“What poem is that?” I inquired.
“This is it,” he replied, offering me the letter which he held. “A personal friend of my own sends it to me for insertion. It is called ‘Crossing the Bar.’ Have you ever seen it before?”
The aggregate thickness of skull of the proprietorial household was phenomenal.
When writing on the subject of this poem I may perhaps be permitted to express the opinion, that the remarks made about it in some directions were the most astounding that ever appeared in print respecting a composition of the character of “Crossing the Bar.”
One writer, it may be remembered, took occasion to point out that the “Pilot” was, of course, the poet’s son, by whom he had been predeceased. The “thought” was, we were assured, that his son had gone before him to show him the direction to take, so to speak. Now whatever the “thought” of the poet was, the thought of this commentator converged not upon a pilot but a pilot-engine.
Then another writer was found anxious to point out that Tennyson’s navigation was defective. “What would be the use of a pilot when the bar was already crossed?” was the question asked by this earnest inquirer. This gentleman’s idea clearly was that Tennyson should have subjected himself to a course of Mr. Clark Russell before attempting to write such a poem as “Crossing the Bar.”
The fact was that Tennyson knew enough navigation for a poet, just as Mr. Gladstone knows enough for a premier. When the two most picturesque of Englishmen (assuming that Mr. Gladstone is an Englishman) took their cruise together in a steam yacht they kept their eyes open, I have good reason to know. I question very much if the most ideal salt in the mercantile marine could make a better attempt to describe some incidents of the sea than Tennyson did in “Enoch Arden”; and as the Boston gentleman was doubtful if more than six men in his city could write “Hamlet,” so I doubt if the same number of able-bodied seamen, whose command of emphatic language is noted, could bring before our eyes the sight, and send rushing through our ears the sound, of a breaking wave, with greater emphasis than Tennyson did when he wrote,—
“As the crest of some slow-arching wave