but one rival. He has treated the romantic, the antique, the domestic life of the world with equal skill. History and theology, art and science, legendary lore, and modern social problems find constant reflection and presentment in his poetry. Some of his poems are so clearly hewn that they are like mighty fragments of the antique; some treat of English peasant life; some of fairy-lore; some of religious fancy; some of social dreams and yearnings; in some the theme is slight, but the slightness of the theme is forgotten in the excellence of the workmanship; in some the theme is as solemn as life and death, and touches issues which are as old as human thought. "Rapt nuns,' it has been said, "English ladies, peasant girls, artists, lawyers, farmers-in short, a tolerably complete representation of the miscellaneous public of the present day," jostle one another in his picture galleries. True, the cosmopolitan note of Browning is wanting; but if Tennyson has not the catholic sympathies of Browning, he has succeeded in touching with the utmost felicity many aspects of English life which his great rival has ignored. And his mood and style are as various as his themes. In such poems as "Dora" we have a Wordsworthian simplicity of diction, a coolness and purity of coloring almost cold in its severity. In such poems as "Maud” and "Locksley Hall" we have the utmost elaboration of ornate imagery and effect. He can be severely simple and chastely sensuous, classic and grotesque, subtle and passionate, passing with the ease of perfect mastery from love to dialectics, from the wail of a somber pessimism to the exaltation and rapture of the triumphant lover. He can even be humorous, and excellently humorous, too, as in such a poem as the "Northern Farmer." It is prob ably in this diversity of gifts that the great secret of Tennyson's wide popularity is to be found. He touches many classes of readers, many varieties of mind. Of his limitations, his peculiarities of view and outlook, his attitude to religion and politics, his pervading melancholy and the causes of it, we shall see more as we devote more particular attention to his works; but enough has been said to explain why it is that he has won not merely wide but sound popularity; and not merely popularity, but fame and success such as no other English poet has ever enjoyed in the brief period during which his work was actually being done, and when the fruits of success were keenest to the taste and most alluring to the ambition. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. What kind of criticism and from what sources did the writers of Tennyson's time have to meet? 2. How is the influence of Keats shown in Tennyson's earliest work? 3. What indications of Tennyson's ability are shown in his early poems? 4. Illustrate this by the "Dying Swan.” 5. Why was Tennyson's youth "an unpropitious hour for poets"? 6. What was the chief error of his earlier poems? 7. How did these poems indicate the direction in which lay his real power? 8. How did Tennyson profit by the advice of his critics? 9. What is the probable reason for Tennyson's wide popularity? BIBLIOGRAPHY Alfred Lord Tennyson. By His Son. 2 Volumes. Tennyson, His Art and Relation to Modern Life. Stopford A. Brooke. Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning. Anne Thackeray Ritchie. The Victorian Poets. Edmund Clarence Stedman. CHAPTER VIII TENNYSON'S TREATMENT OF NATURE The variety of Tennyson's work makes the task of arranging it more than usually difficult. Certain portions of his work are directly philosophical, and are meant to be elucidations or solutions of some of the deepest problems of humanity. Others are surcharged with mournfulness, and might be called lamentations; dirges over dead hopes, lost glories of chivalry, or the bitter presage of future trouble traveling towards us in the development of social perils. Others are purely fanciful, lyrics finished with airy grace, or poems breathing the enchantment of fairy-lore. But such a classification as this is incomplete and fails to yield the result which a just criticism desires. Broadly speaking, there are certain great subjects on which all true poets have something to say. These subjects are nature, woman, life, politics, and religion. Nature needs no definition; under the head of woman we must include all that pertains to love and chivalry; under the head of life, the general view of human action and society which distinguishes a poet; under politics, the poet's view of progress and the future of the race; under religion, what the poet has to say about the devout longings of humanity, its sorrows and their solution, the future and its promises. It will be found that under this classification the works of all great poets can be readily placed. It is the view of nature which is the distinguishing feature in Wordsworth; it is the view of woman-gross, carnal, callous which is the damning feature in Byron; it is the view of religion which lends such paramount interest to the poetry of Arnold and Browning. Let us begin, then, by examining what Tennyson has to say about Nature. We have already seen that to Shelley Nature was something more than an abstract phrase: she was something alive, a radiant and potent spirit, a glorious power filling the mind with infinite delight, and drawing out the spirit of man in ecstatic communion. The first thing we note about Tennyson is, that Nature is not to him what she was to either Shelley or Wordsworth. He nowhere regards Nature as a living presence. He at no time listens for her voice as for the voice of God. To Shelley Nature was love; to Wordsworth she was thought; to Tennyson she is neither. He does not habitually regard Nature as the vesture of the Highest-the outward adumbration of the invisible God. He does not even regard her with the purely sensuous delight of Keats. And the reason for this lies in the fact that the sympathies of Tennyson are so various that there is no excess in any; it is the full play of an exquisitely balanced mind that we see, rather than the fine ecstasy of an enthusiastic artist. To Wordsworth Nature was everything, and on the solitary hills he worshiped before her altars, and in the voice of the winds and waters he heard her breathings and caught the message of her wisdom. Apart from men, in solemn loneliness, incurious about the crowded life of cities or the vast movements of the troubled sea of human thought, he stood, silent and entranced, waiting for revelations of that Eternal Power whose splendor glowed upon the hills at dawn, and whose mind uttered itself out of the starry spaces of the wind-swept heavens at night. But Tennyson has never professed himself incurious about the progress of human opinion or indifferent to the life of cities. Wordsworth's was the priestly temperament, Tennyson's is the artistic. The great drama of human life has not been permitted to pass him unnoticed. He has found joy in the refinements of wealth, interest in the progress of society, passionate absorption in the theological controversies of his time. A certain dramatic interest has always drawn him toward the tragic realities of past history and of present life. He has the quick eye of the scientific observer or of the artistic draughtsman, but little of the rapt contemplation of the seer. Thus it follows that, while Nature perpetually colors his writings, he has nothing new to say about her. There is, however, one quality which distinguishes his view of nature from that of other poets, viz., the scientific accuracy of his observation. Nature to him is neither love nor thought: she is law. He is full of the modern scientific spirit. He sees everywhere the movement of law and the fulfillment of vast purposes which are part of a universal order. He is under no delusion as to the meaning of Nature; so far from being love, she is "red in tooth and claw with rapine." The conclusions of modern science Tennyson has accepted with unquestioning faith, and the only factor which preserves him from an unpoetical view of nature is the religious faith which makes him perceive nature, not as a mechanical engine of fate, but as a process of law leading to nobler life and larger being. That is the mission of law: not to slay, but to make alive; not to fulfill a blind course, but to work out a divine purpose and a diviner life for man, in those far-distant cycles |