Chapter 2

"What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind."

A BRIEF HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE SONNET

The sonnet form was introduced into English poetry by Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey. Their experiments in the sonnet were published in _Tottel's Miscellany_ in 1557, and were prompted by an admiration of Petrarch and other Italian models. Italy was almost certainly the original home of the sonnet (sonnet=Ital. _sonetto_, _a little sound_, or _short strain_, from _suono_, _sound_), and there it has been assiduously cultivated since the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth century Dante and Petrarch gave the form a European celebrity.

The Structure of the Sonnet.

Before saying anything of its development in English poetry, it is advisable to examine an admittedly perfect sonnet, so that we may gain an idea of the nature of this type of poem, both as to form and substance. Wordsworth's sonnet upon Milton (_London_, 1802) will serve our purpose (see page 187). By reference to it you will observe:--

(1) That the sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, and consists of fourteen lines--that number by repeated experimentation having been found the most appropriate for the expression of a single emotional mood.

(2) As an examination of the rimes will show (a b b a a b b a: c d d e c e), there is a natural metrical division at the end of the eighth line. The first eight lines in technical language are called the "octave," the last six lines are called the "sestet." The octave is sometimes said to consist of two quatrains, and the sestet of two tercets.

(3) There is not only a metrical division between the octave and the sestet, but the character of the thought also undergoes a subtle change at that point. It is to be understood, of course, that in the whole poem there must be both unity of thought and mood. Yet, at the ninth line, the thought which is introduced in the octave is elaborated, and presented as it were under another aspect. As Mr. Mark Pattison has admirably expressed it: "This thought or mood should be led up to, and opened in the early lines of the sonnet; strictly, in the first quatrain; in the second quatrain the hearer should be placed in full possession of it. After the second quatrain there should be a pause--not full, nor producing the effect of a break--as of one who had finished what he had got to say, and not preparing a transition to a new subject, but as of one who is turning over what has been said in the mind to enforce it further. The opening of the second system, strictly the first tercet, should turn back upon the thought or sentiment, take it up and carry it forward to the conclusion. The conclusion should be a resultant summing the total of the suggestion in the preceding lines. . . . While the conclusion should leave a sense of finish and completeness, it is necessary to avoid anything like epigrammatic point."

(4) An examination of the rimes again will show that greater strictness prevails in the octave than in the sestet. The most regular type of the octave may be represented by a b b a a b b a, turning therefore upon two rimes only. The sestet, though it contains but six lines, is more liberal in the disposition of its rimes. In the sonnet which we are examining, the rime system of the sestet in c d d e c e--containing, as we see, three separate rimes. In the sestet this is permissible, provided that there is not a riming couplet at the close.

(5) Again, with reference to the rime, it will be observed that the vowel terminals of the octave and the sestet are differentiated. Anything approaching assonance between the two divisions is to be counted as a defect.

(6) It is evident that there is unity both of thought and mood in this sonnet, the sestet being differentiated from the octave, only as above described.

(7) It is almost unnecessary to add that there is no slovenly diction, that the language is dignified in proportion to the theme, and that there is no obscurity or repetition in thought or phraseology.

These rules will appear to the young reader of poetry as almost unnecessarily severe. But it must be remembered that the sonnet is avowedly a conventional form (though in it much of the finest poetry in our language is contained), and as such the conventional laws attaching to all prescribed forms must be observed to win complete success.

Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton have lent the authority of their great names to certain distinct variations from the rigid Petrarchan type. The peculiarity of Spenser's sonnets is that the rime of the octave overflows into the sestet, thus marring the exquisite balance which should subsist between the two parts, and yielding an effect of cloying sweetness. Although the famous stanza-form which he invented in his "Faerie Queene" has found many imitators, his sonnet innovations are practically unimportant.

The Shakespearean sonnet, on the contrary, must be regarded as a well-established variant from the stricter Italian form. Though Shakespeare's name has made it famous, it did not originate with him. Surrey and Daniel had habitually employed it, and in fact it had come to be recognized as the accepted English form. Its characteristic feature, as the following sonnet from Shakespeare will show, was a division into three distinct quatrains, each with alternating rimes, and closed by a couplet. The transition of thought at the ninth line is usually observed:--

"When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee--and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings."

It is Milton's merit that he rescued the sonnet from the snare of verbal wit in which the Elizabethans had involved it, and made it respond to other passions than that of love. His sonnets, as imitations of the Italian form, are more successful than the scattered efforts in that direction of Wyatt and Surrey. They are indeed regular in all respects, save that he is not always careful to observe the pause in the thought, and the subtle change which should divide the octave from the sestet.

After Milton there is a pause in sonnet-writing for a hundred years. William Lisles Bowles (1762-1850), memorable for his influence upon Coleridge, was among the first again to cultivate the form. Coleridge and Shelley gave the sonnet scant attention, and were careless as to its structural qualities. Keats, apart from Wordsworth, was the only poet of the early years of the century who realized its capabilities. He has written a few of our memorable sonnets, but he was not entirely satisfied with the accepted form, and experimented upon variations that cannot be regarded as successful.

There is no doubt that the stimulus to sonnet-writing in the nineteenth century came from Wordsworth, and he, as all his recent biographers admit, received his inspiration from Milton. Wordsworth's sonnets, less remarkable certainly than a supreme few of Shakespeare's, have still imposed themselves as models upon all later writers, while the Shakespearean form has fallen into disuse. A word here, therefore, as to their form.

The strict rime movement of the octave a b b a a b b a is observed in seven only of the present collection of twelve, namely, in the first sonnet, the second, the third, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, and the eighth. The rime formula of the octave with which Wordsworth's name is chiefly associated is a b b a a c c a. The sonnets in which this additional rime is introduced are the fourth, the ninth, the tenth, the eleventh and the twelfth.

As regards the transition from octave to sestet the following sonnets observe the prescribed law, namely, the second, third, sixth, seventh, and ninth. The seven remaining sonnets all show some irregularity in this respect. The first sonnet (_Fair Star_) with its abrupt _enjambement_ at the close of the octave, and the thought pause in the body of the first line of the sestet, is a form much employed by Mrs. Browning, but rigorously avoided by Dante Gabriel Rossetti with his more scrupulous ideal of sonnet construction. This imperfect transition is seen again in the fourth, fifth, eighth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth sonnets. Its boldness certainly amounts to a technical fault in the two sonnets on _King's College Chapel_.

In the sestet we naturally expect and find much variety in the disposition of the rimes. The conclusion of the last sonnet by a couplet is most unusual in Wordsworth.

"IT IS NOT TO BE THOUGHT OF"

This sonnet was composed in September, 1802, first published in the Morning Post in 1803, and subsequently in 1807.

WRITTEN IN LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1802:

PUBLISHED 1807

"This was written immediately after my return from France to London, when I could not but be struck, as here described, with the vanity and parade of our own country, especially in great towns and cities, as contrasted with the quiet, I may say the desolation, that the Revolution had produced in France. This must be borne in mind, or else the Reader may think that in this and the succeeding Sonnets I have exaggerated the mischief engendered and fostered among us by undisturbed wealth."

LONDON, 1802

This sonnet was written in 1803 and published in 1807.

"DARK AND MORE DARK THE SHADES OF EVENING FELL"

This sonnet was written after a journey across the Hambleton Hills, Yorkshire. Wordsworth says: "It was composed October 4th, 1802, after a journey on a day memorable to me--the day of my marriage. The horizon commanded by those hills is most magnificent." Dorothy Wordsworth, describing the sky-prospect, says: "Far off from us in the western sky we saw the shapes of castles, ruins among groves, a great spreading wood, rocks and single trees, a minster with its tower unusually distinct, minarets in another quarter, and a round Grecian temple also; the colours of the shy of a bright gray, and the forms of a sober gray, with dome."

"SURPRISED BY JOY--IMPATIENT AS THE WIND"

This sonnet was suggested by the poet's daughter Catherine long after her death. She died in her fourth year, on June 4, 1812. Wordsworth was absent from home at the time of her death. The sonnet was published in 1815.

"HAIL, TWILIGHT SOVEREIGN OF A PEACEFUL HOUR"

This sonnet was published in 1815.

"I THOUGHT OF THEE, MY PARTNER AND MY GUIDE"

This sonnet, which concludes "The River Duddon" series, is usually entitled "After-Thought". The series was written at intervals, and was finally published in 1820. "The Duddon rises on Wrynose Fell, near to 'Three Shire Stone,' where Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancashire meet."

"SUCH AGE, HOW BEAUTIFUL!"

This sonnet, published in 1827, was inscribed to Lady Fitzgerald at the time in her seventieth year.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Alfred Tennyson was born at Somersby, a small hamlet among the Lincolnshire wolds, on August 6th, 1809. His father, the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, the vicar of Somersby, was a man of large and cultivated intellect, interested in poetry, mathematics, painting, music, and architecture, but somewhat harsh and austere in manner, and subject to fits of gloomy depression, during which his presence was avoided by his family; he was sincerely devoted to them, however, and himself supervised their education. His mother, Elizabeth Fytche, the daughter of the Rev Stephen Fytche of Louth, was a kind-hearted, gentle, refined woman, beloved by her family and friends. Her influence over her sons and daughters was unbounded, and over none more so than Alfred, who in after life recognized to the full what he owed to his mother.

The family was large, consisting of twelve sons and daughters, of whom the eldest died in infancy. Alfred was the fourth child, his brothers Frederick and Charles being older than he. The home life was a very happy one. The boys and girls were all fond of books, and their games partook of the nature of the books they had been reading. They were given to writing, and in this they were encouraged by their father, who proved himself a wise and discriminating critic. Alfred early showed signs of his poetic bent; at the age of twelve he had written an epic of four thousand lines, and even before this a tragedy and innumerable poems in blank verse. He was not encouraged, however, to preserve these specimens of his early powers, and they are now lost.

Alfred attended for a time a small school near his home, but at the age of seven he was sent to the Grammar School at Louth. While at Louth he lived with his grandmother, but his days at school were not happy, and he afterwards looked back over them with almost a shudder. Before he was twelve he returned home, and began his preparation for the university under his father's care. His time was not all devoted to serious study, but was spent in roaming through his father's library, devouring the great classics of ancient and modern times, and in writing his own poems. The family each summer removed to Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast. Here Alfred learned to love the sea in all its moods, a love which lasted through his life.

In 1827, after Frederick had entered Cambridge, the two brothers, Charles and Alfred, being in want of pocket money, resolved to publish a volume of poems. They made a selection from their numerous poems, and offered the book to a bookseller in Louth, For some unknown reason he accepted the book, and soon after, it was published under the title, _Poems by Two Brothers_. There were in reality three brothers, as some of Frederick's poems were included in the volume. The brothers were promised 20 pounds, but more than one half of this sum they had to take out in books. With the balance they went on a triumphal expedition to the sea, rejoicing in the successful launching of their first literary effort.

In 1828 Charles and Alfred Tennyson matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where their elder brother Frederick had already been for some time. Alfred was a somewhat shy lad, and did not at once take kindly to the life of his college. He soon, however, found himself one of a famous society known as "The Apostles," to which belonged some of the best men in the University. Not one member of the "Apostles" at this time, but afterwards made a name for himself, and made his influence felt in the world of politics or letters. The society met at regular intervals, but Alfred did not take much part in the debates, preferring to sit silent and listen to what was said. All his friends had unbounded admiration for his poetry and unlimited faith in his poetic powers. This faith was strengthened by the award of the University Prize for English Verse to Alfred in June, 1829. He did not wish to compete, but on being pressed, polished up an old poem that he had written some years before, and presented it for competition, the subject being _Timbuctoo_. The poem was in blank verse and really showed considerable power; in fact it was a remarkable poem for one so young.

Perhaps the most powerful influence on the life of Tennyson was the friendship he formed while at Cambridge with Arthur Henry Hallam, the son of the historian, Henry Hallam. The two became inseparable friends, a friendship strengthened by the engagement of Hallam to the poet's sister. The two friends agreed to publish a volume of poems as a joint-production, but Henry Hallam, the elder, did not encourage the project, and it was dropped. The result was that in 1830, _Poems, Chiefly Lyrical_, was published with the name of Alfred Tennyson alone on the title page. The volume was reviewed enthusiastically by Hallam, but was more or less slated by Christopher North in the columns of _Blackwoods' Magazine_. Tennyson was very angry about the latter review and replied to the reviewer in some caustic, but entirely unnecessary, verses.

In the same year Hallam and Tennyson made an expedition into Spain to carry aid to the rebel leader against the king of Spain. The expedition was not by any means a success. In 1831 Tennyson left Cambridge, without taking his degree, and shortly after his return home his father died. The family, however, did not remove from Somersby, but remained there until 1837. Late in 1832 appeared another volume entitled _Poems by Alfred Tennyson_. This drew upon the unfortunate author a bitterly sarcastic article in the _Quarterly_, written probably by its brilliant editor, John Gibson Lockhart. The result of this article was that Tennyson was silent for almost ten years, a period spent in ridding himself of the weaknesses so brutally pointed out by the reviewer.

In 1833, Arthur Henry Hallam died, and for a time the light of life seemed to have gone out for Alfred Tennyson. The effect of the death of Hallam upon the poet was extraordinary. It seemed to have changed the whole current of his life; indeed he is said, under the strain of the awful suddeness and unexpectedness of the event, to have contemplated suicide. But saner thoughts intervened, and he again took up the burden of life, with the determination to do what he could in helping others. From this time of storm and stress came _In Memoriam_.

From 1832 to 1842 Tennyson spent a roving life. Now at home, now in London, now with his friends in various parts of England. He was spending his time in finishing his poems, so that when he again came before the world with a volume, he would be a master. The circle of his friends was widening, and now included the greater number of the master-minds of England. He was poor, so poor in fact that he was reduced to the necessity of borrowing the books he wished to read from his friends. But during all this time he never wavered in his allegiance to poetry; he had determined to be a poet, and to devote his life to poetry. At last in 1842 he published his _Poems_ in two volumes, and the world was conquered. From this time onwards he was recognized as the leading poet of his century.

In 1845, Tennyson, poor still, was granted a pension of 200 pounds, chiefly through the influence of his friend Richard Monckton Milnes, and Thomas Carlyle. There was a great deal of criticism regarding this pension from sources that should have been favorable, but the general verdict approved the grant. In 1847 appeared _The Princess_, a poem, which, at that time, did not materially add to his fame; but the poet was now hailed as one of the great ones of his time, and much was expected of him.

In 1850 three most important events in the life of Tennyson happened. He published _In Memoriam_, in memory of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam; he was appointed Poet Laureate, in succession to Wordsworth; and he married Emily Selwood, a lady to whom he had been engaged for seventeen years, but whom his poverty had prevented him from leading to the altar. From this time onwards the life of the poet flowed smoothly. He was happily married, his fame was established, his books brought him sufficient income on which to live comfortable and well. From this point there is little to relate in his career, except the publication of his various volumes.

After his marriage Tennyson lived for some time at Twickenham, where in 1852 Hallam Tennyson was born. In 1851 he and his wife visited Italy, a visit commemorated in _The Daisy_. In 1853 they removed to Farringford at Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, a residence subsequently purchased with the proceeds of _Maud_, published in 1855. The poem had a somewhat mixed reception, being received in some quarters with unstinted abuse and in others with the warmest praise. In the year that _Maud_ was published Tennyson received the honorary degree of D.C.L., from Oxford. In 1859 was published the first four of the _Idylls of the King_, followed in 1864 by _Enoch Arden and Other Poems_. In 1865 his mother died. In 1869 he occupied Aldworth, an almost inaccessible residence in Surrey, near London, in order to escape the annoyance of summer visitors to the Isle of Wight, who insisted on invading his privacy, which, perhaps, more than any other he especially valued.

From 1870 to 1880 Tennyson was engaged principally on his dramas--_Queen Mary_, _Harold_, and _Becket_,--but, with the exception of the last, these did not prove particularly successful on the stage. In 1880 _Ballads and Poems_ was published, an astonishing volume from one so advanced in years. In 1882 the _Promise of May_ was produced in public, but was soon withdrawn. In 1884 Tennyson was raised to the peerage as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Farringford, after having on two previous occasions refused a baronetcy. In 1885 _Tiresias and Other Poems_ was published. In this volume was published _Balin and Balan_, thus completing the _Idylls of the King_, which now assumed their permanent order and form. _Demeter and Other Poems_ followed in 1889, including _Crossing the Bar_. In 1892, on October 6th, the poet died at Aldworth, "with the moonlight upon his bed and an open Shakespeare by his side." A few days later he was buried in Westminster Abbey, by the side of Robert Browning, his friend and contemporary, who had preceded him by only a few years.

Carlyle has left us a graphic description of Tennyson as he was in middle life: "One of the finest--looking men in the world. A great shock of rough, dusky dark hair; bright, laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face--most massive yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musically metallic--fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will grow to." To this may be added a paragraph from Caroline Fox: "Tennyson is a grand specimen of a man, with a magnificent head set on his shoulders like the capital of a mighty pillar. His hair is long and wavy and covers a massive head. He wears a beard and mustache, which one begrudges as hiding so much of that firm, powerful, but finely-chiselled mouth. His eyes are large and gray, and open wide when a subject interests him; they are well shaded by the noble brow, with its strong lines of thought and suffering. I can quite understand Samuel Lawrence calling it the best balance of head he had ever seen."

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

Born, August 6, 1809, at Somersby, Lincolnshire.

Goes to Louth Grammar School, 1816.

Publishes, along with his brother Charles, _Poems by Two Brothers_, 1827.

Goes to Trinity College, Cambridge, 1828.

Forms friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam, 1828.

Wins Vice-Chancellor's Gold Medal for his poem _Timbuctoo_, 1829.

Publishes _Poems, Chiefly Lyrical_, 1830.

Makes an expedition to the Pyrenees with Arthur Henry Hallam, 1830.

Leaves Cambridge, owing to the illness of his father, 1831.

Visits the Rhine with Arthur Henry Hallam, 1832.

Publishes _Poems by Alfred Tennyson_, 1832.

Arthur Henry Hallam dies, 1833.

Removes from Somersby to High Beech in Epping Forest, 1837.

Publishes _Poems_ in two volumes, 1842.

Granted a pension of 200 pounds from the Civil List, 1845.

Publishes _The Princess_, 1847.

Publishes _In Memoriam_, 1850.

Appointed Poet Laureate, 1850.

Marries Miss Emily Selwood, 1850.

Tours southern Europe with his wife, 1851.

Hallam Tennyson born, 1852.

Writes _Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington_, 1852.

Takes up his residence at Farringford in the Isle of Wight, 1853.

Lionel Tennyson born, 1854.

Writes _The Charge of the Light Brigade_, 1855.

The University of Oxford confers on him the degree of D.C.L., 1855.

Publishes _Maud and Other Poems_, 1855.

Purchases Farringford, 1856.

Publishes _Idylls of the King_, 1859.

Writes his _Welcome to Alexandra_, 1863.

Publishes _Enoch Arden_, 1864; _The Holy Grail_, 1869.

His mother dies, 1865.

Purchases land at Haslemere, Surrey, 1868, and begins erection of Aldworth.

Publishes _Queen Mary_, 1875; the drama successfully performed by Henry Irving, 1876.

Publishes _Harold_, 1876.

His drama _The Falcon_ produced, 1869.

Seeks better health by a tour on the Continent with his son Hallam, 1880.

Publishes _Ballads and Other Poems_, 1880.

His drama _The Cup_ successfully performed, 1881.

His drama _The Promise of May_ proves a failure, 1882.

Raised to the peerage as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Farringford, 1884.

Publishes _Becket_, 1884.

His son Lionel dies, 1885.

Publishes _Tiresias and Other Poems_, 1885. This volume contains _Balin and Balan_, thus completing his _Idylls of the King_.

Publishes _Demeter and Other Poems_, 1889.

Dies at Aldworth, October 6, 1892, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

The _Death of Oenone_ is published, 1892.

APPRECIATIONS

"Since the days when Dryden held office no Laureate has been appointed so distinctly pre-eminent above all his contemporaries, so truly the king of the poets, as he upon whose brows now rests the Laureate crown. Dryden's grandeur was sullied, his muse was venal, and his life was vicious; still in his keeping the office acquired a certain dignity; after his death it declined into the depths of depredation, and each succeeding dullard dimmed its failing lustre. The first ray of hope for its revival sprang into life with the appointment of Southey, to whom succeeded Wordsworth, a poet of worth and genius, whose name certainly assisted in resuscitating the ancient dignity of the appointment. Alfred Tennyson derives less honor from the title than he confers upon it; to him we owe a debt of gratitude that he has redeemed the laurels with his poetry, noble, pure, and undefiled as ever poet sung."--_Walter Hamilton_.

"Tennyson is many sided; he has a great variety of subjects. He has treated of the classical and the romantic life of the world; he has been keenly alive to the beauties of nature; and he has tried to sympathize with the social problems that confront mankind. In this respect he is a representative poet of the age, for this very diversity of natural gifts has made him popular with all classes. Perhaps he has not been perfectly cosmopolitan, and sometimes the theme in his poetry has received a slight treatment compared to what might have been given it by deeper thinking and more philosophical poets, but he has caught the spirit of the age and has expressed its thought, if not always forcibly, at least more beautifully than any other poet,"--_Charles Read Nutter_.

"In technical elegance, as an artist in verse, Tennyson is the greatest of modern poets. Other masters, old and new, have surpassed him in special instances; but he is the only one who rarely nods, and who always finishes his verse to the extreme. Here is the absolute sway of metre, compelling every rhyme and measure needful to the thought; here are sinuous alliterations, unique and varying breaks and pauses, winged flights and falls, the glory of sound and color everywhere present, or, if missing, absent of the poet's free will. The fullness of his art evades the charm of spontaneity. His original and fastidious art is of itself a theme for an essay. The poet who studies it may well despair, he can never excel it; its strength is that of perfection; its weakness, the ever-perfection which marks a still-life painter."--_Edmund Clarence Stedman_.

"A striking quality of Tennyson's poetry is its simplicity, both in thought and expression. This trait was characteristic of his life, and so we naturally expect to find it in his verse. Tennyson was too sincere by nature, and too strongly averse to experimenting in new fields of poetry, to attempt the affected or unique. He purposely avoided all subjects which he feared he could not treat with simplicity and clearness. So, in his shorter poems, there are few obscure or ambiguous passages, little that is not easy of comprehension. His subjects themselves tend to prevent ambiguity or obscurity. For he wrote of men and women as he saw them about him, of their joys and sorrows, their trials, their ideals,--and in this was nothing complex. Thus there is a homely quality to his poems, but they are kept from the commonplace by the great tenderness of his feeling. Had Tennyson been primarily of a metaphysical or philosophical mind all this might have been different. True, he was somewhat of a student of philosophy and religion, and some of his poems are of these subjects, but his thought even here is always simple and plain, and he never attempted the deep study that was not characteristic of his nature. No less successful is he in avoiding obscurity in expression. There are few passages that need much explanation. In this he offers a striking contrast to Browning, who often painfully hid his meaning under complex phraseology. His vocabulary is remarkably large, and when we study his use of words, we find that in many cases they are from the two-syllabled class. This matter of choice of clear, simple words and phrases is very important. For, just so much as our attention is drawn from what a poet says to the medium, the language in which he says it, so much is its clearness injured. Vividly to see pictures in our imagination or to be affected by our emotions, we must not, as we read, experience any jar. In Tennyson we never have to think of his expressions--except to admire their simple beauty. Simplicity and beauty, then, are two noticeable qualities of his poetry."--_Charles Read Nutter_.

"An idyllic or picturesque mode of conveying his sentiments is the one natural to Tennyson, if not the only one permitted by his limitations. He is a born observer of physical nature, and, whenever he applies an adjective to some object or passingly alludes to some phenomenon which others have but noted, is almost infallibly correct. He has the unerring first touch which in a single line proves the artist; and it justly has been remarked that there is more true English landscape in many an isolated stanza of _In Memoriam_ than in the whole of _The Seasons_, that vaunted descriptive poem of a former century."--_Edmund Clarence Stedman_.

"In describing scenery, his microscopic eye and marvellously delicate ear are exercised to the utmost in detecting the minutest relations and most evanescent melodies of the objects before him, in order that his representation shall include everything which is important to their full perfection. His pictures of rural English scenery give the inner spirit as well as the outward form of the objects, and represent them, also, in their relation to the mind which is gazing on them. The picture in his mind is spread out before his detecting and dissecting intellect, to be transformed to words only when it can be done with the most refined exactness, both as regards color and form and melody."--_E.P. Whipple_.

"For the most part he wrote of the every day loves and duties of men and women; of the primal pains and joys of humanity; of the aspirations and trials which are common to all ages and all classes and independent even of the diseases of civilization, but he made them new and surprising by the art which he added to them, by beauty of thought, tenderness of feeling, and exquisiteness of shaping."--_Stopford A. Brooke_.

"The tenderness of Tennyson is one of his remarkable qualities--not so much in itself, for other poets have been more tender--but in combination with his rough powers. We are not surprised that his rugged strength is capable of the mighty and tragic tenderness of Rispah, but we could not think at first that he could feel and realize the exquisite tenderness of _Elaine_. It is a wonderful thing to have so wide a tenderness, and only a great poet can possess it and use it well."--_Stopford A. Brooke_.

"Tennyson is a great master of pathos; knows the very tones that go to the heart; can arrest every one of these looks of upbraiding or appeal by which human woe brings the tear into the human eye. The pathos is deep; but it is the majesty not the prostration of grief."--_Peter Bayne_.

"Indeed the truth must be strongly borne in upon even the warmest admirers of Tennyson that his recluse manner of life closed to him many avenues of communication with the men and women of his day, and that, whether as a result or cause of his exclusiveness, he had but little of that restless, intellectual curiosity which constantly whets itself upon new experiences, finds significance where others see confusion, and beneath the apparently commonplace in human character reaches some harmonizing truth. _Rizpah_ and _The Grandmother_ show what a rich harvest he would have reaped had he cared more frequently to walk the thoroughfares of life. His finely wrought character studies are very few in number, and even the range of his types is disappointingly narrow."--_Pelham Edgar_.

"No reader of Tennyson can miss the note of patriotism which he perpetually sounds. He has a deep and genuine love of country, a pride in the achievements of the past, a confidence in the greatness of the future. And this sense of patriotism almost reaches insularity of view. He looks out upon the larger world with a gentle commiseration, and surveys its un-English habits and constitution with sympathetic contempt. The patriotism of Tennyson is sober rather than glowing; it is meditative rather than enthusiastic. Occasionally indeed, his words catch fire, and the verse leaps onward with a sound of triumph, as in such a poem as _The Charge of the Light Brigade_ or in such a glorious ballad as _The Revenge_. Neither of these poems is likely to perish until the glory of the nation perishes, and her deeds of a splendid chivalrous past sink into oblivion, which only shameful cowardice can bring upon her. But as a rule Tennyson's patriotism is not a contagious and inspiring patriotism. It is meditative, philosophic, self-complacent. It rejoices in the infallibility of the English judgment, the eternal security of English institutions, the perfection of English forms of government."--_W. J. Dawson_.

"Tennyson always speaks from the side of virtue; and not of that new and strange virtue which some of our later poets have exalted, and which, when it is stripped of its fine garments, turns out to be nothing else than the unrestrained indulgence of every natural impulse; but rather of that old fashioned virtue whose laws are 'self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,' and which finds its highest embodiment in the morality of the _New Testament_. There is a spiritual courage in his work, a force of fate which conquers doubt and darkness, a light of inward hope which burns dauntless under the shadow of death. Tennyson is the poet of faith; faith as distinguished from cold dogmatism and the acceptance of traditional creeds; faith which does not ignore doubt and mystery, but triumphs over them and faces the unknown with fearless heart. The effect of Christianity upon the poetry of Tennyson may be felt in its general moral quality. By this it is not meant that he is always preaching. But at the same time the poet can hardly help revealing, more by tone and accent than by definite words, his moral sympathies. He is essentially and characteristically a poet with a message. His poetry does not exist merely for the sake of its own perfection of form. It is something more than the sound of one who has a lovely voice and can play skilfully upon an instrument. It is a poetry with a meaning and a purpose. It is a voice that has something to say to us about life. When we read his poems we feel our hearts uplifted, we feel that, after all it is worth while to struggle towards the light, it is worth while to try to be upright and generous and true and loyal and pure, for virtue is victory and goodness is the only fadeless and immortal crown. The secret of the poet's influence must lie in his spontaneous witness to the reality and supremacy of the moral life. His music must thrill us with the conviction that the humblest child of man has a duty, an ideal, a destiny. He must sing of justice and of love as a sure reward, a steadfast law, the safe port and haven of the soul."--_Henry Van Dyke_.

REFERENCES ON TENNYSON'S LIFE AND WORKS

_Alfred, Lord Tennyson: A Memoir_ by Hallam Tennyson. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited. Price $2.00.

_Tennyson and his Friends_ edited by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_Alfred, Lord Tennyson: A Study of his Life and Works_ by Arthur Waugh. London: William Heinemann.

_Tennyson_ by Sir Alfred Lyall in _English Men of Letters_ series. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_Alfred Tennyson_ by Arthur Christopher Benson in _Little Biographies_. London: Methuen & Co.

_Alfred Tennyson: A Saintly Life_ by Robert F. Horton. London: J. M. Dent & Co.

_Alfred Tennyson_ by Andrew Lang. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company.

_Tennyson: His Art and Relation to Modern Life_ by Stopford A. Brooke. London: William Heinemann.

_A Study of the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ by Edward Campbell Tainsh. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_The Poetry of Tennyson_ by Henry Van Dyke. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

_A Tennyson Primer_ by William Macneile Dixon. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.

_A Handbook to the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ by Morton Luce. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_Tennyson: A Critical Study_ by Stephen Gwynn in the _Victorian Era Series_. London: Blackie & Sons, Limited.

_Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and Other Literary Estimates_ by Frederic Harrison. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_Lives of Great English Writers from Chaucer to Browning_ by Walter S. Hinchman and Francis B. Gummere. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

_Personal Sketches of Recent Authors_ by Hattie Tyng Griswold. Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Company.

_Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, Browning_ by Anne Ritchie. New York: Harper & Brothers.

_Memories of the Tennysons_ by Rev. H. D. Rawnsley. Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons.

_The Teaching of Tennyson_ by John Oats. London: James Bowden.

_Tennyson as a Religious Teacher_ by Charles F. G. Masterman. London: Methuen & Co.

_The Social Ideals of Alfred Tennyson as Related to His Time_ by William Clark Gordon. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

_The Religious Spirit in the Poets_ by W. Boyd Carpenter. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

_Literary Essays_ by R. H. Hutton. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_Victorian Poets_ by Edmund Clarence Stedman. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

_The Greater English Poets of the Nineteenth Century_ by William Morton Payne. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

_The Masters of English Literature_ by Stephen Gwynn. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_A Study of English and American Poets_ by J. Scott Clark. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

_The Works of Tennyson with Notes by the Author_ edited with Memoir by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

NOTES

OENONE

"The poem of _Oenone_ is the first of Tennyson's elaborate essays in a metre over which be afterwards obtained an eminent command. It is also the first of his idylls and of his classical studies, with their melodious rendering of the Homeric epithets and the composite words, which Tennyson had the art of coining after the Greek manner ('lily-cradled,' 'river-sundered,' 'dewy-dashed') for compact description or ornament. Several additions were made in a later edition; and the corrections then made show with what sedulous care the poet diversified the structure of his lines, changing the pauses that break the monotonous run of blank verse, and avoiding the use of weak terminals when the line ends in the middle of a sentence. The opening of the poem was in this manner decidedly improved; yet one may judge that the finest passages are still to be found almost as they stood in the original version; and the concluding lines, in which the note of anguish culminates, are left untouched."

"Nevertheless the blank verse of _Oenone_ lacks the even flow and harmonious balance of entire sections in the _Morte d'Arthur_ or _Ulysses_, where the lines are swift or slow, rise to a point and fall gradually, in cadences arranged to correspond with the dramatic movement, showing that the poet has extended and perfected his metrical resources. The later style is simplified; he has rejected cumbrous metaphor; he is less sententious; he has pruned away the flowery exuberance and lightened the sensuous colour of his earlier composition."--_Sir Alfred Lyall_.

First published in 1832-3. It received its present improved form in the edition of 1842. The story of Paris and Oenone may be read in Lempriere, or in any good classical dictionary. Briefly it is as follows:--Paris was the son of Priam, King of Troy, and Hecuba. It was foretold that he would bring great ruin on Troy, so his father ordered him to be slain at birth. The slave, however, did not destroy him, but exposed him upon Mount Ida, where shepherds found him and, brought him up as one of themselves. "He gained the esteem of all the shepherds, and his graceful countenance and manly development recommended him to the favour of Oenone, a nymph of Ida, whom he married, and with whom he lived in the most perfect tenderness. Their conjugal bliss was soon disturbed. At the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, Eris, the goddess of discord, who had not been invited to partake of the entertainment, showed her displeasure by throwing into the assembly of gods, who were at the celebration of the nuptials, a golden apple on which were written the words _Detur pulchriori_. All the goddesses claimed it as their own: the contention at first became general, but at last only three, Juno (Herè), Venus (Aphrodite), and Minerva (Pallas), wished to dispute their respective right to beauty. The gods, unwilling to become arbiters in an affair of so tender and delicate a nature, appointed Paris to adjudge the prize of beauty to the fairest of the goddesses, and indeed the shepherd seemed properly qualified to decide so great a contest, as his wisdom was so well established, and his prudence and sagacity so well known. The goddesses appeared before their judge without any covering or ornament, and each tried by promises and entreaties to gain the attention of Paris, and to influence his judgment. Juno promised him a kingdom; Minerva, military glory; and Venus, the fairest woman in the world for his wife." (Lempriere.) Paris accorded the apple to Aphrodite, abandoned Oenone, and after he had been acknowledged the son of Priam went to Sparta, where he persuaded Helen, the wife of Menelaus, to flee with him to Troy. The ten years' siege, and the destruction of Troy, resulted from this rash act. Oenone's significant words at the close of the poem foreshadow this disaster. Tennyson, in his old age concluded the narrative in the poem called _The Death of Oenone_. According to the legend Paris, mortally wounded by one of the arrows of Philoctetes, sought out the abandoned Oenone that she might heal him of his wound. But he died before he reached her, "and the nymph, still mindful of their former loves, threw herself upon his body, and stabbed herself to the heart, after she had plentifully bathed it with her tears." Tennyson follows another tradition in which Paris reaches Oenone, who scornfully repels him. He passed onward through the mist, and dropped dead upon the mountain side. His old shepherd playmates built his funeral pyre. Oenone follows the yearning in her heart to where her husband lies, and dies in the flames that consume him.

In Chapter IV of Mr. Stopford Brooke's _Tennyson_, there is a valuable commentary upon _Oenone_. He deals first with the imaginative treatment of the landscape, which is characteristic of all Tennyson's classical poems, and instances the remarkable improvement effected in the descriptive passages in the volume of 1842. "But fine landscape and fine figure re-drawing are not enough to make a fine poem. Human interest, human passion, must be greater than Nature, and dominate the subject. Indeed, all this lovely scenery is nothing in comparison with the sorrow and love of Oenone, recalling her lost love in the places where once she lived in joy. This is the main humanity of the poem. But there is more. Her common sorrow is lifted almost into the proportions of Greek tragedy by its cause and by its results. It is caused by a quarrel in Olympus, and the mountain nymph is sacrificed without a thought to the vanity of the careless gods. That is an ever-recurring tragedy in human history. Moreover, the personal tragedy deepens when we see the fateful dread in Oenone's heart that she will, far away, in time hold her lover's life in her hands, and refuse to give it back to him--a fatality that Tennyson treated before he died. And, secondly, Oenone's sorrow is lifted into dignity by the vast results which flowed from its cause. Behind it were the mighty fates of Troy, the ten years' battle, the anger of Achilles, the wanderings of Ulysses, the tragedy of Agamemnon, the founding of Rome, and the three great epics of the ancient world."

Another point of general interest is to be noted in the poem. Despite the classical theme the tone is consistently modern, as may be gathered from the philosophy of the speech of Pallas, and from the tender yielding nature of Oenone. There is no hint here of the vindictive resentment which the old classical writers, would have associated with her grief. Similarly Tennyson has systematically modernised the Arthurian legend in the _Idylls of the King_, giving us nineteenth century thoughts in a conventional mediaeval setting.

A passage from Bayne, puts this question clearly: "Oenone wails melodiously for Paris without the remotest suggestion of fierceness or revengeful wrath. She does not upbraid him for having preferred to her the fairest and most loving wife in Greece, but wonders how any one could love him better than she does. A Greek poet would have used his whole power of expression to instil bitterness into her resentful words. The classic legend, instead of representing Oenone as forgiving Paris, makes her nurse her wrath throughout all the anguish and terror of the Trojan War. At its end, her Paris comes back to her. Deprived of Helen, a broken and baffled man, he returns from the ruins of his native Troy, and entreats Oenone to heal him of a wound, which, unless she lends her aid, must be mortal. Oenone gnashes her teeth at him, refuses him the remedy, and lets him die. In the end, no doubt, she falls into remorse, and kills herself--this is quite in the spirit of classic legend; implacable vengeance, soul-sickened with its own victory, dies in despair. That forgiveness of injuries could be anything but weakness--that it could be honourable, beautiful, brave--is an entirely Christian idea; and it is because this idea, although it has not yet practically conquered the world, although it has indeed but slightly modified the conduct of nations, has nevertheless secured recognition as ethically and socially right, that Tennyson could not hope to enlist the sympathy and admiration of his readers for his Oenone, if he had cast her image in the tearless bronze of Pagan obduracy."

1. IDA. A mountain range in Mysia, near Troy. The scenery is, in part, idealised, and partly inspired by the valley of Cauteretz. See _Introduction_, p. xvi.

2. IONIAN. Ionia was the district adjacent to Mysia. 'Ionian,' therefore, is equivalent to 'neighbouring.'

10. TOPMOST GARGARUS. A Latinism, cf. _summus mons_.

12. TROAS. The Troad (Troas) was the district surrounding Troy.

ILION=Ilium, another name for Troy.

14. CROWN=chief ornament.

22-23. O MOTHER IDA--DIE. Mr. Stedman, in his _Victorian Poets_, devotes a valuable chapter to the discussion of Tennyson's relation to Theocritus, both in sentiment and form. "It is in the _Oenone_ that we discover Tennyson's earliest adaptation of that refrain, which was a striking beauty of the pastoral elegiac verse;

"'O mother Ida, hearken ere I die,'

"is the analogue of (Theocr. II).

"'See thou; whence came my love, O lady Moon,' etc.

"Throughout the poem the Syracusan manner and feeling are strictly and nobly maintained." Note, however, the modernisation already referred to.

MOTHER IDA. The Greeks constantly personified Nature, and attributed a separate individual life to rivers, mountains, etc. Wordsworth's _Excursion_, Book IV., might be read in illustration, especially from the line beginning--

"Once more to distant ages of the world."

MANY-FOUNTAIN'D IDA. Many streams took their source in Ida. Homer applies the same epithet to this mountain.

24-32. These lines are in imitation of certain passages from Theocritus. See Stedman, _Victorian Poets_, pp. 213 f. They illustrate Tennyson's skill in mosaic work.

30. MY EYES--LOVE. Cf. Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. ii. 3. 17:

"Mine eyes are full of tears, my heart of grief."

36. COLD CROWN'D SNAKE. "Cold crown'd" is not a compound epithet, meaning "with a cold head." Each adjective marks a particular quality. _Crown'd_ has reference to the semblance of a coronet that the hoods of certain snakes, such as cobras, possess.

37. THE DAUGHTER OF A RIVER-GOD. Oenone was the daughter of the river Cebrenus in Phrygia.

39-40. AS YONDER WALLS--BREATHED. The walls of Troy were built by Poseidon (Neptune) and Apollo, whom Jupiter had condemned to serve King Laomedon of Troas for a year. The stones were charmed into their places by the breathing of Apollo's flute, as the walls of Thebes are said to have risen to the strain of Amphion's lyre. Compare _Tithonus_, 62-63:

"Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing, When Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers."

And cf. also _The Princess_, iii. 326.

42-43. THAT--WOE. Compare _In Memoriam_, V.

50. WHITE HOOVED. Cf. "hooves" for hoofs, in the _Lady of Shalott_, l. 101.

51. SIMOIS. One of the many streams flowing from Mount Ida.

65. HESPERIAN GOLD. The fruit was in colour like the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides. The Hesperides were three (or four) nymphs, the daughters of Hesperus. They dwelt in the remotest west, near Mount Atlas in Africa, and were appointed to guard the golden apples which Herè gave to Zeus on the day of their marriage. One of Hercules' twelve labours was to procure some of these apples. See the articles _Hesperides_ and _Hercules_ in Lempriere.

66. SMELT AMBROSIALLY. Ambrosia was the food of the gods. Their drink was nectar. The food was sweeter than honey, and of most fragrant odour.

72. WHATEVER OREAD. A classical construction. The Oreads were mountain nymphs.

78. FULL-FACED--GODS. This means either that not a face was missing, or refers to the impressive countenances of the gods. Another possible interpretation is that all their faces were turned full towards the board on which the apple was cast. Compare for this epithet _Lotos Eaters_, 7; and _Princess_, ii. 166.

79. PELEUS. All the gods, save Eris, were present at the marriage between Peleus and Thetis, a sea-deity. In her anger Eris threw upon the banquet-table the apple which Paris now holds in his hand. Peleus and Thetis were the parents of the famous Achilles.

81. IRIS. The messenger of the gods. The rainbow is her symbol.

83. DELIVERING=announcing.

89-100. These lines, and the opening lines of the poem are among the best of Tennyson's blank verse lines, and therefore among the best that English poetry contains. The description owes some of its beauty to Homer. In its earlier form, in the volume of 1832-3, it is much less perfect.

132. A CRESTED PEACOCK. The peacock was sacred to Herè (Juno).

103. A GOLDEN CLOUD. The gods were wont to recline upon Olympus beneath a canopy of golden clouds.

104. DROPPING FRAGRANT DEW. Drops of glittering dew fell from the golden cloud which shrouded Herè and Zeus. See _Iliad_, XIV, 341 f.

105 f. Herè was the queen of Heaven. Power was therefore the gift which she naturally proffered.

114. Supply the ellipsis.

121-122. POWER FITTED--WISDOM. Power that adapts itself to every crisis; power which is born of wisdom and enthroned by wisdom (i.e. does not owe its supremacy to brute strength).

121-122. FROM ALL-ALLEGIANCE. Note the ellipsis and the inversion.

128-131. WHO HAVE ATTAINED--SUPREMACY. Cf. _Lotos Eaters_, l. 155 f, and _Lucretius_, 104-108.

The gods, who haunt The lucid interspace of world and world Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans.

137. O'ERTHWARTED WITH=crossed by.

142 f. Compare the tone of Pallas' speech with what has been said in the introduction, p. liv f., concerning Tennyson's love of moderation and restraint, and his belief in the efficacy of law.

Compare also the general temper of the _Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington_, and especially ll. 201-205.

144--148. Yet these qualities are not bestowed with power as the end in view. Power will come without seeking when these great principles of conduct are observed. The main thing is to live and act by the law of the higher Life,--and it is the part of wisdom to follow right for its own sake, whatever the consequences may be.

151. SEQUEL OF GUERDON. To follow up my words with rewards (such as Herè proffers) would not make me fairer.

153-164. Pallas reads the weakness of Paris's character, but disdains to offer him a more worldly reward. An access of moral courage will be her sole gift to him, so that he shall front danger and disaster until his powers of endurance grow strong with action, and his full-grown will having passed through all experiences, and having become a pure law unto itself, shall be commensurate with perfect freedom, i.e., shall not know that it is circumscribed by law.

This is the philosophy that we find in Wordsworth's _Ode to Duty_.

Stern Lawgiver! Yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face: Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.

165-167. Note how dramatic this interruption is.

170. IDALIAN APHRODITE. Idalium was a town in Cyprus; an island where the goddess was especially worshipped. She was frequently called Cypria or the Cyprian.

171. FRESH AS THE FOAM. Aphrodite was born from the waves of the sea, near the Island of Cyprus.

NEW-BATHED IN PAPHIAN WELLS. Paphos was a town in Cyprus. Aphrodite was said to have landed at Paphos after her birth from the sea-foam. She is sometimes called the Paphian or Paphia on this account.

184. SHE SPOKE AND LAUGH'D. Homer calls her "the laughter-loving Aphrodite."

195-l97. A WILD--WEED. The influence of beauty upon the beasts is a common theme with poets. Cf. Una and the lion in Spenser's _Faery Queen_.

204. THEY CUT AWAY MY TALLEST PINES. Evidently to make ships for Paris's expedition to Greece.

235-240. THERE ARE--DIE. Lamartine in _Le Lac_ (written before 1820) has a very similar passage.

250. CASSANDRA. The daughter of King Priam, and therefore the sister of Paris. She had the gift of prophecy.

260. A FIRE DANCES. Signifying the burning of Troy.

THE EPIC AND MORTE D'ARTHUR

First published, with the epilogue as here printed, in 1842. The _Morte d'Arthur_ was subsequently taken out of the present setting, and with substantial expansion appeared as the final poem of the _Idylls of the King_, with the new title, _The Passing of Arthur_.

Walter Savage Landor doubtless refers to the _Morte d'Arthur_ as early as 1837, when writing to a friend, as follows:--"Yesterday a Mr. Moreton, a young man of rare judgment, read to me a manuscript by Mr. Tennyson, being different in style from his printed poems. The subject is the Death of Arthur. It is more Homeric than any poem of our time, and rivals some of the noblest parts of the Odyssea." A still earlier composition is assured by the correspondence of Edward Fitzgerald who writes that, in 1835, while staying at the Speddings in the Lake Country, he met Tennyson and heard the poet read the _Morte d'Arthur_ and other poems of the 1842 volume. They were read out of a MS., "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night 'when all the house was mute.'"

In _The Epic_ we have specific reference to the Homeric influence in these lines:

"Nay, nay," said Hall, "Why take the style of those heroic times? For nature brings not back the Mastodon, Nor we those times; and why should any man Remodel models? these twelve books of mine Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth," . . .

Critics have agreed for the most part in considering the _Morte d'Arthur_ as the most Homeric of Tennyson's poems. Bayne writes: "Not only in the language is it Homeric, but in the design and manner of treatment. The concentration of interest on the hero, the absence of all modernism in the way of love, story or passion painting, the martial clearness, terseness, brevity of the narrative, with definite specification, at the same time, are exquisitely true to the Homeric pattern." Brimley notes, with probably greater precision, that: "They are rather Virgilian than Homeric echoes; elaborate and stately, not naive and eager to tell their story; rich in pictorial detail; carefully studied; conscious of their own art; more anxious for beauty of workmanship than interest of action."

It has frequently been pointed out in this book how prone Tennyson is to regard all his subjects from the modern point of view:

a truth Looks freshest in the fashion of the day.

The Epic and the epilogue strongly emphasize this modernity in the varied modern types of character which they represent, with their diverse opinions upon contemporary topics. "As to the epilogue," writes Mr. Brooke (p. 130), "it illustrates all I have been saying about Tennyson's method with subjects drawn from Greek or romantic times. He filled and sustained those subjects with thoughts which were as modern as they were ancient. While he placed his readers in Camelot, Ithaca, or Ida, he made them feel also that they were standing in London, Oxford, or an English woodland. When the _Morte d'Arthur_ is finished, the hearer of it sits rapt. There were 'modern touches here and there,' he says, and when he sleeps he dreams of

"King Arthur, like a modern gentleman Of stateliest port; and all the people cried, 'Arthur is come again, he cannot die.' Then those that stood upon the hills behind Repeated--'Come again, and thrice as fair:' And, further inland, voices echoed--'Come With all good things and war shall be no more.

"The old tale, thus modernised in an epilogue, does not lose its dignity, for now the recoming of Arthur is the recoming of Christ in a wider and fairer Christianity. We feel here how the new movement of religion and theology had sent its full and exciting wave into Tennyson. Arthur's death in the battle and the mist is the death of a form of Christianity which, exhausted, died in doubt and darkness. His advent as a modern gentleman is the coming of a brighter and more loving Christ into the hearts of men. For so ends the epilogue. When the voices cry, 'Come again, with all good things,'

"At this a hundred bells began to peal, That with the sound I woke, and heard indeed, The clear church-bells ring in the Christmas-morn."

THE ALLEGORICAL ELEMENT.--The statement is made on p. xxxv of this book that in _The Idylls of the King_ "the effort is made to reconcile the human story with the allegory, and in consequence the issues are confusedly presented to our mind." It is characteristic of the _Morte d'Arthur_ fragment that it is apparently free from all allegorical intention. It is merely a moving human story with a fascinating element of mystery inspired by the original Celtic legend. An element of allegory lies in the epilogue, and _The Passing of Arthur_ still further enforces the allegorical purpose. But here, as Mr. Brooke again writes (p. 371), "we are close throughout to the ancient tale. No allegory, no ethics, no rational soul, no preaching symbolism, enter here, to dim, confuse, or spoil the story. Nothing is added which does not justly exalt the tale, and what is added is chiefly a greater fulness and breadth of humanity, a more lovely and supreme Nature, arranged at every point to enhance into keener life the human feelings of Arthur and his knight, to lift the ultimate hour of sorrow and of death into nobility. Arthur is borne to a chapel nigh the field--

"A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land; On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

"What a noble framework--and with what noble consciousness it is drawn! . . . . All the landscape--than which nothing better has been invented by any English poet--lives from point to point as if Nature herself had created it; but even more alive than the landscape are the two human figures in it--Sir Bedivere standing by the great water, and Arthur lying wounded near the chapel, waiting for his knight. Take one passage, which to hear is to see the thing:

"So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept, And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of the lake.

"Twice he hides the sword, and when Arthur asks: 'What hast thou seen, what heard?' Bedivere answers:

"'I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag,'

"--lines so steeped in the loneliness of mountain tarns that I never stand in solitude beside their waters but I hear the verses in my heart. At the last he throws it.

"The great brand Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch, Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By night, with noises of the northern sea.

"'So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur,' and never yet in poetry did any sword, flung in the air, flash so superbly.

"The rest of the natural description is equally alive, and the passage where the sound echoes the sense, and Bedivere, carrying Arthur, clangs as he moves among the icy rocks, is as clear a piece of ringing, smiting, clashing sound as any to be found in Tennyson:

"Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rung Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels.

"We hear all the changes on the vowel _a_--every sound of it used to give the impression--and then, in a moment, the verse runs into breadth, smoothness and vastness: for Bedivere comes to the shore and sees the great water;

"And on a sudden lo! the level lake, And the long glories of the winter moon,

"in which the vowel _o_, in its changes is used, as the vowel _a_ has been used before.

"The questions and replies of Arthur and Bedivere, the reproaches of the King, the excuses of the Knight, the sorrow and the final wrath of Arthur, are worthy of the landscape, as they ought to be; and the dominance of the human element in the scene is a piece of noble artist-work. Arthur is royal to the close, and when he passes away with the weeping Queens across the mere, unlike the star of the tournament he was of old, he is still the King. Sir Bedivere, left alone on the freezing shore, hears the King give his last message to the world. It is a modern Christian who speaks, but the phrases do not sound out of harmony with that which might be in Romance. Moreover, the end of the saying is of Avilion or Avalon--of the old heathen Celtic place where the wounded are healed and the old made young."

In the final analysis, therefore, the significance of the _Morte d'Arthur_ is a significance of beauty rather than moralistic purpose. It has been said that the reading of Milton's _Lycidas_ is the surest test of one's powers of poetical appreciation. I fear that the test is too severe for many readers who can still enjoy a simpler style of poetry. But any person who can read the _Morte d'Arthur_, and fail to be impressed by its splendid pictures, and subdued to admiration by the dignity of its language, need scarcely hope for pleasure from any poetry.

THE EPIC

3. SACRED BUSH. The mistletoe. This plant was sacred to the Celtic tribes, and was an object of particular veneration with the Druids, especially when associated with the oak-tree.

8. OR GONE=either gone.

18. THE GENERAL DECAY OF FAITH. The story of Arthur is intended to show how faith survives, although the form be changed. See esp. _Morte d'Arthur_, ll. 240-242.

27-28. 'HE BURNT--SOME TWELVE BOOKS.' This must not be taken literally. See, however, p. xxxiii. of the Biographical Sketch, as to Tennyson's hesitation in treating the subject.

48-51. This is self-portraiture. Lord Tennyson's method of reading was impressive though peculiar.

MORTE D'ARTHUR

THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND. Throughout the mediaeval period three great cycles of stories commanded the imagination of the poets. Of these cycles one, the tale of Troy in its curious mediaeval guise, attested the potent spell of antique legend.[1] The two other great cycles were of later origin, and centred around the commanding historical figures of Charlemagne, and the phantom glory of the legendary Arthur.

[1]The extraordinary interest in the half legendary career of Alexander the Great must be noticed here, as also the profound respect amounting to veneration for the Roman poet, Vergil.

The origin of the Arthurian story is involved in obscurity. The crudest form of the myth has doubtless a core of historic truth, and represents him as a mighty Celtic warrior, who works havoc among the heathen Saxon invaders. Accretions naturally are added, and a miraculous origin and a mysterious death throw a superstitious halo around the hero. When the brilliant personality of Lancelot breaks into the tale, and the legend of the Holy Grail is superadded, the theme exercised an irresistible fascination upon the imagination of mediaeval Europe.

The vicissitudes of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain are as romantic as any of which history holds record. After the departure of the Roman invaders from the island, the native population swiftly reasserted itself. The Picts of Caledonia and the Scots of Ireland were their natural foes, but conflict with these enemies served only to stimulate the national life. But actual disaster threatened them when in the fifth and sixth centuries the heathen Angles and Saxons bore down in devastating hordes upon the land. It is at this critical period in the national history that Arthur must have lived. How long or how valiant the resistance was we cannot know. That it was vain is certain. A large body of Britons fled from annihilation across the channel, and founded in the region of Armurica in France, a new Brittany. Meanwhile, in the older Britain, the foe pressed hard upon their fellow-countrymen, and drove them into the western limits of the island, into the fastnesses of Wales, and the rocky parts of Cornwall. Here, and in Northern France, proud in their defeat and tenacious of the instincts of their race, they lived and still live, in the imaginative memories of the past. For them the future held little store of earthly gain, and yet they made the whole world their debtor.

Even in the courts of the conqueror Saxon their strange and beautiful poetry won favour, and in a later century the Norman kings and barons welcomed eagerly the wandering minstrels from Brittany and Wales. But it was not from these scattered sources that Celtic traditions became a European possession, as a brief statement of literary history will clearly show.

The first recorded mention of Arthur's name occurs in a brief and anonymous _History of the Britons_, written in Latin in the tenth century, and attributed to Nennius. This history is curiously amplified in the twelfth century by Geoffrey of Monmouth, first in a story dealing with the prophecies of Merlin, and later in a _History of the Kings of Britain_. This book, with its brilliant description of the court of Arthur, gave the legend a widespread popularity. It was four times within the same century translated into French verse, the most famous of these renderings being the version of Wace, called _Le Brut_, which makes some addition to Geoffrey's original, gathered from Breton sources. In the same century, too, Chrétien de Troyes, the foremost of Arthurian poets, composed his famous cycle of poems.

Of all these manifold sources Tennyson was confessedly ignorant. Where the details are not of his own invention, his _Idylls of the King_ rest entirely upon Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, which Caxton printed in 1485, supplemented in the case of _Enid and Geraint_, and _The Marriage of Geraint_ by a translation of the Welsh _Mabinogion_ by Lady Charlotte Guest.

THE STORY OF THE IDYLLS.--It is well to remember the events that led up to Arthur's death. Guinevere's guilty love for Lancelot had been discovered and revealed by Arthur's nephew, the traitor Modred. The Queen fled the court and sought refuge with the nuns of Almesbury. Lancelot fled to his castle in the north, where the King in vain besieged him. Meanwhile Modred had stirred up a revolt, and leaguing himself with the Saxon invaders, had usurped Arthur's throne. On his march southward to resist his nephew, Arthur halts at the nunnery of Almesbury, and in the Guinevere idyll the moving story of their last farewell is told. Then the King advanced to meet Modred. The description of that "last weird battle in the west" is given in _The Passing of Arthur_, and leads up to the impressive line with which our present poem opens. Towards the close of that fateful day, there came--

A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew The mist aside, and with that wind the tide Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field Of battle: but no man was moving there; Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon, Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave Broke in among dead faces, to and fro Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen, And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome, And rolling far along the gloomy shores The voice of days of old and days to be.

The King speaks despairingly to Bedivere, who answering, swears to him undying allegiance, and points to the traitor, Modred, who still stands unharmed:

Thereupon:--

the King Made at the man: then Modred smote his liege Hard on the helm which many a heathen sword Had beaten thin; while Arthur at one blow, Striking the last stroke with Excalibur, Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell.

4. LYONNESSE. The geography of the _Idylls of the King_ is designedly vague. The region of Lyonnesse was supposed to be adjacent to Cornwall, and the sea now covers it. The Scilly Islands are held to have been the western limit of this fabulous country.

6. THE BOLD SIR BEDIVERE. The epithet "bold" is used repeatedly in this vaguely descriptive fashion with Sir Bedivere's name. Cf. lines 39, 69, 115, 151, 226. The use of "permanent epithets" in narrative poetry has been consecrated by the example of Homer, who constantly employs such expressions as "the swift-footed Achilles," "wide-ruling Agamemnon," etc.

Bedivere is described in _The Coming of Arthur_ as follows:--

For bold in heart and act and word was he Whenever slander breathed against the King.

12. A GREAT WATER. This expression has occasioned much unnecessary comment on the score of its alleged artificiality. There might be a gain in definiteness in substituting "lake," or "river," as the case might be, but there would be a corresponding loss in poetry and in meaning at this particular place. "Had 'a great lake' been substituted for it, the phrase would have needed to be translated by the mind into water of a certain shape and size, before the picture was realized by the imagination." (Brimley.) It would have, consequently, been more precise, but "less poetic and pictorial."

If further justification for the expression were needed it might be stated that "water" stands for lake in certain parts of England, e.g. "Dewentwater," etc.; and, what is of more importance, that Malory uses "water" in the same sense: "The king . . . . saw afore him in a great water a little ship." _Morte d'Arthur_ iv. 6.

21. OF CAMELOT. Arthur's capital, as noted in _The Lady of Shalott_. In speaking of the allegorical meaning of _The Idylls of the King_, Tennyson states that "Camelot, for instance, a city of shadowy palaces, is everywhere symbolical of the gradual growth of human beliefs and institutions, and of the spiritual development of man." Always bear in mind that Tennyson has also said: "There is no single fact or incident in the Idylls, however seemingly mystical, which cannot be explained without any mystery or allegory whatever."

22. I PERISH--MADE. In _The Coming of Arthur_ this thought is amplified:

For first Aurelius lived and fought and died, And after him King Uther fought and died, But either failed to make the kingdom one. And after these King Arthur for a space, _And thro the puissance of his Table Round Drew all their petty princedoms under him, Their king and head, and made a realm, and reigned_.

And in _The Passing of Arthur_ we read:

Ill doom is mine To war against my people and my knights. The king who fights his people fights himself.

23. THO' MERLINE SWARE--AGAIN. Merlin was the great wizard of Arthur's court. In the allegorical view of the poem he typifies the intellect, or, in Tennyson's words: "the sceptical understanding."

This prophecy concerning Arthur is again referred to in _The Coming of Arthur_:

And Merlin in our time Hath spoken also, not in jest, and sworn, Though men may wound him, that he will not die, But pass and come again.

This belief is common to all the Arthurian sources. Compare, for example, Wace's _Brut_: "Arthur, if the story lies not, was mortally wounded in the body: he had himself borne to Avalon to heal his wounds. There he is still; the Britons await him, as they say and understand . . . The prophet spoke truth, and one can doubt, and always will doubt whether he is dead or living." Dr. Sykes writes that, "The sleep of Arthur associates the British story with the similar stories of Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, Brian in Ireland, Boabdil el Chico in Spain, etc."

27. EXCALIBUR. Arthur's magical sword. It is described in _The Coming of Arthur_, ll. 295 f., as:

the sword That rose from out the bosom of the lake, And Arthur rowed across and took it--rich With jewels, elfin Urim, on the hilt, Bewildering heart and eye--the blade so bright That men are blinded by it--on one side, Graven in the oldest tongue of all this world, "Take me," but turn the blade and ye shall see, And written in the speech ye speak yourself, "Cast me away."

It has been variously held that Excalibur typifies temporal authority, or spiritual power. The casting away of the sword, therefore, represents the inevitable change in which human things are involved, and even faith itself. Compare _Morte d'Arthur_, ll. 240-241.

Magical weapons and enchanted armour are a portion of the equipment of almost all the great legendary heroes. Their swords and their horses usually bear distinctive names. Roland's sword was _Durandal_, and Charlemagne's was _Joyeuse_.

37. FLING HIM. The sword is viewed as possessing life.

THE MIDDLE MERE. Compare a similar classical construction in Oenone, l. 10, topmost Gargarus.

53-55. THE WINTER MOON--HILT. The frosty air made the moonlight more than usually brilliant.

60. THIS WAY--MIND. An echo of Vergil's line, Aeneid, VIII. 20. _Atque animum nunc huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc_. "And he divides his swift mind now this way, now that."

63. MANY-KNOTTED WATER FLAGS. Dr. Sykes has a careful note on this expression (_Select Poems of Tennyson_; Gage & Co.). "The epithet many-knotted is difficult to explain. The possible explanations would refer the description to (1) the root-stock of the flag, which shows additional bulbs from year to year; (2) the joints in the flower stalks, of which some half-dozen may be found on each stalk; (3) the large seed-pods that terminate in stalks, a very noticeable feature when the plant is sere; (4) the various bunches or knots of iris in a bed of the plants, so that the whole phrase suggests a thickly matted bed of flags. I favour the last interpretation, though Tennyson's fondness of technical accuracy in his references makes the second more than possible."

70-71. I HEARD--CRAG. It is interesting to read Chapter V., Book XXI. of Malory in connection with Tennyson's version of the story. He is throughout true to the spirit of the original. _A propos_ of lines 70-71, we find in Malory: "What saw thou, there?" said the King. "Sir," he said, "I saw nothing but the waters wap and the waves wan." Tennyson, in these two lines, gives us a consummate example of creative imitation.

84. COUNTING THE DEWY PEBBLES. This aptly describes the absorption of his mind.

85 f. and 56-58 supra. Compare the description of Excalibur, and of Bedivere's hesitancy, in Malory's book. "So Sir Bedivere departed, and by the way he beheld that noble sword, that the pommel and haft were all of precious stones, and then he said to himself, 'If I throw this rich sword in the water, thereof shall never come good, but harm and loss.' And then Sir Bedivere hid Excalibur under a tree."

104. THE LONELY MAIDEN OF THE LAKE. The "Lady of the Lake" was present at the crowning of Arthur. In the _Coming of Arthur_ she is described as dwelling--

Down in a deep; calm, whatsoever storms May shake the world, and when the surface rolls Hath power to walk the waters like our Lord.

Arthur's first meeting with her is described in Malory:-- "So they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand. 'Lo,' said Merlin, 'yonder is that sword that I spake of.' With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake; 'What damsel is that?' said Arthur. 'That is the Lady of the Lake,' said Merlin; 'and within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any upon earth, and richly beseen.'"

In _Gareth and Lynette_ the Lady of the Lake is mystically figured forth upon the great gate of Camelot.

105-106. NINE YEARS--HILLS. Hallam, Lord Tennyson, in the Memoir, quotes Fitzgerald's short account of a row on Lake Windermere with the poet; "'Resting on our oars one calm day on Windermere, whither we had gone for a week from dear Spedding's (Mirehouse), at the end of May, 1835; resting on our oars, and looking into the lake quite unruffled and clear, Alfred quoted from the lines he had lately read us from the MS. of _Morte d'Arthur_ about the lonely lady of the lake and Excalibur:

"Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps, Under the hidden bases of the hills.

"--Not bad, that. Fitz, is it?

"This kind of remark he would make when rendering his own or others' poetry when he came to lines that he particularly admired from no vanity but from a pure feeling of artistic pleasure." (Vol. I. pp. 152-153).

112. Note the slowness of the movement expressed in the rhythm of this line, and compare with it line 168. Contrast the swiftness and energy expressed in ll. 133-136.

121. AUTHORITY--KING. This line has been described as Shakespearian. Its strength is derived from the force of the metaphorical personification. The boldness of the poetical construction is carried into the metaphor in the next line.

129. FOR A MAN. Because a man.

132. AND SLAY THEE WITH MY HANDS. Compare Malory: "And but if thou do now as I bid thee, if ever I may see thee, I shall slay thee with mine own hands, for thou wouldest for my rich sword see me dead." In Rowe and Webb's edition it is suggested that 'with my hands' is added for one of two reasons,--either "because he had now no sword; or more probably, these words are introduced in imitation of Homer's habit of mentioning specific details: cf. 'he went taking long steps with his feet.'" This explanation is ingenious, but unnecessary in view of the quotation from Malory. The note proceeds: "Notice the touch of human personality in the king's sharp anger; otherwise Arthur is generally represented by Tennyson as a rather colourless being, and as almost 'too good for human nature's daily food.'"

133-142. Brimley in his valuable essay on Tennyson, analyses this poem in some detail. Of this passage he writes: "A series of brilliant effects is hit off in these two words, 'made lightnings.' 'Whirl'd in an arch,' is a splendid instance of sound answering to sense, which the older critics made so much of; the additional syllable which breaks the measure, and necessitates an increased rapidity of utterance, seeming to express to the ear the rush of the sword up its parabolic curve. And with what lavish richness of presentative power is the boreal aurora, the collision, the crash, and the thunder of the meeting icebergs, brought before the eye. An inferior artist would have shouted through a page, and emptied a whole pallet of colour, without any result but interrupting his narrative, where Tennyson in three lines strikingly illustrates the fact he has to tell,--associates it impressively with one of Nature's grandest phenomena, and gives a complete picture of this phenomenon besides." The whole essay deserves to be carefully read.

143. DIPT THE SURFACE. A poetical construction.

157. Note the personification of the sword.

182-183. CLOTHED--HILLS. His breath made a vapour in the frosty air through which his figure loomed of more than human size. Tennyson gives us the same effect in _Guinevere_, 597:

The moving vapour rolling round the King, Who seem'd the phantom of a Giant in it, Enwound him fold by fold.

But the classical example is found in Wordsworth's description of the mountain shepherd in _The Prelude_, Book VIII.

When up the lonely brooks on rainy days Angling I went, or trod the trackless hills By mists bewildered, suddenly mine eyes Have glanced upon him distant a few steps, In size a giant, stalking through thick fog, His sheep like Greenland bears, or as he stepped Beyond the boundary line of some hill-shadow, His form hath flashed upon me, glorified By the deep radiance of the setting sun,

191-192. AND ON A SUDDEN--MOON. "Do we not," writes Brimley, "seem to burst from the narrow steep path down the ravine, whose tall precipitous sides hide the sky and the broad landscape from sight, and come out in a moment upon--

"the level lake, And the long glories of the winter moon!"

193. HOVE=hove in sight.

The closing scene in this drama is impressively described by Malory. "So Sir Bedivere came again to the King, and told him what he saw. 'Alas,' said the King, 'help me hence, for I dread me I have tarried over long.' Then Sir Bedivere took the King upon his back, and so went with him to that water side. And when they were at the water side, even fast by the bank hoved a little barge, with many fair ladies in it, and among them all was a queen, and all they had black hoods, and all they wept and shrieked when they saw King Arthur. 'Now, put me into the barge,' said the King: and so they did softly. And there received him three queens with great mourning, and so they set him down, and in one of their laps King Arthur laid his head; and then that queen said; 'Ah, dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me? Alas, this wound on your head hath caught overmuch cold.' And so then they rowed from the land; and Sir Bedivere beheld ail those ladies go from him. Then Sir Bedivere cried; 'Ah, my Lord Arthur, what shall become of me now ye so from me, and leave me here alone among mine enemies?' 'Comfort thyself,' said the King:, 'and do as well as thou mayest, for in me is no trust for to trust in. For I will into the vale of Avilion, to heal me of my grievous wound. And if thou hear never more of me, pray for my soul.' But ever the queens and the ladies wept and shrieked, that it was pity to hear. And, as soon as Sir Bedivere had lost the sight of the barge, he wept and wailed, and so took the forest, and so he went all that night. . . . . ."

It is interesting to note how the poet suggests here and there the phrasing of his original, but even more interesting to note his amplifications. It may be doubted whether Tennyson has here surpassed his original. For its touching simplicity he has substituted a dignified grandeur, and has involved plain statements in gorgeous rhetoric, as in his passage upon the efficacy of prayer. The unadorned original had said only "pray for my soul."

198. THREE QUEENS WITH CROWNS OF GOLD. "That one was King Arthur's sister, Morgan le Fay; the other was the Queen of Northgales (Wales); the third was the Lady of the lake." _Malory_.

215-216. DASH'D WITH DROPS--OF ONSET. Words are sometimes poetical from their precision, and sometimes, as here, they suggest without definite reference. The meaning is "dashed with drops of blood" from the onset or encounter.

2t6-220. Arthur is again described in _The Last Tournament_.

That victor of the Pagan throned in hall, His hair, a sun that rayed from off a brow Like hillsnow high in heaven, the steel-blue eyes, The golden beard that cloth'd his lips with light.

228. MY FOREHEAD AND MY EYES. Compare the note to line 132. Here the specific terms are used according to the epical manner instead of the general term "face."

232-233. Compare the Gospel of _Matthew_ ii. 11.

240-242. These often-quoted lines have been already referred to above. Their very intellectuality is alien to the spirit of the original. In Tennyson's conception they afford the central meaning of the poem, and also of the completed _Idylls_. We must bow to the will of God who brings all things in their due season. Good customs too deeply rooted are like clear waters grown stagnant.

254-255. FOR SO--GOD. The idea that the earth is bound by a gold chain to heaven is comparatively common in literature from Homer downwards. Archdeacon Hare has a passage in his sermon on _Self-Sacrifice_ which doubtless was familiar to Tennyson: "This is the golden chain of love, whereby the whole creation is bound to the throne of the Creator."

257-258. IF INDEED I GO--DOUBT. There is no reason to suppose that these lines indicate Tennyson's personal misgivings on the subject of immortality.

259. THE ISLAND VALLEY OF AVILION. Mr. Rhys in his _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_ combats the old idea that Avalon (Avilion) meant the "Island of Apples" (Welsh aval, apple). The name implies the Island of King Avalon, a Celtic divinity, who presided among the dead.

The valley of Avalon was supposed to be near Glastonbury, in Somersetshire, where Joseph of Arimathea first landed with the Holy Grail.

67 ff. There is an evident symbolical meaning in this dream. Indeed Tennyson always appears to use dreams for purposes of symbol. The lines are an application of the expression; "The old order changeth," etc. The parson's lamentation expressed in line 18, "Upon the general decay of faith," is also directly answered by the assertion that the modern Arthur will arise in modern times. There is a certain grotesqueness in the likening of King Arthur to "a modern gentleman of stateliest port." But Tennyson never wanders far from conditions of his own time. As Mr. Stopford Brooke writes; "Arthur, as the modern gentleman, as the modern ruler of men, such a ruler as one of our Indian heroes on the frontier, is the main thing in Tennyson's mind, and his conception of such a man contains his ethical lesson to his countrymen."

THE BROOK

Published in 1855 in the volume, _Maud and other Poems_. _The Brook_ is one of the most successful of Tennyson's idylls, and is in no degree, as the earlier poem _Dora_ was, a Wordsworthian imitation. The brook itself, which bickers in and out of the story as in its native valley, was not the Somersby brook, which does not now "to join the brimming river," but pours into the sea. The graylings and other details are imaginary. A literary source has been suggested (see Dr. Sykes' note) in Goethe's poem, _Das Bächlein_, which begins:

klar, and clear, sinn; and think; du hin? goest thou? Du Bachlein, silberhell und Thou little brook, silver bright Du eilst vorüber immerdar, Thou hastenest ever onward, Am Ufer steh' ich, sinn' und I stand on the brink, think Wo kommst du her? Wo gehst Whence comest thou? Where

The Brook replies:

Schoss, dark rocks, Moss'. and moss. Ich komm' aus dunkler Felsen I come from the bosom of the Mein Lauf geht über Blum' und My course goes over flowers

The charm of the poem lies in its delicate characterization, in its tone of pensive memory suffused with cheerfulness, and especially in the song of the brook, about which the action revolves. Twenty years have wrought many changes in the human lives of the story, but the brook flows on forever, and Darnley bridge still spans the brimming river, and shows for only change a richer growth of ivy.

6. HOW MONEY BREEDS, i.e. by producing interest at loan.

8. THE THING THAT--IS. The poet's function is thus described by Shakespeare:

As imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. --_Midsummer Night's Dream_, V., 1.

17. HALF-ENGLISH NEILGHERRY AIR. The Neilgherry Hills are in Madras. The climate resembles somewhat that of England.

37. MORE IVY, i.e. than twenty years ago.

46. WILLOW WEED AND MALLOW. These are marsh plants.

93-95. NOT ILLITERATE--DEED. Katie was not without reading; but she was not of those who dabble in sentimental novels (the source of imaginary tears), and saturate themselves with unctuous charities; and whose powers to act are sapped by their excess of feeling.

105. UNCLAIM'D. As having nothing to do with her. Katie resented the implication in the question of line 100. She therefore disdained to answer it. Messrs. Rowe and Webb hold that line 100 is a hint that the speaker, Lawrence Aylmer, was responsible for James's fit of jealousy.

l25f. Note the art with which the old man's garrulousness is expressed. The cautious precision of lines 151-152 is particularly apt.

176. NETTED SUNBEAM. The sunlight reflected like a net-work on the bottom. The ripples on the surface would have this effect.

189. ARNO. A river in Italy which flows past Florence.

189-190. DOME OF BRUNELLESCHI. Brunelleschi (Broo-nei-les'-ké) was an Italian architect (1377-1444), who completed the cathedral of Santa Maria in Florence. Its dome is of great size and impressiveness.

194. BY--SEAS. Tennyson was fond of quoting this line as one of his roost successful individual lines. Its rhythm is indeed sonorous.

195-196. AND HOLD--APRIL AUTUMNS. Objection has been taken to the somewhat pedantic precision of these lines. See, however, the reference on pp. lxxii.-lxxvii. to Tennyson's employment of science in poetry.

The fact is familiar, of course, that in the Antipodes the seasons are the reverse of ours.

203. BRIONY RINGS. Formed by the tendrils of the plant.

IN MEMORIAM

The poem, _In Memoriam_, in memory of Arthur Henry Hallam, was published in 1850, at first anonymously, but the authorship was not long in doubt.

Arthur Henry Hallam, the son of Henry Hallam, the historian, was born in 1811. He entered Eton in 1822, and remained there until 1827, when he went to Cambridge. There he met Alfred Tennyson, and the two young men formed a friendship for one another, broken only by Hallam's early death. In 1832, he graduated from Cambridge, became engaged to Emily Tennyson, the sister of Alfred, and entered on the study of law. In 1833, he had a severe illness and after his recovery was taken by his father for a tour on the Continent, in the hope of restoring his health. Sir Francis Hastings Doyle tells the story of his death: "A severe bout of influenza weakened him, and whilst he was travelling abroad for change of air, and to recover his strength, one of his usual attacks apparently returned upon him without warning, whilst he was still unfitted to resist it; so that when his poor father came back from a walk through the streets of Vienna, he was lying dead on the sofa where he had been left to take a short rest. Mr. Hallam sat down to write his letters, and it was only by slow and imperceptible degrees that a certain anxiety, in consequence of Arthur's stillness and silence, dawned upon his mind; he drew near to ascertain why he had not moved nor spoken, and found that all was over." The body was brought back to England and buried in Clevedon Church, on the banks of the Severn.

The effect upon Tennyson of the death of Arthur Hallam was overwhelming. For a time it "blotted out all joy from his life and made him long for death, in spite of his feeling that he was in some measure a help and comfort to his sister." Under the influence of this great sorrow he wrote _The Two Voices_, _Ulysses_, "_Break, Break, Break_," and began that exquisite series of lyric poems, afterwards joined together in the _In Memoriam_. His friendship for Hallam remained throughout life with him as one of his most precious possessions.

The poems in the text are selected from the _In Memoriam_, and have a more or less close connection with each other. It is better, however, to regard each poem as a separate poem, without any attempt to place it in its relation to the _In Memoriam_ as a whole.

The best annotated edition of _In Memoriam_ is that by A. C. Bradley (Macmillan). Other useful editions are edited by Wallace (Macmillan), and by Robinson (Cambridge Press). Elizabeth B. Chapman's _Companion to In Memoriam_ (Macmillan), contains the best analysis of the poem.

XXVII

"The very memory of such an affection as he had cherished for Hallam is an inspiration. Keen and acute as the sense of loss may be, it purifies rather than destroys the influence of a hallowed love--its effect is to idealize and sanctify. This general truth is enforced by several illustrations."--_Henry E. Shepherd_.

2. NOBLE RAGE. Fierce love of freedom.

6. HIS LICENSE. "Lives without law, because untroubled by the promptings of a higher nature."

6. FIELD OF TIME. The term of his natural life.

12. WANT-BEGOTTEN REST. Hallam, Lord Tennyson interprets: "Rest--the result of some deficiency or narrowness."

16. NEVER TO HAVE LOVED. Life is enriched by the mere act of having loved.

LXIV

"Still brooding on all the possible relations of his old friend to the life and the love that he has left, the poet now compares him to some genius of lowly birth, who should leave his obscure home to rise to the highest office of state, and should sometimes in the midst of his greatness, remember, as in a dream, the dear scenes of old, and it may be, the humble villager who was his chosen playmate."--Elizabeth R. Chapman.

1. DOST THOU, ETC. This section was composed by Tennyson when he was walking up and down the Strand and Fleet Street in London.

5. INVIDIOUS BAR. Obstacle to success. Invidious is used in the sense of "offensive."

7. CIRCUMSTANCE. Adverse circumstances.

9. BY FORCE. Strength of character and will.

10. GOLDEN KEYS. Keys of office of state.

11. MOULD. As a minister of the Crown.

14. CROWNING SLOPE. A felicitous phrase. If it were a precipice it could not be climbed.

15. PILLAR. That on which they build, and which supports them.

21. NARROWER. When he was still in his "low estate."

28. REMEMBER ME. Bradley notes that "the pathetic effect is increased by the fact that in the two preceding stanzas we are not told that his old friend does remember him."

LXXXIII

"With the dawning of the New Year, fresh hope quickens in the poet's breast. He would fain hasten its laggard footsteps, longing for the flowers of spring and for the glory of summer. Can trouble live in the spring--the season of life and love and music? Let the spring come, and he will sing 'for Arthur a sweeter, richer requiem.'"--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

1. NORTHERN SHORE. Robertson explains: "The north being the last to be included in the widening circle of lengthening daylight as it readies further and further down from the equator."

2. NEW-YEAR. The natural, not the calendar year. The re-awakening of life in nature.

5. CLOUDED NOONS. From the noons, which are still clouded.

6. PROPER. Own.

9. SPIRE. Flowering spikes.

10. SPEEDWELL. "The Germander Speedwell is a slender, wiry plant, whose stem sometimes creeps along the surface of the ground before it grows upwards. The flowers have four small petals of the brightest blue, and within the flower at the foot of the petals is a small white circle, with a little white eye looking up. Two stamens with crimson heads rise from this white circle, and in the very centre of the flower there is a tiny green seed-vessel, with a spike coming out of the top."--_C. B. Smith_.

12. LABURNUMS.

"And all the gold from each laburnum chain Drops to the grass." --_To Mary Boyle_.

LXXXVI

"I can open my being also to the reviving influences of Nature--as on a certain evening, balmy and glorious after the rain, when the breeze seemed as if it might breathe new life, and waft me across the seas away from the land of doubt and death to some far off sphere of more than earthly peace,"--_Arthur W. Robinson_.

1. SWEET AFTER SHOWERS, ETC. This poem was written at Barmouth.

1. AMBROSIAL. Ambrosia was the food of the immortal gods. The wind was from the west and was "divinely reviving."

4. BREATHING BARE. Making the horizon bare of clouds.

5. RAPT. Violent motion is not implied.

6. DEWY-TASSEL'D. From the showers.

7. HORNED FLOOD. Between two promontaries.

9. SIGH. "Impart as by a breath or sigh."

10. NEW LIFE. Due to the new friendship.

11. DOUBT AND DEATH. These have up to this time haunted him.

13. FROM BELT, ETC. Tennyson explains: "The west wind rolling to the Eastern seas till it meets the evening star."

16. WHISPER "PEACE." Stopford Brooke says of this poem: "Each verse is linked like bell to bell in a chime to the verse before it, swelling as they go from thought to thought, and finally rising from the landscape of earth to the landscape of infinite space. Can anything be more impassioned and yet more solemn? It has the swiftness of youth and the nobleness of manhood's sacred joy."

CI

"In the garden, looking round on tree and shrub and flower and brook--all the friends of many years--a fresh pang comes with the sight of each. All these will be unwatched, unloved, uncared for; till, perhaps, they find a home in a stranger's heart, growing dear to him and his, while the memory fades of those who love them now."--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

10. THE BROOK. The brook at Somersby flowed past the bottom of the parsonage grounds. It is constantly mentioned in Tennyson's poems. Hallam Tennyson says that the charm and beauty of the brook haunted his father through life.

11. LESSER WAIN. Ursa Minor, or the Little Bear; a small constellation containing the pole star. Wain means "wagon," another name for the constellation.

14. HERN AND CRAKE. Heron and corn-crake.

21. LABOURER. He does not move away, but stays always there.

22. GLEBE. Soil.

CXIV

"The world now is all for the spread of knowledge: and I should be the last to demur. But knowledge has an ardent impetuosity, which in its present immature condition may be fraught with many perils. Knowledge by itself, so far from being of necessity heavenly, may even become devilish in its selfish violence. Everything depends upon its being held in due subordination to those higher elements in our nature which go to make wisdom. Would that the ideal aim of our education were to produce such as he was, in whom every increase in intellectual ability was accompanied by the growth of some finer grace of the spirit."--_Arthur W. Robinson_.

4. HER PILLARS. "Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars."--_Proverbs_ 9: 1.

5. A FIRE. The fire of inspiration.

6. SETS. Hard, like a flint.

6. FORWARD. Bold, without reverence.

7. CHANCE. Of success.

8. TO DESIRE. Governed by passion, without restraint or self-control.

10. FEAR OF DEATH. Knowledge does not know what is beyond the grave and therefore fears death.

11. CUT FROM LOVE, ETC. Wallace says: "Knowledge, in its own nature, can have no love, for love is not of the intellect, and knowledge is all of the intellect: so, too, she can have no faith, for faith in its nature is a confession of ignorance, since she believes what she cannot know."

12. PALLAS. Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom among the Greeks, was fabled to have sprung, fully grown and fully armed, from the brain of Zeus. Wild Pallas means "false wisdom."

17. A HIGHER HAND. Wisdom.

23. THY GOAL. The goal of wisdom.

28. REVERENCE, ETC. In faith and love.

CXV

"Another spring has come, and all its lovely sights and sounds wake answering chords in the poet's breast. The life within him stirs and quickens in responsive harmony with the world without. But his regret, too, blossoms like a flower,"--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

2. BURGEONS. Buds.

2. MAZE OF QUICK. Quick-set tangle.

3. SQUARES. Fields.

8. SIGHTLESS. Invisible.

14. GREENING. Shining out on the sea.

CXVIII

"Do not believe that man's soul is like mere matter, or has been produced, like lower forms in the earlier ages of the earth, only to perish. Believe that he is destined both to advance to something higher on the earth, and also to develop in some higher place elsewhere, if he repeats the process of evolution by subduing the lower within him to the uses of the higher, whether in peaceful growth or through painful struggle."--_A. C. Bradley_.

2. HIS YOUTH. "Limited time, however old or long, must be always young, compared with the hoary age of eternity."

4. EARTH AND LIME. Flesh and bone.

10. SEEMING-RANDOM. But in reality shaped and guided.

11. CYCLIC STORMS. "Periodic cataclysms," or "storms lasting for whole ages."

16. TYPE. Exemplify.

18. ATTRIBUTES OF WOE. Trial and suffering are the crown of man in this world.

20. IDLE. Useless.

22. HEATED HOT. A reference to the tempering of steel.

26. REELING FAUN. Human beings with horns, a tail, and goats' feet. They were more than half-brutish in their nature.

28. THE APE AND THE TIGER. A reference to the theory of evolution, although Darwin's _Origin of Species_ did not appear until 1859.

CXXIII

"Again the mysterious play of mighty cosmic forces arrests his thought. Everything in the material universe is changing, transient; all is in a state of flux, of motion, of perpetual disintegration or re-integration. But there is one thing fixed and abiding--that which we call spirit--and amid all uncertainty, one truth is certain--that to a loving human soul a parting which shall be eternal is unthinkable."--_Elizabeth R. Chapman_.

4. STILLNESS. Hallam Tennyson remarks that balloonists say that even in a storm the middle sea is noiseless. It is the ship that is the cause of the howling of the wind and the lashing of the storm.

4. CENTRAL SEA. Far from land.

8. LIKE CLOUDS, ETC. A reference to geological changes.