This is fierce denunciation, but it pales before the attack on Hell in "Rizpah"; that splendid poem, which is perhaps the very noblest effort of Tennyson's genius; outweighing hundreds of Balaclava charges and sea-fights; outshining the flawless perfection of "Maud":—a poem written in heart's blood and immortal tears, with a wondrously potent and subtle imagination, and a fire of humanity to burn up whole mountains of brutal superstitions.
The passionate words of the poor old dying mother, full of a deathless love for her boy who was hung, go straight as an arrow to its mark, through all the conventions of society and all the teachings of the Church.
Election, Election and Reprobation—it's all very well,
But I go to-night to my boy, and I shall not find him in Hell.
And if he be lost—but to save my soul, that is all your desire;
Do you think that I care for my soul if my boy be gone to the fire?
Tennyson gives the very essence of the moral revolt against Hell. Human nature has so developed in sympathy that the sufferings of others, though out of sight, afflict our imaginations. We loathe the spectacle of Abraham and Lazarus gazing complacently on the torture of Dives. Once it was not so. Those who were "saved" had little or no care for the "damned." But the best men and women of to-day do not want to be saved alone. They want a common salvation or none. And the mother's heart, which the creeds have trampled upon, hates the thought of any happiness in Heaven while son or daughter is agonising in Hell.
It is perfectly clear that Tennyson was far from an orthodox Christian. Quite as certainly he was not a Bibliolator. He read the Bible, of course; and so did Shelley. There are fine things in it, amidst its falsehoods and barbarities; and the English version is a monument of our literature. We regard as apocryphal, however, the story of Tennyson's telling a boy, "Read the Bible and Shakespeare; the one will teach you how to speak to God, and the other how to speak to your fellow-men." Anyhow, when the poet came to die, he did not ask for the Bible and he did ask for Shakespeare. The copy he habitually used was handed to him; he opened it at "Cymbeline," one of the most pagan of Shakespeare's plays; he read a little, and then held the book until Death came with the fall of "tired eyelids upon tired eyes."
It was a poetic death, and a pagan death. There lay the aged, world-weary poet; artificial light was withdrawn, and the moonlight streamed through the window upon his noble figure. Wife and son, doctors and nurses, were silent around him. And as Death put the last cold touch on the once passionate heart, it found him still clasping the book of the mighty magician. * Let it be also noted that no Christian priest was at his bedside. He needed not the mum-lings of a smaller soul to aid him in his last extremity. Hope he may have had, but no fear. His life ended like a long summer day, slowly dying into night.
* The present Lord Tennyson wrote as follows to Sir Arthur
Hodgson, Chairman of the Shakespeare's Birthplace Trustees:
"I beg to convey from my mother and myself our grateful
acknowledgment to the Executive Committee of Shakespeare's
Birthplace for their most kind expression of sympathy and
for their beautiful wreath. My father was reading 'King
Lear,' 'Troilus and Cressida,' and 'Cymbeline' through the
last days of his life. On Wednesday he asked for
Shakespeare. I gave him the book, but said, 'You must not
try to read.' He answered, 'I have opened the book.' I
looked at the book at midnight when I was sitting by him,
lying dead on the Thursday, and found he had opened on one
of the passages which he had called the tenderest in
Shakespeare. We could not part with this volume, but buried
a Shakespeare with him. We had the book enclosed in a metal
box and laid by his side.
—Yours faithfully, Hallam Tennyson."
CHRIST'S OLD COAT.
The little town of Trier (Treves) will soon wear a festive appearance. Pilgrims will be flocking to it from all parts of Germany, and God knows from where besides. Its handful of inhabitants have obtained licenses to open hotels and restaurants; every inch of available space has been let, so that whirligigs, panoramas, and menageries have to be refused the sites they apply for; every room in the town is to be let, more or less furnished; and not only is the tram company doubling its line, but the railway company is constructing special stations for special trains.