Into that circle of splendid names no youthful aspirant could win admittance without a challenge. More fortunate, however, than Keats, Tennyson secured through university friendships some indulgence from the reviews. A few were eager to crown him. It is now acknowledged that their unwinnowed praise discovered less of the judge than of the partisan. The conservative temper of Wilson was provoked by the cordial welcome accorded the new-comer in certain quarters to assume an attitude of repression that was, to say the least, ungenerous. A measured severity might have been amply justified. This first venture was indeed superior to those Hours of Idleness which had drawn the sneer of the Edinburgh Review. But he would have been a bold prophet who in 1830 from “Claribel” and the “Mermaid” would have foretold the “Idylls of the King.”
Tennyson ripened slowly. His next volume was published two years later. It was enriched with the “Lady of Shalott,” the “Lotus-Eaters,” and the “Palace of Art,” but many of the poems were disfigured by his earlier mannerisms, and some discovered an affected mysticism and a hankering after novel expression that was not indicative of health or strength. The poet, too, had betrayed a sensitiveness to criticism that augured ill for the discipline of his powers. It was still an open question whether the great gifts which he unquestionably possessed would be burnished by patient labor, or after some idle brandishings rust in satisfied repose. Nor would he have been the first for whom victory too early and lightly won has twined the poppy with her laurel. A silence of ten years followed, and it seemed probable that another name must be added to those of Campbell and Coleridge on the roll of splendid disappointments.
But during this long interval he had not been idle. He had thought and he had suffered. He had learned much and discarded much. On a sudden, his treasury was opened, and the fruits of energy and discipline fell in glistening showers at the feet of a public which had almost forgotten him. The “Morte d’Arthur,” “Dora,” “Love and Duty,” “Ulysses,” “Locksley Hall,” appealed in divers tones to a charmed and astonished audience. By one sweep, and with no feeble hand, he had planted his standard in many and widely different fields. The bright forecast of his college friends was justified. He had sprung at a bound into the front rank of living poets.
We pass over the “Princess,” which added little to his reputation, and reach 1850, a cardinal point in his career. In that year it is just to say that “Lycidas” and “Adonaïs” were eclipsed by “In Memoriam.” This remarkable work, at once the noblest monody and most impressive of heart histories, interpreted the author’s life and consolidated his fame. “Maud” came next, and, morbid, incoherent, structureless as it is, would have severely tried a credit less firmly rooted. “Maud” indeed seems to owe its origin rather to the blind impulse of crude intemperate youth, or the promptings of some delirious fever, than the deliberate, healthful movement of the poet’s higher faculties. It marks the single break in the progress of his mind.
Not a few of Tennyson’s admirers had always affirmed the “Morte d’Arthur” to be the strongest of his works. That fragment was published in 1842, but it was not until 1859 that four kindred poems were drawn from that Arthurian romance which had early haunted his fancy and has chiefly employed the energies of his riper years. The “Idylls of the King” have had several successors, and the “Last Tournament” completes the cycle.
An effort has lately been made in certain quarters to depreciate Tennyson. We do not object to comparisons if they are fruitful in suggestion, and are instituted in a candid spirit. But perhaps analysis affords the surer test. We ourselves hold Tennyson to be the first of living English poets, and incline to rank him above Byron and beside Wordsworth. In the course of an attempt to indicate his place in literature, we shall quote wherever quotations may sustain or illustrate our ideas. We shall draw mainly from those works which exhibit a writer at his best. The height of mountain ranges is gauged by their loftiest peaks, and the merit of a public benefactor by his virtues, not his shortcomings. A poet is a public benefactor. Not his failures, but his masterpiece, should supply the materials of an honest judgment.
I.
Vision, in the old Roman conception, was the distinguishing faculty of the poet. And indeed vates, not poeta, marks the fundamental condition of his art. The seer precedes the maker. It is not indispensable that he should see more than other men, but he will see more clearly. His perceptions are acute and nimble; his sensations are intense. The retina and ear-drum deliver with peculiar speed and precision their messages to his brain. His glance tracks the eagle in his circles, and numbers the hues of the western sky. He catches the whisper of fainting winds, and spells the cadence of the rippling stream. To him all outlines are sharp and crisp, every tint is vivid, every tone is clear. Senses exquisitely organized are the first essential of the poet.
Sensations are fraught with countless degrees of pleasure, with infinite shades of pain. Those objects whose ideas awaken a feeling of delight we call beautiful. To register the beautiful is an instinct of the poet. With a nice reference to the pleasure imparted, he discriminates forms, divides the chromatic scale, graduates the gamut of sound. In a word, his æsthetic judgment is wakeful and unerring. But the keenest joys of the mind are not begotten by beauty pure and simple. There is a fuller and sweeter satisfaction than that derived from kaleidoscope combinations of color, arabesques without significance, and fantasias without text or theme. Wherever design emerges, the notion of fitness is born. The Greek found it in the human body. We can trace it in the flower and the star. When we contemplate those things of which design may be predicated, there is blended with the feeling of pleasure a perception of inward adaptation. The idea of perfection is married to the idea of beauty. The ideal is their offspring. Upon it the æsthetic judgment unaided dares not pronounce. The complex faculty, whose province is the ideal, is taste. It is the second requisite of the poet.
Most persons of culture and refinement have taste in some degree. They are no strangers to the pure delight evoked by a smiling landscape. In the human form they enjoy the beauty of outline and proportion, and recognize the nice adjustment of structure to a central aim. But their joys are transient. The flower fades; sunset yields to moonlight; autumn touches with her pencil the canvas of the spring; one graceful attitude melts into another; emotions course across the countenance like winds over standing wheat. The poet comes. His mission is to chain the fleeting, to fix the evanescent, to reproduce the past. He brings you a rose with the bloom on it; calls up the buried friend; stays the sinking sun on the edge of his western bed. His life is a long revolt against the law of change. Nor is he confined to imitation. His sphere transcends realities. He may play with nature, if he will not violate her. His memory is not a store-house only, but a crucible as well, where the phenomena of sense lie fused in a glowing golden mass. Through his brain float airy shapes surpassing and yet suggesting the grace of earthly forms; ideals strange and fantastic, yet bound by subtle ties of relationship to types of the actual world. His fancy is ever in labor. Incessant gestation, incessant parturition, engage her energies. Reproduction, creation, is a law of the poet’s being. It is this which vindicates his right to the noble name of maker.