I have tried to state the sources, in the general mind, of the general dislike of Maud. The public, “driving at practice,” disapproved of the “criticism of life” in the poem; confused the suffering narrator with the author, and neglected the poetry. “No modern poem,” said Jowett, “contains more lines that ring in the ears of men. I do not know any verse out of Shakespeare in which the ecstacy of love soars to such a height.” With these comments we may agree, yet may fail to follow Jowett when he says, “No poem since Shakespeare seems to show equal power of the same kind, or equal knowledge of human nature.” Shakespeare could not in a narrative poem have preferred the varying passions of one character to the characters of many persons.
Tennyson was “nettled at first,” his son says, “by these captious remarks of the ‘indolent reviewers,’ but afterwards he would take no notice of them except to speak of them in a half-pitiful, half-humorous, half-mournful manner.” The besetting sin and error of the critics was, of course, to confound Tennyson’s hero with himself, as if we confused Dickens with Pip.
Like Aurora Leigh, Lucile, and other works, Maud is under the disadvantage of being, practically, a novel of modern life in verse. Criticised as a tale of modern life (and it was criticised in that character), it could not be very highly esteemed. But the essence of Maud, of course, lies in the poetical vehicle. Nobody can cavil at the impressiveness of the opening stanzas—
“I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood”;
with the keynotes of colour and of desolation struck; the lips of the hollow “dabbled with blood-red heath,” the “red-ribb’d ledges,” and “the flying gold of the ruin’d woodlands”; and the contrast in the picture of the child Maud—
“Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall.”
The poem abounds in lines which live in the memory, as in the vernal description—
“A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime”;
and the voice heard in the garden singing
“A passionate ballad gallant and gay,”