We often hear it asserted, on the one hand, that the taste for poetry has declined. We hear this, on the other hand, vigorously contested and denied. No, says the indignant champion of the muse, verse may have sunk much in estimation, and the ingenious labours of the rhymist may be put on a par, if you will, with the tricks of the juggler or the caprices of art. Difficulties conquered! Nonsense. We want good things executed. It is your folly if you do not choose the best means. The man who plays on his fiddle with one string only, shall have thanks if he plays well, but not because he plays on one string; if he could have played better, using the four, his thanks shall be diminished by so much. Yes, verse may be depreciated, but poetry—which grows perennial from the very heart of humanity—you may plough over the soil deep as you please, you will only make it grow the faster, and strike the deeper root. The answer is well, and yet there may be something left unexplained. If poetry has been deserting the highroads of human thought—if it has grown more limited as it has grown more subtle—there may be some ground for suspecting that the public will desert it. Without wishing to detract anything from the high merit of his best performances, we should refer to a great portion of the poetry of Shelley as an illustration of these remarks, and also to a considerable part of the poetry of Keats.
It is especially in the class of descriptive poetry, that we moderns have carried the over-refinement we are speaking of, to so remarkable an extent. The poets of Greece and Rome, it has been often observed, rarely, if ever, described natural scenery simply for its own sake. It was with their verse as with their paintings—the landscape was always a mere accessory, the main interest lying with the human or superhuman beings who inhabited it. The truth seems to be, that the pagan imagination was so full of its goddesses and nymphs, that these obscured the genuine impression, which the scene itself would have produced. Not but that the ancient poet must have felt the charm of a beautiful or sublime scene; but instead of dwelling upon this natural charm, he turned immediately to what seemed a more worthy subject—to the supernatural beings with which superstition had peopled the scene. Scarcely could he see the wood for the dryads, or the river for those smooth naiads that were surely living in its lucid depths. And even if we suppose that these pagan faiths had lost their hold both of writer and of reader, it is still very easy to understand that simple nature—trees, and hills, and water—however pleasing to the beholder, might not be thought an appropriate subject, or one sufficiently important for an exclusive description. What is open to every one's eye, and familiar to every man's thought, is not the first, but the last topic to which literature resorts. Not till all others are exhausted does it betake itself to this. Just as the heroic in human existence would be sung and resung, long before a Fielding portrays the common life that is lying about him; so portents and prodigies, gods and satyrs, and Ovidian fables of metamorphosed damsels, would precede the description of groves and bays, verdure and water, and the light of heaven seen shining every day upon them.
Even the sacred poets and prophets amongst the Hebrews, who gave such sublime views of nature, always associated her with the presence of God. This, indeed, was the secret of their sublimity. With them nature was never seen alone. The clouds rolled about His else invisible path; the thunder was His, the hills were His; nature was the perpetual vesture of the Deity.
It is only in modern times that the scenery of nature has been allowed to speak for itself, to make its own impression, as the great representative of the Beautiful here below. But now, as this scenery is to be described, not by admeasurements, or the items of a catalogue, as so much land, so much water, so much timber, but by the deep, and varied, and often shadowy sentiments it calls forth, it is manifest that it must become a theme inexhaustible to the poet, and a theme also somewhat dangerous to him, as tempting him more and more towards those refined, and vague, and evanescent feelings which are not found on the highways of human thought, and are known only to the experience of a few.
But to return more immediately to Mr Tennyson. We have said that, at the time when he commenced writing, poetry was in a certain feverish condition. The young poet had been spoilt—had grown over-confident. He was like Spencer's Knight in the Palace of Love, who sees written over every door, "Be bold! Be bold!" Only over one door does he read the salutary caution, "Be not too bold!" Public opinion, or the opinion of a large and powerful coterie, favoured his wildest excesses. That language was strained and distorted, was a sure sign of the original power of thought that was struggling through the imperfect medium. Obscurity was always honoured. People strained their eyes to watch their favourite as he careered amongst the clouds: if they lost sight of him, the fault was presumed to be in their own vision; they were not likely, therefore, to confess any inability to follow him. The young aspirants of the day even learnt to despise the trammels of their own art. The measure and melody of their verse was sacrificed to the irresistible afflatus which bore them onward. Metre was put to the torture,—at least our ears were tortured—in order that no iota of the heaven-breathed strain should be lost. They still wrote in verse, because verse alone could disguise the empty, meaningless phraseology they had enlisted in their service; but it was often a jingling rhythm, harsher to the ear than the most crabbed prose, which was retained as an excuse or concealment for that resplendent gibberish they had imported so largely into the English language. From a super-refinement of thought, altogether transcendental, they delighted to descend to an imitation of childish or antique simplicity. The natural level of cultivated thought was by all means to be avoided. If you were not in the clouds, you must be seen sitting amongst the buttercups.
Turn now to the opening and earlier poems in Mr Tennyson's volume; they are considerably altered from the state in which they made their first appearance, but they still leave traces enough of the unfortunate influence we have attempted to describe. The best amongst them is a sort of gallery of portraits of fair ladies—Claribel, and Lilian, and Isabel, and Adeline, and Madeline, and others. From these might be extracted some few very beautiful lines, but none of them pleases as a whole. There is an air of effort and elaboration, coupled with much studied negligence, which prevents us from surrendering ourselves to the charms of any of these portraitures. The Claribel, with which the volume commences, might be a woman or a child for anything that the poem tells us; we only gather from the expression "low lieth," that she is dead, and over her grave there rings a chime of words, which leave as little impression on the living ear as they would on the sleeper beneath. It was a pity—since alterations have been permitted—that the volume was still allowed to open with this mere monotonous chant. And why were these two absurd songs To the Owl still preserved? Was it to display a sort of moral courage, and as they were first written out of bravado to common sense, was it held a point of honour to persist in their republication? I, Tennyson, have written good things; therefore this, my nonsense, shall hold its ground in spite of the murmurs of gentle reader, or the anger of malignant critic! But we must not commence an inquisition of this kind, nor ask why this or that has been permitted to remain, for we should carry on such an inquiry to no little extent. We should make wide clearance in this first part of his volume. Here is a long Ode to Memory, which craves to be extinguished, which ought in charity to be forgotten. An utter failure throughout. We cannot read it again, to enable us to speak quite positively, but we do not think there is a single redeeming line in the whole of it. A dreary, shapeless, metaphysical mist lies over it; there is no object seen, and not a ray of beauty even colours the cloud. Then comes an odious piece of pedantry in the shape of "A Song." What metre, Greek or Roman, Russian or Chinese, it was intended to imitate, we have no care to inquire: the man was writing English, and had no justifiable pretence for torturing our ear with verse like this:—
Song.
"A spirit haunts the year's last hours,
Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:
To himself he talks;
For at eventide, listening earnestly,
At his work you may hear him sob and sigh,
In the walks.
Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks
Of the mouldering flowers."
Of the Lady of Shalott we have already hinted our opinion. They must be far gone in dilettantism who can make an especial favourite of such a caprice as this—with its intolerable vagueness, and its irritating repetition, every verse ending with the "Lady of Shalott," which must always rhyme with "Camelot." We cannot conceive what charm Mr Tennyson could find in this species of odious iteration, which he nevertheless repeatedly inflicts upon us. It matters not what precedent he may insist upon—whether he quotes the authority of Theocritus, or the worthy example of old English ballad-makers—the annoyance is none the less. In a poem called The Sisters, we have the verse framed after this fashion:— "We were two daughters of one race;
She was the fairest in the face:
The wind is blowing in turret and tree.
They were together, and she fell;
Therefore revenge became me well.
O the earl was fair to see!"
And so we go on to the end of the chapter, with "The wind is blowing in turret and tree," and "The earl was fair to see," brought in, no matter how, but always in the same place. The rest of the verse is not so abundantly clear as to be well able to afford this intervenient jingle, which is indeed no better than the fal lal la! or tol de rol! of facetious drinking-songs. These have their purpose, being framed expressly for people in that condition when they want noise, and noise only, when the absence of all sense is rather a merit; but what earthly use, or beauty, or purpose there can be in the melancholy iterations of Mr Tennyson, we cannot understand. Certainly we agree here with Hotspur—we would rather hear "a kitten cry Mew, than one of these same metre ballad-mongers."
Oriana is fashioned on the same plan:— "My heart is wasted with my woe,
Oriana.
There is no rest for me below,
Oriana."
As if some miserable dog were baying the moon with the name of Oriana.