The poet's long life was one, however, of disillusion. In youth a sublime yearning possessed him to rush forward. The distance beaconed, the future allured. His spirit was stirred with the visionary ideals of the party of advance, and he joined in the grand but half-meaningless cry of "Forward." But this youthful ferment was to subside, and in the Laureate's later works we notice a deeper, truer, steadier tone. Half the marvels of his morning had been "staled by frequence, shrunk by usage," and he had learnt that though the heart may be shaped to "front the hour," it is vain to dream that the hour will last. Sixty years after! What a retrospect, what a vista of diminishing brightness as the cold, grim, realities of the Present rise and shut out the glory and visions of the Past! Sixty years after! How great, how terrible the change! Hope turned to despair, the hot blood languid, the fire of enthusiasm burnt out, and nothing left but the smouldering embers, the cold gray ashes of age. This is the sorry conclusion we derive from the Laureate's latest political poem-for the sequel to Locksley Hall is as largely political as any of his works. Mother Age, which he trusted, and which appeared to be pregnant with happiness, honour, glory, and greatness, is barren or wasteful. The poet's gleaming vision fades into the gloom of reality. The music that fell upon his ears becomes the wail of misery or the shriek of crime. The blissful future of yesterday is now the agonising today. Lord Tennyson lived long only to see his hopes wither, only to find his high ideals more remote. Yet, such was the confidence within him, such was his belief in the ultimate good of mankind, that he refused to yield to the temptation of pure pessimism, and dared to the end to indulge in hopes. From such a man, with such an experience, his last words have a wealth of splendid suggestion, a ring of manly resolve; they avow a sublime faith in humanity as it is used, influenced, and guided by the Divine Will; they bring a light of comfort to those who, like the poet, may in dark despair have confused cosmos

and chaos and feared that "among the glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied feet." But it is darkest before dawn, and, as Keats has finely said, there is a budding morrow in midnight. Thus the poet questioned, not idly and not without hope

After madness, after massacre, Jacobinism and Jacquerie,

Some diviner force to guide us through the days shall I not see?

When the schemes and all the systems, Kingdoms and Republics fall,
Something kindlier, higher, holier; all for each and each for all.

All the full-brain, half-brain races, led by Justice, Love, and Truth;
All the millions one at length, with all the visions of my youth.

Earth at last a warless world; a single race, a single tongue
I have seen her far away-for is not Earth as yet so young

Every tiger-madness muzzled, every serpent-passion kill'd
Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till'd.

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles.
Universal ocean softly washing all her warless isles.

This is the old dream re-dreamed: how long will it remain a dream only, or how soon will the vision of peace and beauty be overclouded? Not,however, that it was particularly gratifying, in these days of advance, for our premier poet to be perpetually reminding us that we are the ancients of the earth and in the morning of the times. If our actions, our policy, our tendency only prove this, we have indeed little to be proud of. But were this not an essential part of the Laureate's creed, his contradictory utterances, his conflicting hopes and fears, would be well-nigh inexplicable and irreconcilable. His faith was largely rooted in the Pastthe Past which is a silent and undisturbed treasury, not tomb, of early grandeur, of growing power pregnant with wealth that is slowly revealed in the process of years-the Past which contains the first seeds of a national prosperity whose full fruition is of the future; the Past in which are

rooted the people's loyalty, patriotism, religion, and hope. He had thought for the Future too-the Future that opens out to us as a promised land; and, with his hero in The Promise of May, he thought that

When the tide

Of full democracy has overwhelmed

This Old world, from the flood will rise the New,
Like the Love-goddess, with no bridal veil,

Ring, trinket of the Church, but naked Nature
In all her loveliness.

This is the new dawn for which every poet waits, and which constitutes at once the essence and the development of his political creed.

SEVENTEEN years were occupied in the composition of In Memoriam. The poem made its appearance anonymously in the month of June 1850. It could be attributed to only one living poet, and, despite a rigid silence maintained by the author, critics and readers were unanimous in assigning it to Alfred Tennyson. Apart from its greatness as a literary work, In Memoriam is the most interesting of all the Laureate's productions, because it is essentially a personal revelation. Through this poem we become acquainted with the man himself. He was the less reserved because originally it was not his intention to pub-¡ lish to the world those words, which like weeds, were to

G

wrap him o'er Like coarsest clothes against the cold." There was a use in measured language for him. His great grief needed vent; the bitter waters of sorrow flowed forth in verse. Yet words "half reveal And half conceal the soul within," and the student of In Memoriam, though discovering much, must not delude himself that all the mystery of that clouded life can be learnt. The poem gives us an understanding of Tennyson as a mourner only, and we can trace the course of his thoughts during a long period of darkness and doubt. Those thoughts lead us onward to light, hope, and cheerfulness, and they show how a great soul was saved from the wreck of despair. As the poet Coleridge beautifully expresses it—

Sometimes

'Tis well to be bereft of promised good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.

The Poet Laureate was a type of the age. He touched every note in the gamut of belief. His creed underwent much modification and change. He alternated between denials and affirmations, acceptances and rejections, faith and despair. But with all his successive hopes and fears, his dismay and his doubts, his wavering convictions, assents and dissents, he was always craving after the highest good and searching for the surest truth. Man cannot seize the robes of purity and excellence at once. He will follow phantoms and be deluded by imposture; and he has to profit by experience and pass through ordeals before the best opens unto him. Never to be satisfied until he has gained the topmost pinnacles and can gaze with purified vision upon the light, is his duty and his privilege. Tennyson's training, and the influences to which he was early subjected, inclined him from the first towards religion. His father and grandfather were clergymen, his mother was a woman of simple, fervent piety, his favourite brother was a man of most orthodox views. Tennyson's own acquaint