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LIVING MEN OF LETTERS.

MR. TENNYSON.

Nature rejoices in contrasts, and criticism imitates her example; and a better foil to the Man of Letters whose genius and disposition were last the subject of our consideration could scarcely be found than in the living poet whose name heads this paper. Mr. Disraeli has been only in part a man of letters. Mr. Tennyson has been nothing else; and his case, if in consequence of less personal and dramatic interest, is withal more rare, and therefore at least equally worthy of our contemplation. It would scarcely be possible adequately and rightly to describe Mr. Tennyson's disposition and practice than by saying that he has positively shrunk from active life and from the public ken. “The many-headed beast must know,” he observes scornfully in “In Memoriam,” but the many-headed beast knows very little about him, and he has taken good care that very little shall be known. The world generally knows him by his poems and his portrait, and that is about all. His lofty lament for the male friend of his youth, though much bought and somewhat read, must necessarily be caviare even to his own multitude, and is not associated with that kind of romantic sentiment which is best understood by the crowd. We are not aware that many—if indeed any—have cared to inquire, “Who was Amy?” though truly there are in poetical literature fewer pieces of seemingly personal confession more exquisite or better calculated to excite vulgar curiosity than “Locksley Hall.” But Mr. Tennyson has dwelt sedulously remote from the general eye, and, “out of sight out of mind,” is always true in respect of the gaping many. Mr. Tennyson has been singularly fortunate in succeeding in this desire to escape observation, and his success has lent to his career, in our opinion, a dignity and an honourable privacy which, in an age of people plotting for notoriety and “making a racket,” have much distinguished him. Mr. Tennyson has never “fetched and carried sing-song up and down,” or made clubs, coteries, or drawing-rooms subservient to a low itch for popularity. There exists in this metropolis a number of singing gentlemen who pass their lives in praising each other in order to push themselves; and one ambitious bard who, whilst he lived abroad, could obtain little or no recognition in England, has, by coming to London and industriously working the social and critical wires which jerk a man during life into prominence, reached, we must suppose, the summit of his desires. To all such unworthy work Mr. Tennyson has been a stranger. He says very beautifully and very justly that Wordsworth uttered nothing base. He himself has done nothing base. Whether or no the fame he at present enjoys be greater than time will ultimately allot him, such as it is he has honestly won it. He waited for it with noble patience; and if, when it came, it came in an exaggerated form—as is so often the case in this country—he has had nothing to do with the exaggeration. Though necessarily it cannot be said of him, as Laureate, that he has always been “singing songr [songs?] unbidden,” he has certainly remained “like a poet hidden.” The world, however, does not like what it regards as its very proper privilege to be denied it, preferring, where a famous man is concerned, as Dickens has amusingly described of himself, to “come upstairs, and see, and bring its brothers;” and gossip, accordingly, has circulated some ill-natured stories at the expense of what is called Mr. Tennyson's excessive reserve. They will find no currency here. The only anecdote which we may repeat, since it is not ill-natured, is the following. A well-known Prince of the House of Brunswick, naturally familiar with Mr. Tennyson's shrinking habits, yet anxious to pay his respects to the poet, in the neighbourhood of whose home in the Isle of Wight he found himself, made a call unaccompanied and strictly incognito. A page came to the door. “Whom shall I say?” “The Prince of Wales,” was the reply. Whereupon the page, performing a gesture somewhat similar to 0002 one lately described by Mr. Tennyson as performed by Lynette, in other words, putting his dexter thumb to a nose “tip-tilted like the petal of a flower,” playfully observed, “Ha, yes; Prince of Wales! We know a trick worth two of that,” and slammed the poet's door in his Royal Highness's face. We believe he is the only living Englishman of notoriety whose talent for privacy no American has ever baffled.

We may possibly have seemed to dwell somewhat over long upon this one particular trait of the poet's character; but if we have done so, it is because we believe that it is closely allied with his genius, and affords a key to one of the leading idiosyncracies in his writings. It is perfectly intelligible that a true poet should entertain—we must be pardoned for saying it—something even such a Court worldling as Horace experienced it in his better moments. But Mr. Tennyson's feeling on the subject is something deeper than and different from the natural poetic aversion to constant society and to assemblages of people. It includes an actual shrinking from active life and public affairs of all sorts; and if we consider a moment, we shall see that in poets of the higher sort this is rarely if ever found. Not to cite instances from antiquity, though they would all fortify our argument, even the silent and hell-communing Dante went on many embassies, and mixed himself with the affairs of Florence with sufficient earnestness to get himself banished. Petrarch was even more busy, and Tasso's hard fate could never have overtaken one who dwelt apart. To speak of English poets, both Spencer and Chaucer occupied public posts; Shakespeare kept a theatre; Milton was one of the political pillars of an ephemeral Republic; Shelley tried to revolutionise Ireland; and Byron did revolutionise Greece. In France poor Lamartine performed a feat worth of Apollo himself when he propitiated an infuriated Parisian mob; whilst M. Victor Hugo has been a member of parliament more than once, and would fain be a member of parliament again. All these men loved solitude and hated society with the true poet' instinct; but they did not shrink from action and become mere nightingales, ululating amid secluded woodlands. That is precisely what Mr. Tennyson has done in obedience to an exceptional disposition, and the consequence is to be seen in every page of his writings. He is a student both by bent and by habit, and has at once the excellence, but still more the defects, of his leading quality.

Without at once saying what that grave defect is, we would ask to be allowed to start from a point which will lead us up to a frank and complete statement. “Lord Byron,” said Goethe, “has made poetry henceforward cosmopolitan”—meaning thereby, if indeed it be necessary to explain his meaning, that what had before been local or at most national, must henceforward, in consequence of the larger horizon Byron had opened out, be universal, and draw its inspiration from the whole world. Byron died in 1824. Mr. Tennyson's first volumes bear the dates of 1830 and 1832; and, from that time to this, a space of 40 years, he has not published a single line of cosmopolitan poetry. Steadily and unwaveringly his muse has been “compassed by the inviolate sea;” and, though we believe he has seen “the palms and temples of the South,” and can answer for it that he has visited Switzerland, it still remains true of him, in his own language, that “within this region he subsists,” and that his “spirits falter in the mist.” He is uncompromisingly insular—thus flatly contradicting Goethe's dictum. Yet the answer is ready at hand. When Byron reached the age of manhood, England was cosmopolitan; and Byron, having naturally a cosmopolitan mind, became the highest poetic expression of his country. Englishmen were then busy annexing Asia, liberating Europe, and defying America; and “Childe Harold,” “Cain,” “Don Juan,” and “Heaven and Earth,” were the consequence. What are we doing now, and what have we been doing since 1830 and 1832? Leaving Europe to its fate, deprecating the anger of American, and wondering if we can permanently hold India; passing Reform Bills, Municipal Council Bills, counting our money, and spending just as much of it in powder as we hope will enable us to prevent people from taking from us the rest; in a word, ceasing to be not only cosmopolitan but even Imperial, and dwindling not so much to the national as to the parochial condition.

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It may seem harsh if we say that Mr. Tennyson's is parochial poetry; but in the sense in which the epithet is here used, the assertion may stand as correct. We will not, however, reiterate the phrase, for it sounds uncomplimentary, and almost offensive, and we have no wish to be either when speaking of Mr. Tennyson. We will, therefore, employ the word “local,” which sufficiently expressed our meaning. And just as Byron, thanks to disposition, aided by events, wrote what Goethe calls cosmopolitan poetry, when his country was imbued with the spirit of cosmopolitan politics, so Mr. Tennyson, thanks to a different disposition, aided by different events, has written local poetry at a time when England has cherished solely and exclusively a local spirit. Time and circumstances have chimed in admirably with the Laureate's own character, and have at once narrowed his sympathies, and—at home at least—widened his popularity. Wordsworth beautifully speaks of the lark as the “type of the wise who soar but never roam, true to the kindred points of Heaven and home.” Mr. Tennyson never roams at least, and is wonderfully faithful to the second of those two points. It must not be inferred from what we have said that we consider it absolutely impossible for a poet to write in a cosmopolitan spirit when his country is eaten up with the parochial disease; but it must necessarily be mightily difficult. Mr. Tennyson, however, has never tried to overcome the difficulty, and is probably unaware that either the difficulty or the cosmopolitan poetic spirit exists. He is an unmitigated Englishman, apparently not aware that there is any country in the world but England, or that there exist any concerns of moment save English interests. He has been fortunate in the fact that England, during his lifetime, has been of the same opinion, and has not asked him for strains which would have probably been too foreign to the genius of his muse for his reply to be satisfactory. What few attempts he has been forced to make in that direction suggest how thoroughly he would have failed. The “Ode on the Duke of Wellington” is lamentable, and the lines on the Blaclava Charge are a fine example of the bathos to which a poet of wonderful genius may descend when he tried to fly where his wings will not carry him. The “Form, Form, Riflemen Form,” of 1859 was as lamentable in substance as in spirit, being a melancholy exhibition of poetical Philistinism. As for “Maud”—written out of compliment to the Crimean war—the love-lyrics are for the most part exquisite, but the thunder is anything but celestial. Mr. Tennyson sits most skilfully on the corn-stacked wain of Ceres; but on the tumbril of Mars he bumps about deplorably, and is evidently unfit for that somewhat rough riding.

This, then, is the defect of which we spoke. It is the Silver Streak and Happy England theory carried into the domain of poetry. Not, of course, that Mr. Tennyson has in reality any theory on the subject; but his practice is as unserving as though he were its absolute slave. The penalty he has paid, and which his reputation will for ever have to pay, for this narrowness of survey, this insular exclusiveness, is a heavy one. It has prevented him from ever getting hold of a really great subject, or from writing a poem which shall be at one and the same time of sufficient length, sufficient completeness, and sufficient dignity. Properly speaking, he has written only one poem which satisfies even the first two conditions just named, and that is, “The Princess;” and when we remember its them, we need scarcely consider whether the third condition—dignity of subject— has been complied with. And no matter what amount of beautiful poetry a man may have written, if he have but written it in snatches, and failed to embody his genius in one large, great work he must, perforce, sit below those who have not shrunk from the bigger task, and, attempting, have achieved it. There is something eminently pathetic in the bootless wish of the illustrious Laureate that the ten separate sketches now comprised under the generic title of “Idylls of the King,” should be regarded as one poem. It is a valuable testimony to the propriety of the test we have just laid down. Mr. Tennyson knows full well that even if all the fine things that are said in “Paradise Lost” had still been said by Milton, but lay scattered over a host of minor pieces and shorter poems, Milton would not have been regarded as the great poet which the whole world agrees to consider him now.

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In Roman Catholic divinity no amount of venial sins will make one mortal sin; and in poetic theology—for are not the poets gods?—no amount of minor poems will make or equal one great poem. Thoughtful critics have always recognised the fact that sustained power is the highest test of genius; and the world at large has confessed the justice of the standard. It is the wing that does not flag, that does not want rest, not the wing that flies from tree to tree, which testifies to the unflagging heart and brain within. A great theme greatly executed—behold the ambition and reward of all great poets. That Mr. Tennyson would have executed satisfactorily anything he conceived, can scarcely be doubted. Unhappily for him—though we have seen plainly enough why it should be so—he has never been able adequately to conceive a great theme. Far be it from us to deny that the Arthurian Legend might furnish such a theme; but it is beyond controversy that Mr. Tennyson has not conceived the Arthurian Legend in such a way as to produce or even render possible such a result. Each Idyll is perfect and complete in itself—admirably so; and there is a charm about nearly all of them which it would require a diction as dainty as that of Mr. Tennyson himself to express. But take any one away, and the rest are equally good. Take two away—three—four—five—and you in no degree detract from the remainder. Can that possibly be said of one great entire poem? Finally, in the whole of the Idylls, frequent and numerous as are the passages one reads with inexpressible delight, we know but of two that rise to the height—height! there's the rub!—of a great poem; and that is the closing scene in Guinevere, and the passing away of Arthur. Had Mr. Tennyson written one long entire poem in that key, he would have done what, alas, it must be presumed he will never do now.

The mention of Mr. Tennyson's execution leads us to consider another most important and distinctive trait in his writings. But here again he is thoroughly himself—indeed there are no contradictions or perplexities in the Laureate—and what explains his choice of themes equally explains his mode of treating them. When we say that Mr. Tennyson has, for the most part, selected small subjects and small studies, we of course use the word not absolutely, but only relatively, in the sense that we should say Rafael's Madonna della Seggiola was a small subject and a small picture, compared with “Paul Preaching at Athens” by the same artist. Therefore it must not be supposed that any sneer or any intentional belittling of Mr. Tennyson is intended by the employment of the word in this place. It is a word applicable to a leading article as compared with an essay—to an essay as compared with a treatise, to a treatise as compared with a long and exhaustive work. It is in this sense only that we speak of the bulk of Mr. Tennyson's compositions, well aware that, in themselves, they are anything but small. But smallness of subject is pretty sure to entail its own special mode of treatment, particularly if he who has to treat it has a fine sense and instinct of proportion; and no one ever had that sense and instinct more remarkably than Mr. Tennyson. Some men write feebly on great subjects, others turgidly on small subjects. Mr. Tennyson is utterly incapable of committing either mistake. He has an exquisite feeling of the fitness of things. Indeed, he has it to an almost morbid degree, and is painfully solicitous that his style of composition shall harmonise with his subject. Accordingly his writings are laboured and finished as writings were perhaps never laboured or finished before. But is it wonderful? Has it not been a thousand times observed that a large house or a large garden may rely for the impression it excites somewhat upon its size, whereas a small house or a small garden depends wholly for the effect it creates on its neatness and tidiness. The chase may be left to run wild, and even the park may safely scorn to be rigidly symmetrical; but the little garden-plot must be trim, the walks must be well-swept, the edges sharply cut, the roses pruned into shapely sizes, the lawn closely and smoothly shaven, the gates all freshly painted, everything in its place, everything faultless. Indoors it is the same. A good deal of dust may lie in the chambers and corridors of a palace, and if the curtains fall awry, who it that notices what is not an anomaly? But woe to the villa or the cottage where brooms do not sweep 0005 clean, where pictures hang out of the perpendicular, where the furniture, and even each rug, ornament, and what-not, is not exactly in its proper place and scrupulously cared for. Mr. Tennyson has instinctively felt all this; and the consequence is that every cottage ornée of his answers these strict requirements. His garden is not only a garden of sweets, but a garden in which no plant or flower is permitted to outgrow its place, no one pebble trespasses on the grass, no nook or corner is neglected or ignored. He is quite right. Was it not Sheridan who spoke, in mentioning Burke, of “the negligent grandeur of his mind.” But to be negligent you must be grand; and Mr. Tennyson knowing himself to be scarcely the one, takes excellent care never to the other. The result, however, is that he has imbued his readers with a taste for finish in composition which they miss when they turn to writers avowedly greater than himself—we speak of the dead—and whose lustre he thus for the moment undoubtedly dims. Of course that is a result which cannot be permanent, but it is all powerful for the moment. In fact, he has made them somewhat “old maidish” in their exactingness, and led them to complain of anything in point of arrangement that is not perfect. Mr. Carlyle may have had something of this sort in view when he spoke so admirably of “the completeness of a limited mind.”

The proper function of criticism, in our opinion, is to make just estimates, and, therefore, whilst endeavouring to obtain ample recognition for writers not yet sufficiently appreciated, to warn the public against exaggerated enthusiasm for writers already fully or over praised. To say all the good we could say, and should like to say, or Mr. Tennyson's poetry, would occupy far more space than we have already covered; but, that space being limited, we have considered that it was better occupied in the attempt to obtain a correct view of his precise merits and demerits than in repeating encomiums, which, however just, have been, and still are, profusely pronounced. But we must, at least, take leave of this delightful poet with praise. So far, he is beyond comparison the chief singer of the Victorian Era, and could we conceive his poems to be suddenly withdrawn from us the blank would be appalling. The signal excellence of his writings can be expressed only by that vague word “charm.” There is a glamour in nearly all of what he writes. His notes may be only the middle notes, but how clear and silvery they are! He is the most “exquisite” of writers. It is singular to reflect that he has been writing for forty-two years, and cannot have written much more than forty-two thousand verses—one thousand verses a year, or less than three verses a day. And he has done absolutely nothing else. That is very wonderful;; but it agrees perfectly with all that has been remarked of him. Schiller observes finely that though the poet is the child of the century, woe to him if he its pupil, still more its slave; since his mission is not to delight, but, like the son of Agamemnon, terrible, to purify it. We fear Mr. Tennyson does not satisfy Schiller's lofty condition. He belongs to the pacific, comfortable, contented, upper middle-class centre of the nineteenth century; but when future ages are disposed to treat somewhat roughly that century's estimate of its own merits they will be obliged to pause and allow that it must have had qualities of no mean order to have produced a poet whose brows, even in his own lifetime, were so justly girt with laurel.