendurable isolation, engendering madness, but at last repentance, and reconcilement with the scouted commonalty of mankind.

The dominant note of Tennyson’s poetry is assuredly the delineation of human moods modulated by Nature, and through a system of Nature-symbolism. Thus, in “Elaine,” when Lancelot has sent a courtier to the queen, asking her to grant him audience, that he may present the diamonds won for her in tourney, she receives the messenger with unmoved dignity; but he, bending low and reverently before her, saw “with a sidelong eye”

“The shadow of some piece of pointed lace In the queen’s shadow vibrate on the walls, And parted, laughing in his courtly heart.”

The “Morte d’Arthur” affords a striking instance of this peculiarly Tennysonian method. That is another of the very finest pieces. Such poetry may suggest labor, but not more than does the poetry of Virgil or Milton. Every word is the right word, and each in the right place. Sir H. Taylor indeed warns poets against “wanting to make every word beautiful.” And yet here it must be owned that the result of such an effort is successful, so delicate has become the artistic tact of this poet in his maturity.[1] For, good expression being the happy adaptation of language to meaning, it follows that sometimes good expression will be perfectly simple, even ordinary in character, and sometimes it will be ornate, elaborate, dignified. He who can thus vary his language is the best verbal artist, and Tennyson can thus vary it. In this poem, the “Morte d’Arthur,” too, we have “deep-chested music.” Except in some of Wordsworth and Shelley, or in the magnificent “Hyperion” of Keats, we have had no such stately, sonorous organ-music in English verse since Milton as in this poem, or in “Tithonus,” “Ulysses,” “Lucretius,” and “Guinevere.” From the majestic overture,

“So all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea,”

onward to the end, the same high elevation is maintained.

But this very picturesqueness of treatment has been urged against Tennyson as a fault in his narrative pieces generally, from its alleged over-luxuriance, and tendency to absorb, rather than enhance, the higher human interest of character and action. However this be (and I think it is an objection that does apply, for instance, to “The Princess”), here in this poem picturesqueness must be counted as a merit, because congenial to the semi-mythical, ideal, and parabolic nature of Arthurian legend, full of portent and supernatural suggestion. Such Ossianic hero-forms are nearly as much akin to the elements as to man. And the same answer holds largely in the case of the other Arthurian Idylls. It has been noted how well-chosen is the epithet “water” applied to a lake in the lines, “On one side lay the ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full.” Why is this so happy? For as a rule the concrete rather than the abstract is poetical, because the former brings with it an image, and the former involves no vision. But now in the night all Sir Bedevere could observe, or care to observe, was that there was “some great water.” We do not—he did not—want to know exactly what it was. Other thoughts, other cares, preoccupy him and us. Again, of dying Arthur we are told that “all his greaves and caisses were dashed with drops of onset.” “Onset” is a very generic term, poetic because removed from all vulgar associations of common parlance, and vaguely suggestive not only of war’s pomp and circumstance, but of high deeds also, and heroic hearts, since onset belongs to mettle and daring; the word for vast and shadowy connotation is akin to Milton’s grand abstraction, “Far off _His coming_ shone” or Shelley’s, “Where the Earthquake Demon taught her young _Ruin_.”

It has been noted also how cunningly Tennyson can gild and furbish up the most commonplace detail—as when he calls Arthur’s mustache “the knightly growth that fringed his lips,” or condescends to glorify a pigeon-pie, or paints the clown’s astonishment by this detail, “the brawny spearman let his cheek Bulge with the unswallowed piece, and turning stared;” or thus characterizes a pun, “and took the word, and play’d upon it, and made it of two colors.” This kind of ingenuity, indeed, belongs rather to talent than to genius; it is exercised in cold blood; but talent may be a valuable auxiliary of genius, perfecting skill in the technical departments of art. Yet such a gift is not without danger to the possessor. It may tempt him to make his work too much like a delicate mosaic of costly stone, too hard and unblended, from excessive elaboration of detail. One may even prefer to art thus highly wrought a more glowing and careless strain, that lifts us off our feet, and carries us away as on a more rapid, if more turbid torrent of inspiration, such as we find in Byron, Shelley, or Victor Hugo. Here you are compelled to pause at every step, and admire the design of the costly tesselated pavement under your feet. Perhaps there is a jewelled glitter, a Pre-Raphaelite or Japanese minuteness of finish here and there in Tennyson, that takes away from the feeling of aërial perspective and remote distance, leaving little to the imagination; not suggesting and whetting the appetite, but rather satiating it; his loving observation of minute particulars is so faithful, his knowledge of what others, even men of science, have observed so accurate, his fancy so nimble in the detection of similitudes. But every master has his own manner, and his reverent disciples would be sorry if he could be without it. We love the little idiosyncracies of our friends.

I have said the objection in question does seem to lie against “The Princess.” It contains some of the most beautiful poetic pearls the poet has ever dropped; but the manner appears rather disproportionate to the matter, at least to the subject as he has chosen to regard it. For it is regarded by him only semi-seriously; so lightly and sportively is the whole topic viewed at the outset, that the effect is almost that of burlesque; yet there is a very serious conclusion, and a very weighty moral is drawn from the story, the workmanship being labored to a degree, and almost encumbered with ornamentation. But the poet himself admits the ingrained incongruity of the poem. The fine comparison of the Princess Ida in the battle to a beacon glaring ruin over raging seas, for instance, seems too grand for the occasion. How differently, and in what burning earnest has a great poet-woman, Mrs. Browning, treated this grave modern question of the civil and political position of women in “Aurora Leigh!” Tennyson’s is essentially a man’s view, and the frequent talk about women’s beauty must be very aggravating to the “Blues.” It is this poem especially that gives people with a limited knowledge of Tennyson the idea of a “pretty” poet; the prettiness, though very genuine, seems to play too patronizingly with a momentous theme. The Princess herself, and the other figures are indeed dramatically realized, but the splendor of invention, and the dainty detail, rather dazzle the eye away from their humanity. Here, however, are some of the loveliest songs that this poet, one of our supreme lyrists, ever sung: “Tears, idle tears!” “The splendor falls,” “Sweet and low,” “Home they brought,” “Ask me no more,” and the exquisite melody, “For Love is of the valley.” Moreover, the grand lines toward the close are full of wisdom—

“For woman is not undeveloped man, But diverse: could we make her as the man Sweet love were slain,” &c.

I feel myself a somewhat similar incongruity in the poet’s treatment of his more homely, modern, half-humorous themes, such as the introduction to the “Morte d’Arthur,” and “Will Waterproof;” not at all in the humorous poems, like the “Northern Farmer,” which are all of a piece, and perfect in their own vein. In this introduction we have “The host and I sat round the wassail bowl, then half-way ebb’d;” but this metaphorical style is not (fortunately) sustained, and so, as good luck would have it, a metaphor not being ready to hand, we have the honester and homelier line, “Till I tired out with cutting eights that day upon the pond;” yet this homespun hardly agrees with the above stage-king’s costume. And so again I often venture to wish that the Poet-Laureate would not say “flowed” when he only means “said.” Still, this may be hypercriticism. For I did not personally agree with the critic who objected to Enoch Arden’s fish-basket being called “ocean-smelling osier.” There is no doubt, however, that “Stokes, and Nokes, and Vokes” have exaggerated the poet’s manner, till the “murex fished up” by Keats and Tennyson has become one universal flare of purple. Beautiful as some of Mr. Rossetti’s work is, his expression in the sonnets surely became obscure from over-involution, and excessive _fioriture_ of diction. But then Rossetti’s style is no doubt formed considerably upon that of the Italian poets. One is glad, however, that, this time, at all events, the right man has “got the porridge!”

In connection with “Morte d’Arthur,” I may draw attention again to Lord Tennyson’s singular skill in producing a rhythmical response to the sense.

“The great brand Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch.”

Here the anapest instead of the iambic in the last place happily imitates the sword Excalibur’s own gyration in the air. Then what admirable wisdom does the legend, opening out into parable, disclose toward the end! When Sir Bedevere laments the passing away of the Round Table, and Arthur’s noble peerage, gone down in doubt, distrust, treachery, and blood, after that last great battle in the West, when, amid the death-white mist, “confusion fell even upon Arthur,” and “friend slew friend, now knowing whom he slew,” how grandly comes the answer of Arthur from the mystic barge, that bears him from the visible world to “some far island valley of Avilion,” “The old order changeth, yielding place to new, and God fulfils Himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world!” The new commencement of this poem, called in the idyls “The Passing of Arthur,” is well worthy of the conclusion. How weirdly expressive is that last battle in the mist of those hours of spiritual perplexity, which overcloud even strongest natures and firmest faith, overshadowing whole communities, when we know not friend from foe, the holiest hope seems doomed to disappointment, all the great aim and work of life have failed; even loyalty to the highest is no more; the fair polity built laboriously by some god-like spirit dissolves, and “all his realm reels back into the beast;” while men “falling down in death” look up to heaven only to find cloud, and the great-voiced ocean, as it were Destiny without love and without mind, with voice of days of old and days to be, shakes the world, wastes the narrow kingdom, yea, beats upon the faces of our dead! The world-sorrow pierces here through the strain of a poet usually calm and contented. Yet “Arthur shall come again, aye, twice as fair;” for the spirit of man is young immortally.

Who, moreover, has moulded for us phrases of more transcendent dignity, of more felicitous grace and import, phrases, epithets, and lines that have already become memorable household words? More magnificent expression I cannot conceive than that of such poems as “Lucretius,” “Tithonus,” “Ulysses.” These all for versification, language, luminous picture, harmony of structure have never been surpassed. What pregnant brevity, weight, and majesty of expression in the lines where Lucretius characterizes the death of his namesake Lucretia, ending “and from it sprang the commonwealth, which breaks, as I am breaking now!” What masterly power in poetically embodying a materialistic philosophy, congenial to modern science, yet in absolute dramatic keeping with the actual thought of the Roman poet! And at the same time, what tremendous grasp of the terrible conflict of passion with reason, two natures in one, significant for all epochs! In “Tithonus” and “Ulysses” we find embodiments in high-born verse and illustrious phrase of ideal moods, adventurous peril-affronting Enterprise contemptuously tolerant of tame household virtues in “Ulysses,” and the bane of a burdensome immortality, become incapable even of love, in “Tithonus.” Any personification more exquisite than that of Aurora in the latter were inconceivable.