Of Arthur Hallam's own quality as a poet we get a pleasant glimpse in the sonnet addressed to his betrothed when he began to teach her Italian:—
"Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome,
Ringing with echoes of Italian song;
Henceforth to thee these magic halls belong,
And all the pleasant place is like a home.
Hark, on the right, with full piano tone,
Old Dante's voice encircles all the air;
Hark yet again, like flute-tones mingling rare
Comes the keen sweetness of Petrarca's moan.
Pass thou the lintel freely; without fear
Feast on the music. I do better know thee
Than to suspect this pleasure thou dost owe me
Will wrong thy gentle spirit, or make less dear."
After Tennyson had made his first literary successes, and after the family life at Somersby was broken up, we next hear of him through a warm and life-long friend. Away back in 1844 Carlyle in one of his letters to Emerson gives the following description of the then young and rising poet. It is an authentic glimpse of the real man, as he then appeared to one of the shrewdest and most critical of the men of that day.
"Tennyson is now in town, and means to come and see me. Of this latter result I shall be very glad: Alfred is one of the few British or Foreign Figures (a not increasing number I think) who are and remain beautiful to me,—a true human soul, or some approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can say, Brother! However, I doubt he will not come; he often skips me, in these brief visits to Town; skips everybody indeed, being a man solitary and sad, as certain men are, dwelling in an element of gloom,—carrying a bit of Chaos about him, in short, which he is manufacturing into Cosmos!
"Alfred is the son of a Lincolnshire Gentleman Farmer, I think; indeed, you see in his verses that he is a native of 'moated granges,' and green fat pastures, not of mountains and their torrents and storms. He had his breeding at Cambridge, as if for the Law or Church; being master of a small annuity, on his Father's decease, he preferred clubbing, with his mother and some sisters, to live unpromoted and write Poems. In this way he lives still, now here, now there; the family always within reach of London, never in it; he himself making rare and brief visits, lodging in some old comrade's rooms. I think he must be under forty, not much under it. One of the finest looking men in the world. A great shock of rough dusty-dark hair; bright, laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,—fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet in these decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will grow to. He is often unwell; very chaotic—his way is through Chaos and the Bottomless and Pathless; not handy for making out many miles upon."
To this graphic description little need be added of the Tennyson of that time. He was in the midst of his greatest literary successes, and just beginning to reap some of the rewards of his labors. His fame increased rapidly from that time forward, and his fortune with his fame. For many years he has been a rich man, being a sharp and shrewd manager of his worldly affairs. His investments have always proved to be paying ones; and for a long time he has had whatever prices he named for his poems. He has a beautiful place at Farringford, Isle of Wight, and another country seat at Aldworth, in Surrey. He also owns a house in London, although he spends very little time there. He kept up his visits to the Carlyles during his occasional stays in the metropolis, until the death of his old friends. He was very fond of Mrs. Carlyle, her sharp wit amusing him, and her appreciation of his own work flattering him. She gives occasional pleasant mention of him in her letters. Over his later work Carlyle was not enthusiastic, although he retained his friendship for the man. In 1867, after the death of his wife, he gives us his last glimpse of the poet, which is as characteristic as the other:—
"We read at first Tennyson's 'Idyls,' with profound recognition of the finely elaborated execution, and also of the inward perfection of vacancy—and, to say truth, with considerable impatience at being treated so very like infants though the lollipops were so superlative. We gladly changed for one Emerson's 'English Traits;' and read that with increasing and ever increasing satisfaction every evening; blessing heaven that there were still books for grown-up people too."
According to Carlyle, what Tennyson needed was a Task; and wanting that, he almost lost his way among the will-o'-wisps. High art, in the eyes of Carlyle, was but a poor "task" for a man like Tennyson. Upon this point the world will not be likely to agree with him, nor in his judgment of the wonderful "Idyls of the King." Although Tennyson, like Carlyle himself, has written too far into the shadows of age, he will not be judged by the labors of his old age, but by the matchless products of his prime. These are surely a priceless possession for the readers of the future, as well as for the men of his own time.
In the autobiography of Sir Henry Taylor we have this glimpse of the poet, in a letter from Mrs. Cameron to that gentleman:—
"Alfred has grown, he says, much fonder of you since your last visit here. He says he feels now he is beginning to know you and not to feel afraid of you; and that he is beginning to get over your extreme insolence to him when he was young and you were in your meridian splendor and glory. So one reads your simplicity. He was very violent with the girls on the subject of the rage for autographs. He said he believed every crime and every vice in the world was connected with the passion for autographs and anecdotes and records; that the desiring anecdotes and acquaintance with the lives of great men was treating them like pigs, to be ripped open for the public; that he knew he himself should be ripped open like a pig; that he thanked God Almighty with his whole heart and soul that he knew nothing, and that the world knew nothing, of Shakspeare but his writings."
All of which sounds not unlike what Carlyle himself might have said in those days; and yet what personal revelations he made to the world before his death!