Though I must pass the early years almost in silence, I cannot refrain from quoting the delightful tale, first made known (I believe) by Miss Thackeray,[85] how at the age of five the Poet was seen with outspread arms in a high wind, sailing gaily along and shouting his first line of poetry
I hear a voice that’s speaking in the wind
—he did indeed all his life hear that voice and all other Nature-voices; and also the other tale of ten years later, how on the news of Byron’s death (in 1824) the boy went out, desolate, and carved the sad tidings on the sandstone, and (to use his own words) “thought everything over and finished for every one, and that nothing else mattered.”
Such despairing grief has seemed to some readers extravagant, to be excused on the plea of youth—he was only fifteen: but it must not be forgotten that Byron’s death was the final blow of a triple fatality such as finds no parallel in the history of literature. Three men of striking genius and rich poetic gifts—Byron, Shelley, and Keats—were all prematurely lost to the world within four years (1821-4). The fervid sorrow of the impulsive and gifted boy of fifteen, so far from being extravagant, must have been shared by countless readers of all ages who cared for poetry, not in England only.
It is true that as the years went on the youthful sympathy of Tennyson with what has been called the Revolutionary poetry was materially modified—perhaps especially in the case of Shelley. Yet there is a striking letter of the date 1834—when Shelley had been dead twelve years, and Tennyson was twenty-five—which should not be forgotten. Henry Taylor had attacked the Byron-Shelley school of poetry; and Tennyson, while not disputing much of his general judgment, adds this penetrating comment: “It may be that he (Taylor) does not sufficiently take into consideration the peculiar strength evolved by such writers as Byron and Shelley, who, however mistaken they may be, did yet give the world another heart and new pulses, and so we are kept going.”
Matthew Arnold was a fine critic and a poet of high distinction, but I have always felt, if we compare his somewhat severe attitude towards the earlier school with that of Tennyson, that it was the latter who showed the truer insight, the wider sympathy, and the juster appreciation.
Of his Cambridge life, 1828-30, two main points stand out: the grievous want he felt of any real stimulus or inspiration in the instruction provided by the authorities; and, secondly, the remarkable group of distinguished men of his own age with whom his college life was passed. As to the first, the scathing lines written at the time, and published with his express consent in the biography, are more eloquent than any description could be. After naming all the glories of the Colleges—their portals, gardens, libraries, chapels, “doctors, proctors and deans”—“all these,” he cries, “shall not avail you when the Daybeam sports, new-risen over Albion ...” and the poem ends with the reason:
Because your manner sorts
Not with this age wherefrom ye stand apart,
Because the lips of little children preach
Against you,—you that do profess to teach
And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart.
On the other hand, this lack (of official wisdom) was more than supplied by the friends with whom he lived—James Spedding, Monckton Milnes (afterwards Lord Houghton), Trench, Alford, Brookfield, Blakesley, Thompson (afterwards Master), Merivale, Stephen Spring-Rice, J. Kemble, Heath, C. Buller, Monteith, Tennant, and above all Arthur Hallam. Thirty-five years later Lord Houghton justly said of this group of friends that “for the wealth of their promise they were a body of men such as this University has seldom contained.” To this should be added the special influence of the “Apostles,” to which Society most of these friends belonged, who had organized from the first regular weekly meetings for essays and discussions, where no topic was barred, and speech was absolutely free. The immense stimulus of such discussion to thought, to study, to readiness and power of argument, to widening the range of intellectual interests and literary judgment and appreciation, must be obvious to all. And we must not forget that the years covered by young Tennyson’s residence at Cambridge were precisely the period of the keenest intellectual stir and the stormiest political warfare that preceded the great Reform Bill.
To return to the poetry. Passing over the purely juvenile Poems by two Brothers printed in his eighteenth year, we have, in 1830, the first book of poems which have partially survived the mature and fastidious taste which suppressed so much of the early work. Even here, half the pieces have been withdrawn, and much of the rest re-written: what remains is rather slight—the Isabels and Claribels and Adelines and Lilians and Eleanores, poems which in some critics’ views border on the trivial. Really they should be regarded as experiments in lyric measures: and the careful student will note the signs of the poet’s fine ear and keen eye for nature: but the depths were not sounded.