For poets ever were of dark resolve, And swift stern deed That maiden heard no more, But spake Alas! my heart is very weak, And but for-Stay! And if some dreadful morn, After great search and shouting through the wold, O poet, read! read all thy wondrous scroll! For the elegant trifles of verse Tennyson had never much affection. In later life he almost entirely neglected the sonnet; while he was guiltless of the composition of ballade, kyrielle, pantoum, rondeau, sestina, triolet, villanelle, and all the artificial forms of verse adopted more for fantasy and pastime than for serious purpose. On the other hand, he displayed a capacity for reproducing the "riddling triplets of old time," and he could imitate to a marvel the Mantuan poet, "lord of language," and " wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man." His love of alliteration never became a craze. It was effective because it was not strained and laboured, and it was used just often enough to display the poet's power, just seldom enough to please the reader's taste. Tennyson, on the other hand, made a speciality of double-words, and excelled even his master, Spenser, in the number and richness and power of his combinations. Freely admitting the mannerisms and peculiarities of the poet, I still find it extremely difficult to understand the criticism of Hain Friswell who in his Men of Letters honestly criticised confined himself to sweeping denunciation of the poet's work. "An age," he said, "that calls Dickens deep reading, and picks up the sixpences, will appreciate Alfred Tennyson. Look at his photograph. Deep-browed, but not deep-lined; bald, but not grey; with a dark disappointment and little hopeful feeling on his face; with hair unkempt, heaped up in the carriage of his shoulders, and with his figure covered with a tragic cloak, the Laureate is pourtrayed, gloomily peering from two ineffective and not very lustrous eyes, a man of sixty, looking more like a worn and a more feeling man of fifty. His skin is sallow, his whole physique not jovial nor red like Shakespeare and Dickens, but lachrymose and saturnine; lachrymose! and yet as regards fame and reward, what a successful man he has been! At an age at which Shakespeare was holding horses, he was a pensionary of the Court. When he was very young the critics killed a far greater poet, John Keats, so that they might shower down repentant and selfrecalcitrant praise on the successor. When he was but young, an old worn-out poet-a true prose man, but a poet still-contended for the Laureateship after years of toil and pen labour, but the young singer was crowned, and received the Laureate's wreath, the Laureate's fame and pension-the glory of which wreath was made purer and higher from that of his predecessor, Wordsworth. Tennyson's access to fame was sudden. Lorsque Tennyson publia ses premiers poèmes,' says M. Taine, 'the critics spoke mockingly of them,' and let us say the critics were right. 'He was silent,' continues the French author, ' and for ten years no one saw his name in a review, nor even in a catalogue, his books had burrowed their way alone ('avaient fait leur chemin tout seuls et sous terre'), and on the first blow Tennyson passed for the greatest poet of his country and his age.' It was because the age had been sinking in verve and true poetic feeling that Tennyson, great as he is in some points, at once rose to the level of its highest appreciation. It has cost long years for Tennyson to free himself from the drawing-room style of poetry. Indeed the 'Keepsake' and 'Book of Beauty' haunt him for ever, and have effectually forbidden him to be a great poet. And yet he had something of a chance that way once. There is the divine afflatus perceptible, but he has been educated too much, and is too careful and too timid. They write of him as of one who lies on the sofa all day, and smokes cigars. Tennyson's popularity, as a poet, grew down from the higher classes. A few young people of high life began to admire him, and Moxon sold his books slowly; then the next stratum of society under these took the fever, and found in the Laureate's poems easy things to understand; and then again, and again, a wider but a commoner circle took up his songs. By his books he made at last much money. His brothers, Charles and Septimus,' both singers, were at one time rivals, but he soon distanced them and others. It was whispered that the Queen admired and that Prince Albert read his poems, and then with the loyal English-speaking people his fame was made. Moxon died, and the house paid Tennyson all that his books brought, save a percentage of fifteen per cent.; so that for some years the poet found his lines golden. When Macmillan and the Cornhill magazines were 1 An error-Frederick is no doubt meant. started, their proprietors wanted names to attract, and they paid the Laureate a guinea a line for some weak kickshaws: I stood on a tower, in the wet, When the old year and the new year met, and a weak story about a City clerk, which were hardly worth printing. The magazines did themselves good as regards advertising, but much harm to the Laureate. In 1830 the Laureate published poems, chiefly lyrical, with prose notes full of egotism, which were properly laughed at, and since then, it is said, Tennyson has abandoned prose for ever. Yes, Tennyson is a greatly successful, but he is not a great poet. The next age will surely reverse the verdict of this. He is sugar-sweet, pretty-pretty, full of womanly talk and feminine stuff. Lilian, Dora, Clara, Emmeline 1-you can count up thirty such pretty names, but you cannot count any great poem of the Laureate's. No, he is no great poet. Mr Tennyson has been very discreet, and a very good Court poet,—for a manufactured article really none better; but he is like the lady who did not want to 'look frightful when dead,' and so put on the paint and the fucus, and he will take no deep hold of the world. What did sweet Will Shakespeare do? Did he not say that he had gored mine own thoughts; Sold cheap what is most dear, And made myself a motley to the view. Did he not give us blood and passion with his poetry? But says Tennyson: 'Nor can it suit me to forget' that I am admired by all young ladies, and am a Laureate. Further he adds, I count it crime To mourn for any overmuch. And posterity will count it folly to place a half-hearted and polished rhymster amongst her shining great ones, who were fellows with poverty and disrespect in this life, and who learnt in suffering that they might teach in song." Tennyson could afford to disregard "criticism" of this character. His best answer to such censors was "silence when they rave"; yet such outbursts taught him that Sing thou low or loud or sweet, All at all points thou canst not meet, 1 Adeline is no doubt intended. What is true at last will tell : Hold thine own and work thy will! These lines from the last volume might almost be the poct's answer to the critics, who could not "place him well" at the beginning, who misunderstood him at many stages of his life, but who found in the end that the man who "held his own and worked his will" was the victor over all. CHAPTER XVI. LABOR LIMÆ: SUPPRESSED AND REVISED POEMS. "And here the Singer for his art Not all in vain may plead, 'The Song that nerves a nation's heart, Is in itself a deed.'" -Epilogue. TENNYSON'S suppressed poems, and his constant revision, curtailment, and extension of those retained and published, are a study in themselves. He composed slowly and laboriously, and as a rule had a verse completely shaped in his mind before he committed it to paper. Once it was written out he set about polishing it, finding new places for words, new words for places, and making change upon change until not infrequently the original disappeared entirely, and the whole verse was recast. His favourite mode of composition was to walk about in his garden, smoking vigorously, and revolving his ideas until they took shape. At such times he was unapproachable. When engaged on a sustained work he would lock himself in his study, and neither be heard nor seen for days at a time. His love of revision was almost a mania, and it was one of the tasks of his life to Add and alter, many times, Till all be ripe and rotten. His caligraphy was quaint and neat, the letters being distinct, small, and Greek-like, and to the expert revealing the love of exactness, minuteness, and care of the writer. No hurried, passionate, excitable man could have written every word with such evident control and restraint. Byron, who always composed in a fever, sent illegible scrawls to the |