Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

that we may well consider him, not as having reached his true height, but as toiling on to something higher even than he dreams. But however bright may be the vision of the future, the survival of the fittest is poor comfort in the vast interval. It has nothing to say to the halt and maimed, except that they deserve to be halt and maimed. It can rejoice in the vast movements of society, which, like immense waves, carry it onward to its infinite goal, but it has no compassion for the lives sacrificed every day in this predetermined progress. And as one turns over the pages of Tennyson, he sometimes finds himself wondering whether Tennyson has ever suffered deeply. Personal suffering, the agony of severed love which comes to all, he has known; but there is another form of sorrow, the sorrow of early disappointment and rebuff, which does far more to educate men into breadth and charity of view; and by the buffeting angels of vicissitude he has been unvisited. Life may be too fortunate, things may go too well with men in this world. The liquor of life may cor

rupt with excess of sweetness; and for lack of that wholesome bitter of disappointment, which is God's frequent medicine to the greatest, a man's heart may stagnate in an undiscerning content. Is this absence of vicissitude part of the reason for the comparative limitation of sympathy which we find in Tennyson's view of life? He has been attended by worldly fortune and success never before vouchsafed to any English poet. How different the life that closed in sorrowful isolation at Dumfries, or the life cut off by the violence of tempest at Spezzia, to the close of this life in fortune, fame, and peerage! How different the plain life and simple house from which came to us the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" to the cultured life

of artistic ease in which the "Idylls of the King" have been slowly fashioned and perfected in fastidious patience! Doubt it as we may, resent it as we do, nevertheless the truth remains that those whose words live longest in the hearts of men have "learned in suffering what they taught in song." In them the heart has most maintained a childlike simplicity and sympathy, and to them it has been given to survey life with the largest charity of hope. Is it this lack of vicissitude in the life of the poet himself which has dulled the larger sympathies of his nature and narrowed the range and spirit of his poetry? Has he too long, like his own Maud,

Fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life?

It is hard to judge; but no one can be unconscious of the fact of this limitation. Its causes lie partly in the order of the poet's life, but mainly in the character of his own mind, which is dispassionate rather than ardent, philosophic rather than sympathetic, and better fitted to touch with subtle delicacy the fringe of a great problem than to penetrate its bloom with true imaginative insight.

The final impression which we take, then, from the modern poems of Tennyson is, that his view of life and society is dull and conventional. The greater portion of his poetry consists of reproductions-reproductions from the antique, from the medieval, from the romantic. And this is in itself significant, because it shows how largely he has turned his mind away from the vision of the present. When he touches the medieval and antique world he is at his best. All the graceful qualities of his mind then come into play, and he clothes the past with a glamour of words which soothes the mind and kindles the imagination with

a keen delight. But in spite of all his attempts, laborious and partially successful as they are, to seize the modern spirit, he has failed in the main. He has nothing new to say: all that he can do is to take old and well-worn ideas and clothe them with a novelty of phrase which gives them fresh currency. He has little faculty of piercing through the husk of the conventional to the living thoughts and passions of man which throb beneath. He passes by, as a careless tourist might pass over a volcanic district, admiring the flowers and color, but not suspecting the angry fire which boils below his feet. He finds everywhere just what conventional opinion says you ought to find; he has no strength to tear aside the thin crust and discover the passionate possibilities and sad realities which are decorously hidden from the thoughtless eye. He skims the surface: he does not probe the depth. Divest his figures of the garb of musical speech in which they move, and there is nothing left but commonplace thought and sentiment. Like the "passon" in the "Northern Farmer," they say what they "ow't to 'a said," and we come away with a convincing sense of their entire respectability. They talk, in fact, very much like Anthony Trollope's deans and churchmen, who look out upon life with a curious mixture of sedate thoughtfulness and decorous conservatism. The general effect they produce upon the mind is dullness. But if Tennyson's view of life is dull, and his opinions commonplace, we cannot but admit that all that the art of the most perfect phrasing can do to cover dullness Tennyson has done. He has, indeed, so dexterously concealed the comparative poverty of his thought in all his modern poems with the eloquence and beauty of his language that many people have not yet dis

The

covered the deception. Nevertheless it is there. fact that so few are aware of it is sufficient testimony to the perfection of the artistic illusion.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. How does a poet usually work out his philosophy of life? 2. How is "the sense of order" felt in Tennyson's poems? 3. How does this quality of his character affect his view of human society?

4. Why is he not in the true sense “a people's poet"? 5. Give illustrations of his treatment of great social questions.

6. How may these qualities of the poet's work be explained? 7. Why is the commonplace character of his views of life not always perceived?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Tennyson: His Art and Relation to Modern Life. Stopford A. Brooke.

The Poetry of Tennyson. Henry Van Dyke.

The Mind of Tennyson.

Literary Studies (Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning), Vol. II. Walter Bagehot.

CHAPTER XI

IDYLLS AND THE "IDYLLS OF THE KING"

We have now come to the point in our study of Tennyson where his two greatest poems, the "Idylls of the King" and "In Memoriam," come into review. There are, however, certain groups of poems which can scarcely be passed unmentioned; and before turning to the two greatest works of Tennyson it may be well to glance at these. Everywhere throughout Tennyson's books there are to be found exquisite clusters of lyrical poems, and it may be said with confidence that in this domain of poetry his power is unrivaled and his excellence supreme. It is this excellence which redeems "Maud," in all other respects the weakest and least artistic of his long poems. The "Princess," again, wearisome and dull as it becomes in parts, contains three or four of the most musical lyrics Tennyson has ever written, and snatches of melody which will bear comparison with the finest lyrics in the language. The art in which Tennyson's rarest excellence lies, the art of musical expression, the subtle cadence of rhythm which produces a recurring and never-forgotten sweetness in the memory, is seen at its very best in these short and lovely lyrics. The lines in the "Princess" commencing, The splendor falls on castle walls,

may be mentioned in this category as the nearest approach to the effect of fine music which language is able to pro

« AnteriorContinuar »