The first of these merits—the least it may be in some eyes, not so in others—was a steadfast, intense, fiery patriotism, which may remind us of that which Macaulay in a famous passage has ascribed to Chatham in modern times and to Demosthenes of old. This quality differed as much from the flowery and conventional rhetoric not uncommon in writers of some foreign nations, as from the smug self-satisfaction which was so frequent in English speakers and authors of his own earlier time. No one probably of Mr. Froude's day was less blind to English faults than he was; no one more thoroughly grasped and more ardently admired the greatness of England, or more steadfastly did his utmost in his own vocation to keep her great.
His second excellence—an excellence still contested and in a way contestable, but less subject than the first to personal and particular opinion—was his command of the historic grasp, his share of the historic sense. I have seen these terms referred to as if they were chatter or claptrap; while the qualities which they denote are very often confounded with qualities which, sometimes found in connection with them, may exist without either. The historic sense may be roughly described as the power of seizing, and so of portraying, a historic character, incident, or period as if it were alive not dead; in such a manner that the fit reader, whether he is convinced or not that the things ever did happen, sees that they might and probably must have happened. Some of the most estimable and excellent of historians have not had even a glimmering of this sense: they have at best laboriously assembled the materials out of which, sooner or later, some one with the sense will make a live history. But Thucydides and Herodotus had it; Tacitus had it, and even Sallust; it betrays itself in the most artless fashion in Villehardouin and Joinville, less artlessly in Comines; Clarendon had it; Gibbon had it; Carlyle had it as none has had it before or since. And Mr. Froude had it; not much less though more fitfully than Carlyle. It is not in the least necessary to agree with his views; it is possible to regard his facts with the most anxious suspicion. You may think that the case made out for King Henry is pretty weak, and the case made out against Queen Mary is much weaker. But Mr. Froude is among the rare Deucalions of historic literature: he cannot cast a stone but it becomes alive.
Thirdly, and still rising in the scale of incontestability, though even so contested, I believe, by some, is the merit of style. I have sometimes doubted whether Mr. Froude at his best has any superior among the prose writers of the last half of this century. His is not a catching style; and in particular it does not perhaps impress itself upon green tastes. It has neither the popular and slightly brusque appeal of Macaulay or Kinglake, nor the unique magnificence of Mr. Ruskin, nor the fretted and iridescent delicacy of some other writers. It must be frankly confessed that, the bulk of his work being very great and his industry not being untiring, it is unequal, and sometimes not above (it is never below) good journey-work. But at its best it is of a simply wonderful attraction—simply in the pure sense, for it is never very ornate, and does not proceed in point of "tricks" much beyond the best varieties of the latest Georgian form. That strange quality of "liveliness" which has been noticed in reference to its author's view of history, animates it throughout. It is never flat; never merely popular; never merely scholarly; never merely "precious" and eccentric. And at its very best it is excelled by no style in this century, and approached by few in this or any other, as a perfect harmony of unpretentious music, adjusted to the matter that it conveys, and lingering on the ear that it reaches.
Note.—As examples of the almost enforced omissions referred to in the text may be mentioned earlier Archdeacon Coxe, the biographer of Marlborough and the historian of the House of Austria; later, Finlay (1799-1875), the valiant successor of Gibbon, and the chronicler of the obscure and thankless fortunes of the country called Greece, after it had ceased to be living. Professor Sir J. R. Seeley, Kingsley's successor at Cambridge (1834-94), equally distinguished in his professional business, and as a lay theologian in a sense rather extra-orthodox than unorthodox; and Sir John Stirling-Maxwell, no mean historian either in the general sense or in the special department of Art. It is open to any one to contend that each and all of these as well deserve notice as not a few dealt with above; yet if they were admitted others still could hardly be excluded.
CHAPTER VI
THE SECOND POETICAL PERIOD
The second period of English poetry in the nineteenth century displays a variety and abundance of poetical accomplishment which must rank it very little below either its immediate predecessor, or even the great so-called Elizabethan era. But it is distinguished from both these periods, and, indeed, from almost all others by the extraordinary predominance of a single poet in excellence, in influence, and in duration. There is probably no other instance anywhere of a poet who for more than sixty years wrote better poetry than any one of his contemporaries who were not very old men when he began, and for exactly fifty of those years was recognised by the best judges as the chief poet of his country if not of his time.
Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809 at Somersby, in Lincolnshire, where his father, a member of a good county family, was rector. He was the third son, and his two elder brothers, Frederick and Charles, both possessed considerable poetical gifts, though it cannot be said that the Poems by Two Brothers (it seems that it should really have been "three"), which appeared in 1826, display much of this or anything whatever of Alfred's subsequent charm. From the Grammar School of Louth the poet went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was contemporary, and in most cases intimate, with an unusually distinguished set of undergraduates, many of whom afterwards figured in the famous Sterling Club (see chapter iv). He also did what not many great future poets have done, he obtained the Chancellor's prize for English verse with a poem on "Timbuctoo," where again his special note is almost, though perhaps not quite, absent: it appears faintly and fitfully in another juvenile poem not formally published till long afterwards, "The Lover's Tale."