Tennyson and His Friends Part 55

[90] From Theocritus.

[91] [For another view of "Gareth" see FitzGerald's letter to my father in 1873:

MY DEAR ALFRED--I write my yearly letter to yourself this time, because I have a word to say about "Gareth" which your publisher sent me as "from the author." I don't think it is mere perversity that makes me like it better than all its predecessors, save and except (of course) the old "Morte." The subject, the young knight who can endure and conquer, interests me more than all the heroines of the 1st volume. I do not know if I admire more _separate_ pa.s.sages in this "Idyll" than in the others; for I have admired _many_ in _all_. But I do admire several here very much, as

The journey to Camelot, pp. 13-14, All Gareth's va.s.salage, 31-34, Departure with Lynette, 42, Sitting at table with the Barons, 54, Phantom of past life, 71,

and many other pa.s.sages and expressions "quae nunc perscribere longum est."--ED.]

[92] Bedivere.

[93] Reprinted, with some few alterations, from the _Edinburgh Review_, No. ccclx.x.xii., by the kind permission of the Editor and the late Sir Alfred Lyall.

[94] E. FitzGerald.

[95] He said to Bishop Lightfoot, "The cardinal point of Christianity is the Life after Death."

[96] See Appendix C.

[97] [The sibilants give the lisping peacefulness of the waves. For beauty of sound he would cite the following lines:

The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees;

and

The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm;

and

And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn,

ED.]

[98] [My father would not have allowed this. He said, "It is pure nonsense to say that my later poems are melancholy. In old age I have a stronger faith in G.o.d and human good than I had in youth."--ED.]

[99] [This is taken from Quintus Calaber.--ED.]

[100] [It is interesting to note that Sir Richard Jebb held that the "Death of none" was "essentially Greek."--ED.]

[101] [This pa.s.sage must not be misunderstood, as Sir Alfred Lyall thought that he had touched high-water mark in some of his later poems, such as: "In Memoriam," certain pa.s.sages in the "Idylls of the King," "The Ancient Sage," and "Maud," the "Northern Farmers," "Rizpah," "The Revenge," the Dedication to Edward FitzGerald of "Tiresias," and "Crossing the Bar."--ED.]

[102] Presidential Address to the British Academy, October 1909 (Tennyson centenary), published here by the late Professor Butcher's kind permission.

[103] The Master of Christ's.

[104] Captain Thomas Hamilton, who then lived at Elleray. He was the brother of Sir William Hamilton, and is frequently mentioned in Sir Walter Scott's Journal.

[105] _Philip van Artevelde_, by Henry Taylor.

[106] Probably August 10. See letter to Thompson, August 19, 1841.

[107] The reply referred to is:--

FARRINGFORD, _Jan. 19th, 1870_.

MY DEAR JAMES--Send the box, please, not without your new volume hither. I shall be grateful for both. I am glad that you find anything to approve of in the "H. G." I have not yet finished the Arthurian legends, otherwise I might consider your Job theme. Strange that I quite forgot our conversation thereupon. Where is Westbourne Terrace?

If I had ever clearly made out I should a.s.suredly have called. I have often when in town past by the old 60, the "vedovo sito," with a groan, thinking of you as no longer the comeatable, runupableto, smokeablewith J. S. of old, but as a family man, far in the west, sitting cigarless among many nieces, clean and forlorn, but I hope to see you somewhere in '70, for I have taken chambers in Victoria Street for three years, though they are not yet furnished.

Where is the difficulty of that line in the "Flower"? It is rather rough certainly, but, had you followed the clue of "little flower" in the preceding line, you would not have stumbled over this, which is accentual anapaest,

What you are, root and all:

rough--doubtless.--Believe me yours ever,

A. TENNYSON.

[108] [_The Holy Grail and other Poems._ It was Spedding chiefly who urged my father about this time to write his plays, because he thought that he had the true dramatic instinct. He criticized them in proof, and gave them his warm commendation.--ED.]

[109] _Life and Letters_, vol. v.

[110] The pa.s.sage from Shakespeare prefixed to this paper contains probably as much as can be said of the mental, not less than the affectionate conditions, under which such a report as "In Memoriam" is produced, and may give us more insight into the imaginative faculty's mode of working, than all our philosophizing and a.n.a.lysis. It seems to let out with the fulness, simplicity, and unconsciousness of a child--"Fancy's Child"--the secret mechanism or procession of the greatest creative mind our race has produced. In itself, it has no recondite meaning, it answers fully its own sweet purpose. We are not believers, like some folks, in the omniscience of even Shakespeare. But, like many things that he and other wise men and many simple children say, it has a germ of universal meaning, which it is quite lawful to bring out of it, and which may be enjoyed to the full without any wrong to its own original beauty and fitness. A dewdrop is not the less beautiful that it ill.u.s.trates in its structure the law of gravitation which holds the world together, and by which "the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong." This is the pa.s.sage. The Friar speaking of Claudio, hearing that Hero "died upon his words," says:

The idea of her life shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination; And every lovely organ of her life Shall come apparelled in more precious habit-- More moving delicate, and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of his soul, Than when she lived indeed.

We have here expressed in plain language the imaginative memory of the beloved dead, rising upon the past, like moonlight upon midnight:

The gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme.

This is its simple meaning--the statement of a truth, the utterance of personal feeling. But observe its hidden abstract significance--it is the revelation of what goes on in the depths of the soul, when the dead elements of what once was, are laid before the imagination, and so breathed upon as to be quickened into a new and higher life. We have first the _Idea of her Life_--all he remembered and felt of her, gathered into one vague shadowy image, not any one look, or action, or time,--then the idea of her life _creeps_--is in before he is aware, and SWEETLY creeps--it might have been softly or gently, but it is the addition of affection to all this, and bringing in another sense,--and now it is in his _study of imagination_--what a place! fit for such a visitor. Then out comes the _Idea_, more particular, more questionable, but still ideal, spiritual,--_every lovely organ of her life_--then the clothing upon, the mortal putting on its immortal, spiritual body--_shall come apparelled in more precious habit, more moving delicate_--this is the transfiguring, the putting on strength, the _poco piu_--the little more which makes immortal,--_more full of life_, and all this submitted to--_the eye and prospect of the soul_.

[111]

Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street; Doors, where my heart was wont to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand.

"In Memoriam."

This is a mistake, as his friend Dr. A. P. Stanley thus corrects: "'The long unlovely street' was Wimpole Street, No. 67, where the Hallams lived; and Arthur used to say to his friends, 'You know you will always find us at sixes and sevens.'"

[112] We had read these lives, and had remarked them, before we knew whose they were, as being of rare merit. No one could suppose they were written by one so young. We give his estimate of the character of Burke. "The mind of this great man may perhaps be taken as a representation of the general characteristics of the English intellect. Its groundwork was solid, practical, and conversant with the details of business; but upon this, and secured by this, arose a superstructure of imagination and moral sentiment. He saw little, _because it was painful to him_ to see anything, beyond the limits of the national character. In all things, while he deeply reverenced principles, he chose to deal with the concrete rather than with abstractions. He studied men rather than man." The words in italics imply an insight into the deepest springs of human action, the conjunct causes of what we call character, such as few men of large experience attain.

[113] This will remind the reader of a fine pa.s.sage in _Edwin the Fair_, on the specific differences in the sounds made by the ash, the elm, the fir, etc., when moved by the wind; and of some lines by Landor on flowers speaking to each other; and of something more exquisite than either, in _Consuelo_--the description of the flowers in the old monastic garden, at the "sweet hour of prime."

[114] _Remains_, vol. iii. p. 105.

[115] This is the pa.s.sage referred to in Henry Taylor's delightful _Notes from Life_ ("Essay on Wisdom"):

"Fear, indeed, is the mother of foresight: spiritual fear, of a foresight that reaches beyond the grave; temporal fear, of a foresight that falls short; but without fear there is neither the one foresight nor the other; and as pain has been truly said to be "the deepest thing in our nature,"

so is it fear that will bring the depths of our nature within our knowledge. A great capacity of _suffering_ belongs to genius; and it has been observed that an alternation of joyfulness and dejection is quite as characteristic of the man of genius as intensity in either kind." In his _Notes from Books_, p. 216, he recurs to it: "'Pain,' says a writer whose early death will not prevent his being long remembered, 'pain is the deepest thing that we have in our nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real and more holy than any other.'"

[116] From _Problems and Persons_, by Wilfrid Ward, published here by his kind permission and that of Longmans, Green and Co.