нему "none can essay another upon its model without yielding every claim to personality at the risk of an inferiority that would be appalling. The strength of Tennyson's intellect has full sweep in this elegiac poem-the great threnody of our language, by virtue of unique conception and power. The grave, majestic, hymnal measure swells like the peal of an organ, yet acts as a break on undue spasmodic outbursts of discordant grief. . . . In Memoriam is a serene and truthful panorama of refined experiences; filled with pictures of gentle scholastic life, and of English scenery through all the changes of a rolling year; expressing, moreover, the thoughts engendered by these changes. When too sombre, it is lightened by sweet reminiscences; when too light, recalled to grief by stanzas that have the deep solemnity of a passing bell. . . . The wisdom, yearnings, and aspirations of a noble mind are here; curious reasoning, for once, is not out of place; the poet's imagination, shut in upon itself, strives to irradiate with inward light the mystic problems of life. At the close, Nature's eternal miracle is made symbolic of the soul's palingenesis, and the tender and beautiful marriage-lay tranquillises the reader with the thought of the dear common joys which are the heritage of every living kind." Mr Robert Buchanan aptly described In Memoriam as a "rainbow on a grave.' Not the least interesting parts of the poem are those in which Tennyson has supplied us with fragments of his autobiography and glimpses of the old home and the places he loved.1 Whatever awakened the memory of his lost friend was doubly dear to him; yet, when he left Somersby in 1837, and took a last glance at the "pleasant fields and farms," seeing them from afar Mix in one another's arms To one pure image of regret, -he was little disposed ever to renew accquaintance with them. The scenes were blotted out of his vision, 1 See In Tennyson Land, cap. v.; also Appendix A. but were enshrined in his memory. Let Charles Tennyson-Turner express in words why the old home was not revisited. out. In the dark twilight of an autumn morn I stood within a little country town, Wherefrom a long acquainted path went down Death and the past came up the well-known road, But to the pilgrim there can be no more hallowed spot than the "dear village haunts" which breathe of that eventful past. Here one of the great dramas of life was acted Here came Arthur Hallam and read the Tuscan poets on the lawn; here wandered the friends; here the lovers plighted their troth; here were the day-dreams dreamed and the vast hopes hoped; and here was the devastation wrought and the life-long sorrow begun when with bier and pall came the revelation of irreparable loss. No literary work has done more than In Memoriam to resolve doubt and "justify the ways of God to man." No one can rise from the study of it without feeling strengthened, cheered, and refreshed. It is the history of a soul's struggle and of the victory of life and its Giver. It is the passage from darkness to light, from mystery to revelation, from fear to faith, from rebellion to resignation, and from reproof to praise. Shelley sang in rapture— The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought And love and life contend in it for what Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. To this exquisite thought Tennyson has imparted a larger significance. He reaches a higher and more refined sphere, from which he points upward to the most blessed of truths, the realisation of That God, which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, To which the whole creation moves. CHAPTER VII. "MAUD": TENNYSON ON WAR AND PEACE. "I would the old God of war himself were dead, Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck, -The Princess. "I would that wars should cease, From War with kindly links of gold, -Epilogue (to the Charge of the Heavy Brigade). IN the preceding chapter I have given an analysis of In Memoriam, touching in turn upon the personal parts, the vein of philosophy, and the religious teaching, and showing the synthetical character of the whole poem. The year which saw its publication was the year of the poet's marriage and of his appointment to the Laureateship. Shiplake Church was the scene of his wedding—“ a large and beautiful pile," wrote Mary Russell Mitford, “the tower half-clothed with ivy, and standing with its charming vicarage and pretty vicarage-garden on a high eminence overhanging one of the finest bends of the river Thames. A woody lane leads from the church to the bottom of the chalk-cliff, one side of which stands out from the road below like a promontory, surmounted by the laurel-hedges and flowery arbours of the vicarage garden, and crested by a noble cedar of Lebanon." While in this neighbourhood the poet composed Riflemen, form, for the Berkshire Volunteers; but directly after his marriage he went abroad, and the record of his enchanted journey with his wife “in lands of palm and southern pine," may be read in that most delightful of picture-poems, The Daisy. Returning home, and having to mourn the loss of his first child, Tennyson took up his residence in London, his house being in Montpelier Row, Twickenham. There he stayed until November 1853, seeing in that time his Poems pass through an eighth edition, The Princess through a fifth edition, and In Memoriam through a fourth edition. All these were still being subjected to rigid revision, while additions were made or former pieces omitted at the poet's discretion. He contributed a number of miscellaneous poems to the papers, writing them more as Laureate than as poet compelled to utterance, and few of these he afterwards deemed worthy of preservation. The note struck in such verses as Hands all Round, the Ode on Wellington, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and The Third of February 1852, was to ring through the greater work then in preparation. (The Fifties were a time of mad excitement. Everywhere was heard the clamour of arms. The European nations were locked in a deadly struggle. All thoughts were of war, and all eyes were fixed upon the battle-ground of the Crimea, where the destiny of England and Russia was to be decided by cannon and sabre. In 1855 the Laureate published Maud, little thinking perhaps of the torrent of vituperation which would be poured upon him from some quarters in consequence. Whether anticipated or not, the powerful drama, showing the curse of a corrupting peace, excited a controversy which will never entirely subside as long as the old question remains unanswered "Is war a cause or a consequence?" So far back as 1836, Tennyson, then known only as the author of the Poems, chiefly Lyrical which had failed to produce any sensation beyond his own circle of friends, had been petitioned by the Marquis of Northampton to contribute to an Annual, which was to be published for charitable purposes. A copy of this publication, which I |