transcend the glory he has had in the past. Inasmuch as some faint indications seem to suggest that we may be living in an era which is to see the beginning of new casts of thought and new growth in spiritual life, we deem the position and relation of Tennyson to our times one of great importance, since he must be admitted to wear the laureate's crown in spiritual poetry, he alone having succeeded in transfiguring the outward and material by an infusion of the hidden life.

To appreciate truly Tennyson's poetry, and ascertain how far he fulfils what Bacon lays down as the work of the true poet, it is imperative that we consider the purposes developed in his works, as only by so doing is it possible rightly to estimate what the question at issue terms their "healthy tendency." He, unlike most poets, from the commencement of his work set before him a regular progress and development which could only ripen slowly; for he resolved not to rely upon the passionate utterances of genius alone for his power to sway men, but sought to infuse that genius into artistic and refined language, and so to secure an effect reaching alike the taste, imagination, intellect, and affections. So great and wondrous an ideal could only be slowly and painfully wrought out, and hence the great value of his poems regarded as the biography of a mind which sets high excellence from the first before it, but comes gradually to see that point after point has to be altered and given up, and that a loftier and more blessed standard can alone satisfy the unquenched craving of the poet's soul.

His earlier poems are mere pictorial efforts; here the poet's ideal is firm, exquisite, gorgeous, colouring with little sympathy with the life pulsing in the wide world; still they are worth consideration as indications of that marvellous word-painting afterwards associated with such noble sentiments, and the polish and beauty of which are still dwelt upon in the structure of his later works. In "The Poet" he gave proofs that already the fire was kindled which anon was to leap so high heavenward; in the quiet flow of "Circumstance," we have the promise of that analytical power he has since wielded with a master's hand. His collected edition of 1842 at once placed him on the proud eminence of the poet of his country and age; and though he is still struggling to a loftier height, his songs are now full of a rich life, flowing on amid more than the old vigour and beauty of versification. He is not yet perfect; there are still the taints of what our negative friends term "morbidity and mysticism." And why? Because he is not content to balance every light and shade, and, like Longfellow, utter didactic songs, each of which shall have its practical and utilitarian value consequent on its very triteness. He has not yet found his resting-place; he utter's life's riddles, but has no solutions to offer; hence, if judged by an arbitrary standard, he is non-understandible and mystical in this series of his works. "Locksley Hall" is loaded with thoughts of most invigorating and soulstirring power. Such, for instance, as,

"Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

Again:

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast, Full of sad experience, moving towards the stillness of his rest."

*

*

*

*

"Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new,' That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do."

"Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change;
Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day:
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay."

Despite the wild passion of this poem, we feel there is deepest, richest, healthiest life throbbing through it; the poet has insight almost inspired to look through and beyond all the fierce doubt and struggle of his era; and to see a future radiant with glory, for he sees a present in which a will works that is subduing all things to itself, and evolving a blessed godlike oneness out of all the divers aims and ends of man. In the classical poems of this series, where he seems most removed from the sympathies of his contemporaries, a careful review will bring out the proof that he has placed them there, not so much as studies in the antique as analyses of character, applicable alike to all time. His "Ulysses" and "Enone laden with wisdom and sentiment, as he declares that

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,

These three alone lead life to sovereign power."

are

Scattered among this series there were, however, a number of pieces which at first sight seemed so destitute of any moral power for good, if accepted without antidote, that they have served all those who could not understand Tennyson's teaching as a whole, as a constant drawback with which they justify their verdict that his tendency is unhealthy. The "Lotos-eaters" may be taken as a specimen of this class; they have been ably characterized as "studies by the artist in one colour." The poet has not yet reached his highest region; he is still struggling; and with the restlessness there ever and anon comes deep yearning for rest and fixity of being.

This seeming melancholy is a proof of the depth and intensity of his mind, which no easy commonplaces respecting the mystery of life can satisfy; and must not he who has felt deepest be always the truest and best teacher? Why have the Psalms of David such marvellous aptitude to teach all generations, but that they are the fullest expressions of the experience of one of the deepest and most poetic minds the world has known? So, if, in some of his works, Tennyson has only stated the need, this of itself is not a small thing; nor is it morbid or unhealthy to proclaim that the soul

66

will not, cannot be satisfied with the material, that, because, as Bacon says, "It has a more ample greatness;" it is ever crying, Give, give." Taking the collected pieces as a whole, we challenge comparison with Longfellow to show wherein he has more health in the tone and tendency of his poetry than Tennyson; for in the minor pieces or ballads of the latter there lives a power most marked; we need hardly refer to the Gardener's Daughter," the "Miller's Daughter,' Clara Vere de Vere," the " Lord of Burleigh," as proofs of this; for even in the quaint conceits of the "Day Dream" we read such lines as these::

66

"To sleep through terms of mighty wars,
And wake on science grown to move,
On secrets of the brain, the stars,
As wild as aught of fairy love;
And all that else the years will show,
The Foet-forms of stronger hours,
The vast Republics that may grow,
The Federations and the Powers;
Titanic forces, taking birth

In divers seasons, divers climes."

But it is objected by our opponents that Tennyson is not fraternal and warm-hearted; that his sympathies are with some far-off romance which attracts his notice, rather than the every-day life around him; we reply that to admit him to be a great and true poet, and then expect his genius to be "cribbed, cabined, and confined" by our notions, is to contradict all nature, which will bestow its gifts in its own way. We believe that the poet whose teachings have to be brought out as hidden gems will be more useful to his fellows than he who aims directly to stimulate them. We have little faith in what is termed practical poetry, which is ever striving to reach men through giving expression to their ordinary thoughts, rather than influencing them by glorious examples. Nor is Tenny. son's devotion to the romance of Arthur the idle and fruitless thing some would fain persuade us; to him his hero is no myth of the past, but a living exemplar who has ever his message to all men; for, in his earlier devotion to him, as in "Morte d'Arthur," he tells us,-

"Arthur is come again: he cannot die;

Come again, and thrice as fair;

Come with all good things, and war shall be.no more."

Arthur, too, was an image for all time; through the poem just noticed he answers some of the querulous lamentations of the present about the past, when he makes the grand old king in his last words say,—

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."

And he adds,

"More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of."

Our opponents have disputed the Laureate's claim to healthy teaching on the ground of a lack of earnestness and vigour; they have asked for a counterpart of the Psalm of Life and "Excelsior," and have affirmed they exist not in Tennyson's poems; they must surely have forgotten those wondrous political lyrics which have been before men for years, in which there breathes a wisdom unmatched by anything Longfellow has yet given to the world. In them political philosophy has been wedded most happily to the poetic form; for the poet has no shallow love of country and friends; he dwells there, rather than in more gorgeous regions, because

"It is the land that freemen till,

That sober-suited Freedom chose,

The land where, girt with friends or foes,
A man may speak the thing he will.

"A land of settled government,

A land of just and old renown,

Where Freedom broadens slowly down

From precedent to precedent."

Hence he glories in his great position as a modern citizen in such a land, and sings :

:

Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet;
Above her shook the starry lights,
She heard the torrents meet.
"There in her place she did rejoice,
Self-gathered in her prophet mind;
But fragments of her mighty voice
Came rolling on the wind.

"Then step't she down thro' town and
field,

To mingle with the human race, And part by part to men reveal'd

The fulness of her face.

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"Grave mother of majestic works,

From her isle-altar gazing down,
Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks,
And, King-like, wears the crown.
"Her open eyes desire the truth;

The wisdom of a thousand years
Is in them. May perpetual youth
Keep dry their light from tears;

"That her fair form may stand and shine,
Make bright our days, and light our..
dreams,

Turning to scorn, with lips divine,

The falsehood of extremes!"

But in the longer pocm, Love thou thy land," there is a majestic display of power which has seldom been equalled. In it he probes the want and need of his age, the lack of reverent heed for and consistency to truth, which too greatly marks the knowledge of the time.

VOL. IV.

"Make knowledge circle with the winds,

But let her herald, Reverence, fly

Before her, to whatever sky

Bear seed of men, and growth of minds."

D

Every verse might be quoted to show how full of ripest wisdom and experience it is; the warning against working for place; depending on mere watchwords; the blessed trust that the right shall not always be won through blood,—

"Certain, if knowledge bring the sword,

That knowledge takes the sword away;"

and finally, the marvellous close in which the result of all the ages' strife and work is declared,

"To-morrow yet would reap to-day,

As we bear blossom of the dead;

Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed
Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay."

The next era in the development of Tennyson's mind is that marked by "The Princess." He has reached a certain position where the fierceness of the old struggle is past, and as yet the new problems before him are not started. He has now taken that place which, amid all subsequent variations, he holds firmly, as the poet of woman; he has seen that the relation of the sexes, their mutual power and influence, is one perplexing enigma, which presses especially on the present era, and hence he essays some solution of it, knowing that in so doing he is also doing most for man. The result of his study is summed in that magnificent passage, commencing,

"For woman is not undevelop't man, but diverse."

Having completed this task, he next appears before us in a totally new phase of being; the mystery of death has opened up before him the whole problem of human existence; there is now an end to the even flow and philosophic spirit of "The Princess;" questions deep, vast, awful in their significance, press his spirit; he has lost communion with one of earth's fairest growths, a young man of such powers, that those who knew him best, tell us Tennyson in nowise has overdrawn or idolized his character, when in those matchless lines he describes him as

"Heart affluence in discursive talk

From household fountains never dry,
The critic clearness of an eye
That saw through all the Muses' walk;
"Seraphic intellect, and force

To throw the doubts of man;
Impassioned logic, which outrun
The hearer in its fiery course.
"High nature, amorous of the good,

But touched with no ascetic gloom,

*For a review of the privately published British Review, in Vol. for 1852.

And passion pure in snowy bloom Through all the years of April blood. "A love of freedom rarely felt,

Of freedom in her regal seat
Of England; not the schoolboy heat,
The blind hysterics of the Celt.
"And manhood fused with female grace

In such a sort, the child would twine
A trustful hand, unasked, in thine,
And find his comfort in thy face." *

works of A. H. Hallam, see the North