We are anxious not to appear to lay undue stress on these extracts. Let them go for as much as they are worth, and no more. We do not stretch them on any Procrustean bed to the measure of orthodox. Others might be adduced, of a latitudinarian tendency, but they are few in number, and do not neutralize the force of these. In view of many passages in Shakespeare of a Catholic bearing, and of several facts favorable to the belief that he was a Catholic, M. Rio has come to the probably sound conclusion that he really was what he himself wishes to prove him. We put no such forced interpretation on our extracts from Tennyson as M. Rio has certainly put on many which he has brought forward from the Elizabethan poet; but we think that they are sufficiently cast in a Catholic mould to warrant us in applying to Tennyson the words which Carlyle has used in reference to his predecessor: "Catholicism, with and against feudalism, but not against nature and her bounty, gave us English a Shakespeare and era of Shakespeare, and so produced a blossom of Catholicism." (French Revolution, vol. i. 10.)
But religion, as we have said, does not occupy a prominent place in Tennyson's pages. He is, in the main, like the great dramatist—a poet of this world. Love and women are his favorite themes, but love within the bounds of law, and woman strongly idealized. License finds in him no apologist, while he throws around purity and fidelity all the charms of song. The most rigid moralist can find nothing to censure in his treatment of the guilty love of Lancelot and Guinevere, the wedded love of Enid and Geraint, the meretricious love of Vivien, and the unrequited love of Elaine. If Milton had, as he intended, [Footnote 43] chosen King Arthur as the subject of his epic, he could not have taken a higher moral tone than Tennyson has in the Idylls of the King, and, considering how lax were his notions about marriage, it is probable he would have taken a lower one.
[Footnote 43: See his Mansas, and Life, by Toland, p. 17.]
King Arthur's praise of honorable courtship and conjugal faith is too long to be quoted here, but it may be referred to as equally eloquent and edifying. (Idylls of the King.)
The Laureate has learned at least one secret of making a great name—not to write too much. "I hate many books," wrote Père Lacordaire. "The capital point is, to have an aim in life, and deeply to respect posterity by sending it but a small number of well-meditated works." This has been Tennyson's rule. With six slender volumes he has built himself an everlasting name. He has, till within the last few months, seldom contributed to periodicals, and when he has done so, the price paid for his stanzas seems fabulous. The estimation in which he is held by critics of a high order amounts, in many cases, to a passion and a worship. The specimen he has given of a translation of the Iliad promises for it, if completed, all that Longfellow has wrought for the Divina Commedia. The attempts he has made at Alcaics, Hendecasyllabics, and Galliambics in English have been thoroughly successful, and stamp him as an accomplished scholar. (Boädicea, etc., in Enoch Arden and other Poems.) As he does not write much, so neither does he write fast. The impetuous oratory of Shakespeare's and Byron's verse is unknown to him. He never affects it. He reminds us rather of the operations of nature, who slowly and calmly, but without difficulty, produces her marvellous results. Drop by drop his immortal poems are distilled, like the chalybeate droppings which leave at length on the cavern floor a perfect red and crystal stalagmite. "Day by day," says the National Review, when speaking on this subject—"day by day, as the hours pass, the delicate sand falls into beautiful forms, in stillness, in peace, in brooding." "The particular power by which Mr. Tennyson surpasses all recent English poets," writes the Edinburgh Review, "is that of sustained perfection. ... We look in vain among his modern rivals for any who can compete with him in the power of saying beautifully the thing he has to say."
O degli altri poeti onore e lume,
Vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore
Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume. [Footnote 44]
[Footnote 44: L Inferno, i. 82.]
During a long period, the originality of Tennyson's verse was an obstacle to its fame, and indeed continues to be so in the minds of some readers. His use of obsolete words appears to many persons affected, while others applaud him for his vigorous Saxon, believing, with Dean Swift, that the Saxon element in our compound tongue should be religiously preserved, and that the writers and speakers who please us most are those whose style is most Saxon in its character. If Tennyson has modelled his verse after any author, it is undoubtedly Shakespeare, and the traces of this study may perhaps be found in his vocabulary. Yet no man is less of a plagiarist; not only his forms of thought but of language also are original, and though he owes much to the early dramatists, to Wordsworth and to Shelley, he fuses all metals in the alembic of his own mind, and turns them to gold. His love of nature is intense, and his observation of her works is microscopic. Yet he is never so occupied with details as to lose sight of broad outlines. In 1845, Wordsworth spoke of him as "decidedly the first of our living poets;" but since that time his fame has been steadily on the increase. Many of his lines have passed into proverbs, and a crowd of feebly fluttering imitators have vainly striven to rival him on the wing. What the people once called a weed has grown into a tall flower, wearing a crown of light, and flourishing far and wide. (The Flower. Enoch Arden, etc., p. 152.) A concordance to In Memoriam has been published, and the several editions of the Laureate's volumes have been collated as carefully as if they were works of antiquity. Every ardent lover of English poetry is familiar with Mariana, "in the lonely moated grange;" the good Haroun Alraschid among his obelisks and cedars; Oriana wailing amid the Norland whirlwinds; the Lady Shalott in her "four gray walls and four gray towers;" the proud Lady Clara Vere de Vere; the drowsy Lotos-Eaters; the chaste and benevolent Godiva; Maud in her garden of "woodbine spices;" the true love of the Lord of Burleigh, and the reward of honest Lady Clare. The highest praise of these ballads is that they have sunk into the nation's heart. They combine the chief excellences of other bards, and remind us of some delicious fruit which unites in itself a variety of the most exquisite flavors. This richness and sweetness may be ascribed in part to that remarkable condensation of thought which enriches one page of Tennyson with as many ideas and images as would, in most other poets, be found scattered over two or three pages. "We must not expect," wrote Shenstone in one of his essays, "to trace the flow of Waller, the landskip of Thomson, the fire of Dryden, the imagery of Shakespeare, the simplicity of Spenser, the courtliness of Prior, the humor of Swift, the wit of Cowley, the delicacy of Addison, the tenderness of Otway, and the invention, the spirit, and sublimity of Milton, joined in any single writer." Perhaps not. But Shenstone had never read Tennyson, and there is no knowing what he might have thought if he had conned the calm majesty of Ulysses; the classical beauty of Tithonus and the Princess; the luxuriant eloquence of Locksley Hall; the deep lyrical flow of The Letters and The Voyage; the 'cute drollery of the Northern Farmer; the idyllic sweetness of OEnone; the grandeur of Morte d'Arthur; the touching simplicity of Enoch Arden; the power and pathos of Aylmer's Field; the perfect minstrelsy of the Rivulet, and the songs, O Swallow, Swallow, and Tears, Idle Tears; and the sharps and trebles of the Brook, more musical than Mendelssohn.
Far be it from us to carp at any poetry because it proceeds from one who is not a Catholic. We believe, indeed, firmly that, if Tennyson had been imbued with the ancient faith, it would have cleared some vagueness both from his mind and his verse. But in these days, when Socinianism, positivism, and free-thinking in various shapes are taking such strong hold of educated men, we rejoice unfeignedly to find popular writings marked, even in an imperfect degree, with Christian doctrine and feeling. The influence exerted by the Laureate in the world of letters is great, and we have, therefore, endeavored at some length to show how far it is favorable, and how far unfavorable, to the cause of truth. Though unhappily not a Catholic, we recognize with delight the fact that he is not an infidel, and we feel persuaded that some at least of our readers will be pleased at our having placed in a prominent point of view the redeeming features in the religious character of his poetry.