His Mastership.
It is to note, too, that the Laureate of to-day deals with language in a way that to the Tennyson of the beginning was—unhappily—impossible. In those early years he neither would nor could have been responsible for the magnificent and convincing rhythms of Vastness, the austere yet passionate shapeliness of Happy, the effects of vigour and variety realised in Parnassus. For in those early years he was rather Benvenuto than Michelangelo, he was more of a jeweller than a sculptor, the phrase was too much to him, the inspiration of the incorrect too little. All that is changed, and for the best. Most interesting is it to the artist to remark how impatient—(as the Milton of the Agonistes was)—of rhyme and how confident in rhythm is the whilome poet of Oriana and The Lotus-Eaters and The Vision of Sin; and how this impatience and this confidence are revealed not merely in a piece of mysticism naked yet unashamed as The Gleam—(whose movement
with its constancy in double endings and avoidance of triplets is perhaps a little tame)—but also in what should have been a popular piece: the ode, to wit, On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. In eld, indeed, the craftsman inclines to play with his material: he is conscious of mastery; he is in the full enjoyment of his own; he indulges in experiments which to him are as a crown of glory and to them that come after him—to the noodles that would walk in his ways without first preparing themselves by prayer and study and a life of abnegation—are only the devil in disguise. The Rembrandt of The Syndics, the Shakespeare of The Tempest and Lear—what are these but pits for the feet of the Young Ass? and what else will be the Tennyson of Vastness and The Gleam? ‘Lord,’ quoth Dickens years ago in respect of the Idylls or of Maud, ‘what a pleasure it is to come across a man that can write!’ He also was an artist in words; and what he said then he would say now with greater emphasis and more assurance. From the first Lord Tennyson has been an exemplar; and now in these new utterances, his supremacy is completely revealed. There is no fear now that ‘All will grow the flower, For all have got the seed’; for then it was a mannerism that people took and imitated, and now—! Now it is art; it is the greater Shakespeare, the consummate Rembrandt, the unique Velasquez; and they may rise to it that can.