Chapter CXXIII (2)

In the same year Hallam and Tennyson made an expedition into Spain to carry aid to the rebel leader against the king of Spain. The expedition was not by any means a success. In 1831 Tennyson left Cambridge, without taking his degree, and shortly after his return home his father died. The family, however, did not remove from Somersby, but remained there until 1837. Late in 1832 appeared another volume entitled _Poems by Alfred Tennyson_. This drew upon the unfortunate author a bitterly sarcastic article in the _Quarterly_, written probably by its brilliant editor, John Gibson Lockhart. The result of this article was that Tennyson was silent for almost ten years, a period spent in ridding himself of the weaknesses so brutally pointed out by the reviewer.

In 1833, Arthur Henry Hallam died, and for a time the light of life seemed to have gone out for Alfred Tennyson. The effect of the death of Hallam upon the poet was extraordinary. It seemed to have changed the whole current of his life; indeed he is said, under the strain of the awful suddeness and unexpectedness of the event, to have contemplated suicide. But saner thoughts intervened, and he again took up the burden of life, with the determination to do what he could in helping others. From this time of storm and stress came _In Memoriam_.

From 1832 to 1842 Tennyson spent a roving life. Now at home, now in London, now with his friends in various parts of England. He was spending his time in finishing his poems, so that when he again came before the world with a volume, he would be a master. The circle of his friends was widening, and now included the greater number of the master-minds of England. He was poor, so poor in fact that he was reduced to the necessity of borrowing the books he wished to read from his friends. But during all this time he never wavered in his allegiance to poetry; he had determined to be a poet, and to devote his life to poetry. At last in 1842 he published his _Poems_ in two volumes, and the world was conquered. From this time onwards he was recognized as the leading poet of his century.

In 1845, Tennyson, poor still, was granted a pension of 200 pounds, chiefly through the influence of his friend Richard Monckton Milnes, and Thomas Carlyle. There was a great deal of criticism regarding this pension from sources that should have been favorable, but the general verdict approved the grant. In 1847 appeared _The Princess_, a poem, which, at that time, did not materially add to his fame; but the poet was now hailed as one of the great ones of his time, and much was expected of him.

In 1850 three most important events in the life of Tennyson happened. He published _In Memoriam_, in memory of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam; he was appointed Poet Laureate, in succession to Wordsworth; and he married Emily Selwood, a lady to whom he had been engaged for seventeen years, but whom his poverty had prevented him from leading to the altar. From this time onwards the life of the poet flowed smoothly. He was happily married, his fame was established, his books brought him sufficient income on which to live comfortable and well. From this point there is little to relate in his career, except the publication of his various volumes.

After his marriage Tennyson lived for some time at Twickenham, where in 1852 Hallam Tennyson was born. In 1851 he and his wife visited Italy, a visit commemorated in _The Daisy_. In 1853 they removed to Farringford at Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, a residence subsequently purchased with the proceeds of _Maud_, published in 1855. The poem had a somewhat mixed reception, being received in some quarters with unstinted abuse and in others with the warmest praise. In the year that _Maud_ was published Tennyson received the honorary degree of D.C.L., from Oxford. In 1859 was published the first four of the _Idylls of the King_, followed in 1864 by _Enoch Arden and Other Poems_. In 1865 his mother died. In 1869 he occupied Aldworth, an almost inaccessible residence in Surrey, near London, in order to escape the annoyance of summer visitors to the Isle of Wight, who insisted on invading his privacy, which, perhaps, more than any other he especially valued.

From 1870 to 1880 Tennyson was engaged principally on his dramas--_Queen Mary_, _Harold_, and _Becket_,--but, with the exception of the last, these did not prove particularly successful on the stage. In 1880 _Ballads and Poems_ was published, an astonishing volume from one so advanced in years. In 1882 the _Promise of May_ was produced in public, but was soon withdrawn. In 1884 Tennyson was raised to the peerage as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Farringford, after having on two previous occasions refused a baronetcy. In 1885 _Tiresias and Other Poems_ was published. In this volume was published _Balin and Balan_, thus completing the _Idylls of the King_, which now assumed their permanent order and form. _Demeter and Other Poems_ followed in 1889, including _Crossing the Bar_. In 1892, on October 6th, the poet died at Aldworth, "with the moonlight upon his bed and an open Shakespeare by his side." A few days later he was buried in Westminster Abbey, by the side of Robert Browning, his friend and contemporary, who had preceded him by only a few years.

Carlyle has left us a graphic description of Tennyson as he was in middle life: "One of the finest--looking men in the world. A great shock of rough, dusky dark hair; bright, laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face--most massive yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musically metallic--fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will grow to." To this may be added a paragraph from Caroline Fox: "Tennyson is a grand specimen of a man, with a magnificent head set on his shoulders like the capital of a mighty pillar. His hair is long and wavy and covers a massive head. He wears a beard and mustache, which one begrudges as hiding so much of that firm, powerful, but finely-chiselled mouth. His eyes are large and gray, and open wide when a subject interests him; they are well shaded by the noble brow, with its strong lines of thought and suffering. I can quite understand Samuel Lawrence calling it the best balance of head he had ever seen."

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

Born, August 6, 1809, at Somersby, Lincolnshire.

Goes to Louth Grammar School, 1816.

Publishes, along with his brother Charles, _Poems by Two Brothers_, 1827.

Goes to Trinity College, Cambridge, 1828.

Forms friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam, 1828.

Wins Vice-Chancellor's Gold Medal for his poem _Timbuctoo_, 1829.

Publishes _Poems, Chiefly Lyrical_, 1830.

Makes an expedition to the Pyrenees with Arthur Henry Hallam, 1830.

Leaves Cambridge, owing to the illness of his father, 1831.

Visits the Rhine with Arthur Henry Hallam, 1832.

Publishes _Poems by Alfred Tennyson_, 1832.

Arthur Henry Hallam dies, 1833.

Removes from Somersby to High Beech in Epping Forest, 1837.

Publishes _Poems_ in two volumes, 1842.

Granted a pension of 200 pounds from the Civil List, 1845.

Publishes _The Princess_, 1847.

Publishes _In Memoriam_, 1850.

Appointed Poet Laureate, 1850.

Marries Miss Emily Selwood, 1850.

Tours southern Europe with his wife, 1851.

Hallam Tennyson born, 1852.

Writes _Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington_, 1852.

Takes up his residence at Farringford in the Isle of Wight, 1853.

Lionel Tennyson born, 1854.

Writes _The Charge of the Light Brigade_, 1855.

The University of Oxford confers on him the degree of D.C.L., 1855.

Publishes _Maud and Other Poems_, 1855.

Purchases Farringford, 1856.

Publishes _Idylls of the King_, 1859.

Writes his _Welcome to Alexandra_, 1863.

Publishes _Enoch Arden_, 1864; _The Holy Grail_, 1869.

His mother dies, 1865.

Purchases land at Haslemere, Surrey, 1868, and begins erection of Aldworth.

Publishes _Queen Mary_, 1875; the drama successfully performed by Henry Irving, 1876.

Publishes _Harold_, 1876.

His drama _The Falcon_ produced, 1869.

Seeks better health by a tour on the Continent with his son Hallam, 1880.

Publishes _Ballads and Other Poems_, 1880.

His drama _The Cup_ successfully performed, 1881.

His drama _The Promise of May_ proves a failure, 1882.

Raised to the peerage as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Farringford, 1884.

Publishes _Becket_, 1884.

His son Lionel dies, 1885.

Publishes _Tiresias and Other Poems_, 1885. This volume contains _Balin and Balan_, thus completing his _Idylls of the King_.

Publishes _Demeter and Other Poems_, 1889.

Dies at Aldworth, October 6, 1892, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

The _Death of Oenone_ is published, 1892.

APPRECIATIONS

"Since the days when Dryden held office no Laureate has been appointed so distinctly pre-eminent above all his contemporaries, so truly the king of the poets, as he upon whose brows now rests the Laureate crown. Dryden's grandeur was sullied, his muse was venal, and his life was vicious; still in his keeping the office acquired a certain dignity; after his death it declined into the depths of depredation, and each succeeding dullard dimmed its failing lustre. The first ray of hope for its revival sprang into life with the appointment of Southey, to whom succeeded Wordsworth, a poet of worth and genius, whose name certainly assisted in resuscitating the ancient dignity of the appointment. Alfred Tennyson derives less honor from the title than he confers upon it; to him we owe a debt of gratitude that he has redeemed the laurels with his poetry, noble, pure, and undefiled as ever poet sung."--_Walter Hamilton_.

"Tennyson is many sided; he has a great variety of subjects. He has treated of the classical and the romantic life of the world; he has been keenly alive to the beauties of nature; and he has tried to sympathize with the social problems that confront mankind. In this respect he is a representative poet of the age, for this very diversity of natural gifts has made him popular with all classes. Perhaps he has not been perfectly cosmopolitan, and sometimes the theme in his poetry has received a slight treatment compared to what might have been given it by deeper thinking and more philosophical poets, but he has caught the spirit of the age and has expressed its thought, if not always forcibly, at least more beautifully than any other poet,"--_Charles Read Nutter_.

"In technical elegance, as an artist in verse, Tennyson is the greatest of modern poets. Other masters, old and new, have surpassed him in special instances; but he is the only one who rarely nods, and who always finishes his verse to the extreme. Here is the absolute sway of metre, compelling every rhyme and measure needful to the thought; here are sinuous alliterations, unique and varying breaks and pauses, winged flights and falls, the glory of sound and color everywhere present, or, if missing, absent of the poet's free will. The fullness of his art evades the charm of spontaneity. His original and fastidious art is of itself a theme for an essay. The poet who studies it may well despair, he can never excel it; its strength is that of perfection; its weakness, the ever-perfection which marks a still-life painter."--_Edmund Clarence Stedman_.

"A striking quality of Tennyson's poetry is its simplicity, both in thought and expression. This trait was characteristic of his life, and so we naturally expect to find it in his verse. Tennyson was too sincere by nature, and too strongly averse to experimenting in new fields of poetry, to attempt the affected or unique. He purposely avoided all subjects which he feared he could not treat with simplicity and clearness. So, in his shorter poems, there are few obscure or ambiguous passages, little that is not easy of comprehension. His subjects themselves tend to prevent ambiguity or obscurity. For he wrote of men and women as he saw them about him, of their joys and sorrows, their trials, their ideals,--and in this was nothing complex. Thus there is a homely quality to his poems, but they are kept from the commonplace by the great tenderness of his feeling. Had Tennyson been primarily of a metaphysical or philosophical mind all this might have been different. True, he was somewhat of a student of philosophy and religion, and some of his poems are of these subjects, but his thought even here is always simple and plain, and he never attempted the deep study that was not characteristic of his nature. No less successful is he in avoiding obscurity in expression. There are few passages that need much explanation. In this he offers a striking contrast to Browning, who often painfully hid his meaning under complex phraseology. His vocabulary is remarkably large, and when we study his use of words, we find that in many cases they are from the two-syllabled class. This matter of choice of clear, simple words and phrases is very important. For, just so much as our attention is drawn from what a poet says to the medium, the language in which he says it, so much is its clearness injured. Vividly to see pictures in our imagination or to be affected by our emotions, we must not, as we read, experience any jar. In Tennyson we never have to think of his expressions--except to admire their simple beauty. Simplicity and beauty, then, are two noticeable qualities of his poetry."--_Charles Read Nutter_.

"An idyllic or picturesque mode of conveying his sentiments is the one natural to Tennyson, if not the only one permitted by his limitations. He is a born observer of physical nature, and, whenever he applies an adjective to some object or passingly alludes to some phenomenon which others have but noted, is almost infallibly correct. He has the unerring first touch which in a single line proves the artist; and it justly has been remarked that there is more true English landscape in many an isolated stanza of _In Memoriam_ than in the whole of _The Seasons_, that vaunted descriptive poem of a former century."--_Edmund Clarence Stedman_.

"In describing scenery, his microscopic eye and marvellously delicate ear are exercised to the utmost in detecting the minutest relations and most evanescent melodies of the objects before him, in order that his representation shall include everything which is important to their full perfection. His pictures of rural English scenery give the inner spirit as well as the outward form of the objects, and represent them, also, in their relation to the mind which is gazing on them. The picture in his mind is spread out before his detecting and dissecting intellect, to be transformed to words only when it can be done with the most refined exactness, both as regards color and form and melody."--_E.P. Whipple_.

"For the most part he wrote of the every day loves and duties of men and women; of the primal pains and joys of humanity; of the aspirations and trials which are common to all ages and all classes and independent even of the diseases of civilization, but he made them new and surprising by the art which he added to them, by beauty of thought, tenderness of feeling, and exquisiteness of shaping."--_Stopford A. Brooke_.

"The tenderness of Tennyson is one of his remarkable qualities--not so much in itself, for other poets have been more tender--but in combination with his rough powers. We are not surprised that his rugged strength is capable of the mighty and tragic tenderness of Rispah, but we could not think at first that he could feel and realize the exquisite tenderness of _Elaine_. It is a wonderful thing to have so wide a tenderness, and only a great poet can possess it and use it well."--_Stopford A. Brooke_.

"Tennyson is a great master of pathos; knows the very tones that go to the heart; can arrest every one of these looks of upbraiding or appeal by which human woe brings the tear into the human eye. The pathos is deep; but it is the majesty not the prostration of grief."--_Peter Bayne_.

"Indeed the truth must be strongly borne in upon even the warmest admirers of Tennyson that his recluse manner of life closed to him many avenues of communication with the men and women of his day, and that, whether as a result or cause of his exclusiveness, he had but little of that restless, intellectual curiosity which constantly whets itself upon new experiences, finds significance where others see confusion, and beneath the apparently commonplace in human character reaches some harmonizing truth. _Rizpah_ and _The Grandmother_ show what a rich harvest he would have reaped had he cared more frequently to walk the thoroughfares of life. His finely wrought character studies are very few in number, and even the range of his types is disappointingly narrow."--_Pelham Edgar_.

"No reader of Tennyson can miss the note of patriotism which he perpetually sounds. He has a deep and genuine love of country, a pride in the achievements of the past, a confidence in the greatness of the future. And this sense of patriotism almost reaches insularity of view. He looks out upon the larger world with a gentle commiseration, and surveys its un-English habits and constitution with sympathetic contempt. The patriotism of Tennyson is sober rather than glowing; it is meditative rather than enthusiastic. Occasionally indeed, his words catch fire, and the verse leaps onward with a sound of triumph, as in such a poem as _The Charge of the Light Brigade_ or in such a glorious ballad as _The Revenge_. Neither of these poems is likely to perish until the glory of the nation perishes, and her deeds of a splendid chivalrous past sink into oblivion, which only shameful cowardice can bring upon her. But as a rule Tennyson's patriotism is not a contagious and inspiring patriotism. It is meditative, philosophic, self-complacent. It rejoices in the infallibility of the English judgment, the eternal security of English institutions, the perfection of English forms of government."--_W. J. Dawson_.

"Tennyson always speaks from the side of virtue; and not of that new and strange virtue which some of our later poets have exalted, and which, when it is stripped of its fine garments, turns out to be nothing else than the unrestrained indulgence of every natural impulse; but rather of that old fashioned virtue whose laws are 'self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,' and which finds its highest embodiment in the morality of the _New Testament_. There is a spiritual courage in his work, a force of fate which conquers doubt and darkness, a light of inward hope which burns dauntless under the shadow of death. Tennyson is the poet of faith; faith as distinguished from cold dogmatism and the acceptance of traditional creeds; faith which does not ignore doubt and mystery, but triumphs over them and faces the unknown with fearless heart. The effect of Christianity upon the poetry of Tennyson may be felt in its general moral quality. By this it is not meant that he is always preaching. But at the same time the poet can hardly help revealing, more by tone and accent than by definite words, his moral sympathies. He is essentially and characteristically a poet with a message. His poetry does not exist merely for the sake of its own perfection of form. It is something more than the sound of one who has a lovely voice and can play skilfully upon an instrument. It is a poetry with a meaning and a purpose. It is a voice that has something to say to us about life. When we read his poems we feel our hearts uplifted, we feel that, after all it is worth while to struggle towards the light, it is worth while to try to be upright and generous and true and loyal and pure, for virtue is victory and goodness is the only fadeless and immortal crown. The secret of the poet's influence must lie in his spontaneous witness to the reality and supremacy of the moral life. His music must thrill us with the conviction that the humblest child of man has a duty, an ideal, a destiny. He must sing of justice and of love as a sure reward, a steadfast law, the safe port and haven of the soul."--_Henry Van Dyke_.

REFERENCES ON TENNYSON'S LIFE AND WORKS

_Alfred, Lord Tennyson: A Memoir_ by Hallam Tennyson. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited. Price $2.00.

_Tennyson and his Friends_ edited by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_Alfred, Lord Tennyson: A Study of his Life and Works_ by Arthur Waugh. London: William Heinemann.

_Tennyson_ by Sir Alfred Lyall in _English Men of Letters_ series. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_Alfred Tennyson_ by Arthur Christopher Benson in _Little Biographies_. London: Methuen & Co.

_Alfred Tennyson: A Saintly Life_ by Robert F. Horton. London: J. M. Dent & Co.

_Alfred Tennyson_ by Andrew Lang. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company.

_Tennyson: His Art and Relation to Modern Life_ by Stopford A. Brooke. London: William Heinemann.

_A Study of the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ by Edward Campbell Tainsh. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_The Poetry of Tennyson_ by Henry Van Dyke. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

_A Tennyson Primer_ by William Macneile Dixon. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.

_A Handbook to the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson_ by Morton Luce. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_Tennyson: A Critical Study_ by Stephen Gwynn in the _Victorian Era Series_. London: Blackie & Sons, Limited.

_Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and Other Literary Estimates_ by Frederic Harrison. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_Lives of Great English Writers from Chaucer to Browning_ by Walter S. Hinchman and Francis B. Gummere. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

_Personal Sketches of Recent Authors_ by Hattie Tyng Griswold. Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Company.

_Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, Browning_ by Anne Ritchie. New York: Harper & Brothers.

_Memories of the Tennysons_ by Rev. H. D. Rawnsley. Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons.

_The Teaching of Tennyson_ by John Oats. London: James Bowden.

_Tennyson as a Religious Teacher_ by Charles F. G. Masterman. London: Methuen & Co.

_The Social Ideals of Alfred Tennyson as Related to His Time_ by William Clark Gordon. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

_The Religious Spirit in the Poets_ by W. Boyd Carpenter. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

_Literary Essays_ by R. H. Hutton. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_Victorian Poets_ by Edmund Clarence Stedman. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

_The Greater English Poets of the Nineteenth Century_ by William Morton Payne. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

_The Masters of English Literature_ by Stephen Gwynn. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_A Study of English and American Poets_ by J. Scott Clark. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

_The Works of Tennyson with Notes by the Author_ edited with Memoir by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

NOTES

OENONE

"The poem of _Oenone_ is the first of Tennyson's elaborate essays in a metre over which be afterwards obtained an eminent command. It is also the first of his idylls and of his classical studies, with their melodious rendering of the Homeric epithets and the composite words, which Tennyson had the art of coining after the Greek manner ('lily-cradled,' 'river-sundered,' 'dewy-dashed') for compact description or ornament. Several additions were made in a later edition; and the corrections then made show with what sedulous care the poet diversified the structure of his lines, changing the pauses that break the monotonous run of blank verse, and avoiding the use of weak terminals when the line ends in the middle of a sentence. The opening of the poem was in this manner decidedly improved; yet one may judge that the finest passages are still to be found almost as they stood in the original version; and the concluding lines, in which the note of anguish culminates, are left untouched."

"Nevertheless the blank verse of _Oenone_ lacks the even flow and harmonious balance of entire sections in the _Morte d'Arthur_ or _Ulysses_, where the lines are swift or slow, rise to a point and fall gradually, in cadences arranged to correspond with the dramatic movement, showing that the poet has extended and perfected his metrical resources. The later style is simplified; he has rejected cumbrous metaphor; he is less sententious; he has pruned away the flowery exuberance and lightened the sensuous colour of his earlier composition."--_Sir Alfred Lyall_.

First published in 1832-3. It received its present improved form in the edition of 1842. The story of Paris and Oenone may be read in Lempriere, or in any good classical dictionary. Briefly it is as follows:--Paris was the son of Priam, King of Troy, and Hecuba. It was foretold that he would bring great ruin on Troy, so his father ordered him to be slain at birth. The slave, however, did not destroy him, but exposed him upon Mount Ida, where shepherds found him and, brought him up as one of themselves. "He gained the esteem of all the shepherds, and his graceful countenance and manly development recommended him to the favour of Oenone, a nymph of Ida, whom he married, and with whom he lived in the most perfect tenderness. Their conjugal bliss was soon disturbed. At the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, Eris, the goddess of discord, who had not been invited to partake of the entertainment, showed her displeasure by throwing into the assembly of gods, who were at the celebration of the nuptials, a golden apple on which were written the words _Detur pulchriori_. All the goddesses claimed it as their own: the contention at first became general, but at last only three, Juno (Here), Venus (Aphrodite), and Minerva (Pallas), wished to dispute their respective right to beauty. The gods, unwilling to become arbiters in an affair of so tender and delicate a nature, appointed Paris to adjudge the prize of beauty to the fairest of the goddesses, and indeed the shepherd seemed properly qualified to decide so great a contest, as his wisdom was so well established, and his prudence and sagacity so well known. The goddesses appeared before their judge without any covering or ornament, and each tried by promises and entreaties to gain the attention of Paris, and to influence his judgment. Juno promised him a kingdom; Minerva, military glory; and Venus, the fairest woman in the world for his wife." (Lempriere.) Paris accorded the apple to Aphrodite, abandoned Oenone, and after he had been acknowledged the son of Priam went to Sparta, where he persuaded Helen, the wife of Menelaus, to flee with him to Troy. The ten years' siege, and the destruction of Troy, resulted from this rash act. Oenone's significant words at the close of the poem foreshadow this disaster. Tennyson, in his old age concluded the narrative in the poem called _The Death of Oenone_. According to the legend Paris, mortally wounded by one of the arrows of Philoctetes, sought out the abandoned Oenone that she might heal him of his wound. But he died before he reached her, "and the nymph, still mindful of their former loves, threw herself upon his body, and stabbed herself to the heart, after she had plentifully bathed it with her tears." Tennyson follows another tradition in which Paris reaches Oenone, who scornfully repels him. He passed onward through the mist, and dropped dead upon the mountain side. His old shepherd playmates built his funeral pyre. Oenone follows the yearning in her heart to where her husband lies, and dies in the flames that consume him.

In Chapter IV of Mr. Stopford Brooke's _Tennyson_, there is a valuable commentary upon _Oenone_. He deals first with the imaginative treatment of the landscape, which is characteristic of all Tennyson's classical poems, and instances the remarkable improvement effected in the descriptive passages in the volume of 1842. "But fine landscape and fine figure re-drawing are not enough to make a fine poem. Human interest, human passion, must be greater than Nature, and dominate the subject. Indeed, all this lovely scenery is nothing in comparison with the sorrow and love of Oenone, recalling her lost love in the places where once she lived in joy. This is the main humanity of the poem. But there is more. Her common sorrow is lifted almost into the proportions of Greek tragedy by its cause and by its results. It is caused by a quarrel in Olympus, and the mountain nymph is sacrificed without a thought to the vanity of the careless gods. That is an ever-recurring tragedy in human history. Moreover, the personal tragedy deepens when we see the fateful dread in Oenone's heart that she will, far away, in time hold her lover's life in her hands, and refuse to give it back to him--a fatality that Tennyson treated before he died. And, secondly, Oenone's sorrow is lifted into dignity by the vast results which flowed from its cause. Behind it were the mighty fates of Troy, the ten years' battle, the anger of Achilles, the wanderings of Ulysses, the tragedy of Agamemnon, the founding of Rome, and the three great epics of the ancient world."

Another point of general interest is to be noted in the poem. Despite the classical theme the tone is consistently modern, as may be gathered from the philosophy of the speech of Pallas, and from the tender yielding nature of Oenone. There is no hint here of the vindictive resentment which the old classical writers, would have associated with her grief. Similarly Tennyson has systematically modernised the Arthurian legend in the _Idylls of the King_, giving us nineteenth century thoughts in a conventional mediaeval setting.

A passage from Bayne, puts this question clearly: "Oenone wails melodiously for Paris without the remotest suggestion of fierceness or revengeful wrath. She does not upbraid him for having preferred to her the fairest and most loving wife in Greece, but wonders how any one could love him better than she does. A Greek poet would have used his whole power of expression to instil bitterness into her resentful words. The classic legend, instead of representing Oenone as forgiving Paris, makes her nurse her wrath throughout all the anguish and terror of the Trojan War. At its end, her Paris comes back to her. Deprived of Helen, a broken and baffled man, he returns from the ruins of his native Troy, and entreats Oenone to heal him of a wound, which, unless she lends her aid, must be mortal. Oenone gnashes her teeth at him, refuses him the remedy, and lets him die. In the end, no doubt, she falls into remorse, and kills herself--this is quite in the spirit of classic legend; implacable vengeance, soul-sickened with its own victory, dies in despair. That forgiveness of injuries could be anything but weakness--that it could be honourable, beautiful, brave--is an entirely Christian idea; and it is because this idea, although it has not yet practically conquered the world, although it has indeed but slightly modified the conduct of nations, has nevertheless secured recognition as ethically and socially right, that Tennyson could not hope to enlist the sympathy and admiration of his readers for his Oenone, if he had cast her image in the tearless bronze of Pagan obduracy."

1. IDA. A mountain range in Mysia, near Troy. The scenery is, in part, idealised, and partly inspired by the valley of Cauteretz. See _Introduction_, p. xvi.

2. IONIAN. Ionia was the district adjacent to Mysia. 'Ionian,' therefore, is equivalent to 'neighbouring.'

10. TOPMOST GARGARUS. A Latinism, cf. _summus mons_.

12. TROAS. The Troad (Troas) was the district surrounding Troy.

ILION=Ilium, another name for Troy.

14. CROWN=chief ornament.

22-23. O MOTHER IDA--DIE. Mr. Stedman, in his _Victorian Poets_, devotes a valuable chapter to the discussion of Tennyson's relation to Theocritus, both in sentiment and form. "It is in the _Oenone_ that we discover Tennyson's earliest adaptation of that refrain, which was a striking beauty of the pastoral elegiac verse;

"'O mother Ida, hearken ere I die,'

"is the analogue of (Theocr. II).

"'See thou; whence came my love, O lady Moon,' etc.

"Throughout the poem the Syracusan manner and feeling are strictly and nobly maintained." Note, however, the modernisation already referred to.

MOTHER IDA. The Greeks constantly personified Nature, and attributed a separate individual life to rivers, mountains, etc. Wordsworth's _Excursion_, Book IV., might be read in illustration, especially from the line beginning--

"Once more to distant ages of the world."

MANY-FOUNTAIN'D IDA. Many streams took their source in Ida. Homer applies the same epithet to this mountain.

24-32. These lines are in imitation of certain passages from Theocritus. See Stedman, _Victorian Poets_, pp. 213 f. They illustrate Tennyson's skill in mosaic work.

30. MY EYES--LOVE. Cf. Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. ii. 3. 17:

"Mine eyes are full of tears, my heart of grief."

36. COLD CROWN'D SNAKE. "Cold crown'd" is not a compound epithet, meaning "with a cold head." Each adjective marks a particular quality. _Crown'd_ has reference to the semblance of a coronet that the hoods of certain snakes, such as cobras, possess.

37. THE DAUGHTER OF A RIVER-GOD. Oenone was the daughter of the river Cebrenus in Phrygia.

39-40. AS YONDER WALLS--BREATHED. The walls of Troy were built by Poseidon (Neptune) and Apollo, whom Jupiter had condemned to serve King Laomedon of Troas for a year. The stones were charmed into their places by the breathing of Apollo's flute, as the walls of Thebes are said to have risen to the strain of Amphion's lyre. Compare _Tithonus_, 62-63:

"Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing,
When Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers."

And cf. also _The Princess_, iii. 326.

42-43. THAT--WOE. Compare _In Memoriam_, V.

50. WHITE HOOVED. Cf. "hooves" for hoofs, in the _Lady of Shalott_, l. 101.

51. SIMOIS. One of the many streams flowing from Mount Ida.

65. HESPERIAN GOLD. The fruit was in colour like the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides. The Hesperides were three (or four) nymphs, the daughters of Hesperus. They dwelt in the remotest west, near Mount Atlas in Africa, and were appointed to guard the golden apples which Here gave to Zeus on the day of their marriage. One of Hercules' twelve labours was to procure some of these apples. See the articles _Hesperides_ and _Hercules_ in Lempriere.

66. SMELT AMBROSIALLY. Ambrosia was the food of the gods. Their drink was nectar. The food was sweeter than honey, and of most fragrant odour.

72. WHATEVER OREAD. A classical construction. The Oreads were mountain nymphs.

78. FULL-FACED--GODS. This means either that not a face was missing, or refers to the impressive countenances of the gods. Another possible interpretation is that all their faces were turned full towards the board on which the apple was cast. Compare for this epithet _Lotos Eaters_, 7; and _Princess_, ii. 166.

79. PELEUS. All the gods, save Eris, were present at the marriage between Peleus and Thetis, a sea-deity. In her anger Eris threw upon the banquet-table the apple which Paris now holds in his hand. Peleus and Thetis were the parents of the famous Achilles.

81. IRIS. The messenger of the gods. The rainbow is her symbol.

83. DELIVERING=announcing.

89-100. These lines, and the opening lines of the poem are among the best of Tennyson's blank verse lines, and therefore among the best that English poetry contains. The description owes some of its beauty to Homer. In its earlier form, in the volume of 1832-3, it is much less perfect.

132. A CRESTED PEACOCK. The peacock was sacred to Here (Juno).

103. A GOLDEN CLOUD. The gods were wont to recline upon Olympus beneath a canopy of golden clouds.

104. DROPPING FRAGRANT DEW. Drops of glittering dew fell from the golden cloud which shrouded Here and Zeus. See _Iliad_, XIV, 341 f.

105 f. Here was the queen of Heaven. Power was therefore the gift which she naturally proffered.

114. Supply the ellipsis.

121-122. POWER FITTED--WISDOM. Power that adapts itself to every crisis; power which is born of wisdom and enthroned by wisdom (i.e. does not owe its supremacy to brute strength).

121-122. FROM ALL-ALLEGIANCE. Note the ellipsis and the inversion.

128-131. WHO HAVE ATTAINED--SUPREMACY. Cf. _Lotos Eaters_, l. 155 f, and _Lucretius_, 104-108.

The gods, who haunt
The lucid interspace of world and world
Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind,
Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans.

137. O'ERTHWARTED WITH=crossed by.

142 f. Compare the tone of Pallas' speech with what has been said in the introduction, p. liv f., concerning Tennyson's love of moderation and restraint, and his belief in the efficacy of law.

Compare also the general temper of the _Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington_, and especially ll. 201-205.

144--148. Yet these qualities are not bestowed with power as the end in view. Power will come without seeking when these great principles of conduct are observed. The main thing is to live and act by the law of the higher Life,--and it is the part of wisdom to follow right for its own sake, whatever the consequences may be.

151. SEQUEL OF GUERDON. To follow up my words with rewards (such as Here proffers) would not make me fairer.

153-164. Pallas reads the weakness of Paris's character, but disdains to offer him a more worldly reward. An access of moral courage will be her sole gift to him, so that he shall front danger and disaster until his powers of endurance grow strong with action, and his full-grown will having passed through all experiences, and having become a pure law unto itself, shall be commensurate with perfect freedom, i.e., shall not know that it is circumscribed by law.

This is the philosophy that we find in Wordsworth's _Ode to Duty_.

Stern Lawgiver! Yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
And the most ancient heavens, through thee,
are fresh and strong.

165-167. Note how dramatic this interruption is.

170. IDALIAN APHRODITE. Idalium was a town in Cyprus; an island where the goddess was especially worshipped. She was frequently called Cypria or the Cyprian.

171. FRESH AS THE FOAM. Aphrodite was born from the waves of the sea, near the Island of Cyprus.

NEW-BATHED IN PAPHIAN WELLS. Paphos was a town in Cyprus. Aphrodite was said to have landed at Paphos after her birth from the sea-foam. She is sometimes called the Paphian or Paphia on this account.

184. SHE SPOKE AND LAUGH'D. Homer calls her "the laughter-loving Aphrodite."

195-l97. A WILD--WEED. The influence of beauty upon the beasts is a common theme with poets. Cf. Una and the lion in Spenser's _Faery Queen_.

204. THEY CUT AWAY MY TALLEST PINES. Evidently to make ships for Paris's expedition to Greece.

235-240. THERE ARE--DIE. Lamartine in _Le Lac_ (written before 1820) has a very similar passage.

250. CASSANDRA. The daughter of King Priam, and therefore the sister of Paris. She had the gift of prophecy.

260. A FIRE DANCES. Signifying the burning of Troy.

THE EPIC AND MORTE D'ARTHUR

First published, with the epilogue as here printed, in 1842. The _Morte d'Arthur_ was subsequently taken out of the present setting, and with substantial expansion appeared as the final poem of the _Idylls of the King_, with the new title, _The Passing of Arthur_.

Walter Savage Landor doubtless refers to the _Morte d'Arthur_ as early as 1837, when writing to a friend, as follows:--"Yesterday a Mr. Moreton, a young man of rare judgment, read to me a manuscript by Mr. Tennyson, being different in style from his printed poems. The subject is the Death of Arthur. It is more Homeric than any poem of our time, and rivals some of the noblest parts of the Odyssea." A still earlier composition is assured by the correspondence of Edward Fitzgerald who writes that, in 1835, while staying at the Speddings in the Lake Country, he met Tennyson and heard the poet read the _Morte d'Arthur_ and other poems of the 1842 volume. They were read out of a MS., "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night 'when all the house was mute.'"

In _The Epic_ we have specific reference to the Homeric influence in these lines:

"Nay, nay," said Hall,
"Why take the style of those heroic times?
For nature brings not back the Mastodon,
Nor we those times; and why should any man
Remodel models? these twelve books of mine
Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth," . . .

Critics have agreed for the most part in considering the _Morte d'Arthur_ as the most Homeric of Tennyson's poems. Bayne writes: "Not only in the language is it Homeric, but in the design and manner of treatment. The concentration of interest on the hero, the absence of all modernism in the way of love, story or passion painting, the martial clearness, terseness, brevity of the narrative, with definite specification, at the same time, are exquisitely true to the Homeric pattern." Brimley notes, with probably greater precision, that: "They are rather Virgilian than Homeric echoes; elaborate and stately, not naive and eager to tell their story; rich in pictorial detail; carefully studied; conscious of their own art; more anxious for beauty of workmanship than interest of action."

It has frequently been pointed out in this book how prone Tennyson is to regard all his subjects from the modern point of view:

a truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the day.

The Epic and the epilogue strongly emphasize this modernity in the varied modern types of character which they represent, with their diverse opinions upon contemporary topics. "As to the epilogue," writes Mr. Brooke (p. 130), "it illustrates all I have been saying about Tennyson's method with subjects drawn from Greek or romantic times. He filled and sustained those subjects with thoughts which were as modern as they were ancient. While he placed his readers in Camelot, Ithaca, or Ida, he made them feel also that they were standing in London, Oxford, or an English woodland. When the _Morte d'Arthur_ is finished, the hearer of it sits rapt. There were 'modern touches here and there,' he says, and when he sleeps he dreams of

"King Arthur, like a modern gentleman
Of stateliest port; and all the people cried,
'Arthur is come again, he cannot die.'
Then those that stood upon the hills behind
Repeated--'Come again, and thrice as fair:'
And, further inland, voices echoed--'Come
With all good things and war shall be no more.

"The old tale, thus modernised in an epilogue, does not lose its dignity, for now the recoming of Arthur is the recoming of Christ in a wider and fairer Christianity. We feel here how the new movement of religion and theology had sent its full and exciting wave into Tennyson. Arthur's death in the battle and the mist is the death of a form of Christianity which, exhausted, died in doubt and darkness. His advent as a modern gentleman is the coming of a brighter and more loving Christ into the hearts of men. For so ends the epilogue. When the voices cry, 'Come again, with all good things,'

"At this a hundred bells began to peal,
That with the sound I woke, and heard indeed,
The clear church-bells ring in the Christmas-morn."

THE ALLEGORICAL ELEMENT.--The statement is made on p. xxxv of this book that in _The Idylls of the King_ "the effort is made to reconcile the human story with the allegory, and in consequence the issues are confusedly presented to our mind." It is characteristic of the _Morte d'Arthur_ fragment that it is apparently free from all allegorical intention. It is merely a moving human story with a fascinating element of mystery inspired by the original Celtic legend. An element of allegory lies in the epilogue, and _The Passing of Arthur_ still further enforces the allegorical purpose. But here, as Mr. Brooke again writes (p. 371), "we are close throughout to the ancient tale. No allegory, no ethics, no rational soul, no preaching symbolism, enter here, to dim, confuse, or spoil the story. Nothing is added which does not justly exalt the tale, and what is added is chiefly a greater fulness and breadth of humanity, a more lovely and supreme Nature, arranged at every point to enhance into keener life the human feelings of Arthur and his knight, to lift the ultimate hour of sorrow and of death into nobility. Arthur is borne to a chapel nigh the field--

"A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land;
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

"What a noble framework--and with what noble consciousness it is drawn! . . . . All the landscape--than which nothing better has been invented by any English poet--lives from point to point as if Nature herself had created it; but even more alive than the landscape are the two human figures in it--Sir Bedivere standing by the great water, and Arthur lying wounded near the chapel, waiting for his knight. Take one passage, which to hear is to see the thing:

"So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept,
And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang
Shrill, chill with flakes of foam. He, stepping down
By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake.

"Twice he hides the sword, and when Arthur asks: 'What hast thou seen, what heard?' Bedivere answers:

"'I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
And the wild water lapping on the crag,'

"--lines so steeped in the loneliness of mountain tarns that I never stand in solitude beside their waters but I hear the verses in my heart. At the last he throws it.

"The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch,
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock
By night, with noises of the northern sea.

"'So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur,' and never yet in poetry did any sword, flung in the air, flash so superbly.

"The rest of the natural description is equally alive, and the passage where the sound echoes the sense, and Bedivere, carrying Arthur, clangs as he moves among the icy rocks, is as clear a piece of ringing, smiting, clashing sound as any to be found in Tennyson:

"Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms, and all to left and right
The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rung
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels.

"We hear all the changes on the vowel _a_--every sound of it used to give the impression--and then, in a moment, the verse runs into breadth, smoothness and vastness: for Bedivere comes to the shore and sees the great water;

"And on a sudden lo! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon,

"in which the vowel _o_, in its changes is used, as the vowel _a_ has been used before.

"The questions and replies of Arthur and Bedivere, the reproaches of the King, the excuses of the Knight, the sorrow and the final wrath of Arthur, are worthy of the landscape, as they ought to be; and the dominance of the human element in the scene is a piece of noble artist-work. Arthur is royal to the close, and when he passes away with the weeping Queens across the mere, unlike the star of the tournament he was of old, he is still the King. Sir Bedivere, left alone on the freezing shore, hears the King give his last message to the world. It is a modern Christian who speaks, but the phrases do not sound out of harmony with that which might be in Romance. Moreover, the end of the saying is of Avilion or Avalon--of the old heathen Celtic place where the wounded are healed and the old made young."

In the final analysis, therefore, the significance of the _Morte d'Arthur_ is a significance of beauty rather than moralistic purpose. It has been said that the reading of Milton's _Lycidas_ is the surest test of one's powers of poetical appreciation. I fear that the test is too severe for many readers who can still enjoy a simpler style of poetry. But any person who can read the _Morte d'Arthur_, and fail to be impressed by its splendid pictures, and subdued to admiration by the dignity of its language, need scarcely hope for pleasure from any poetry.

THE EPIC

3. SACRED BUSH. The mistletoe. This plant was sacred to the Celtic tribes, and was an object of particular veneration with the Druids, especially when associated with the oak-tree.

8. OR GONE=either gone.

18. THE GENERAL DECAY OF FAITH. The story of Arthur is intended to show how faith survives, although the form be changed. See esp. _Morte d'Arthur_, ll. 240-242.

27-28. 'HE BURNT--SOME TWELVE BOOKS.' This must not be taken literally. See, however, p. xxxiii. of the Biographical Sketch, as to Tennyson's hesitation in treating the subject.

48-51. This is self-portraiture. Lord Tennyson's method of reading was impressive though peculiar.

MORTE D'ARTHUR

THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND. Throughout the mediaeval period three great cycles of stories commanded the imagination of the poets. Of these cycles one, the tale of Troy in its curious mediaeval guise, attested the potent spell of antique legend.[1] The two other great cycles were of later origin, and centred around the commanding historical figures of Charlemagne, and the phantom glory of the legendary Arthur.

[1]The extraordinary interest in the half legendary career of Alexander the Great must be noticed here, as also the profound respect amounting to veneration for the Roman poet, Vergil.

The origin of the Arthurian story is involved in obscurity. The crudest form of the myth has doubtless a core of historic truth, and represents him as a mighty Celtic warrior, who works havoc among the heathen Saxon invaders. Accretions naturally are added, and a miraculous origin and a mysterious death throw a superstitious halo around the hero. When the brilliant personality of Lancelot breaks into the tale, and the legend of the Holy Grail is superadded, the theme exercised an irresistible fascination upon the imagination of mediaeval Europe.

The vicissitudes of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain are as romantic as any of which history holds record. After the departure of the Roman invaders from the island, the native population swiftly reasserted itself. The Picts of Caledonia and the Scots of Ireland were their natural foes, but conflict with these enemies served only to stimulate the national life. But actual disaster threatened them when in the fifth and sixth centuries the heathen Angles and Saxons bore down in devastating hordes upon the land. It is at this critical period in the national history that Arthur must have lived. How long or how valiant the resistance was we cannot know. That it was vain is certain. A large body of Britons fled from annihilation across the channel, and founded in the region of Armurica in France, a new Brittany. Meanwhile, in the older Britain, the foe pressed hard upon their fellow-countrymen, and drove them into the western limits of the island, into the fastnesses of Wales, and the rocky parts of Cornwall. Here, and in Northern France, proud in their defeat and tenacious of the instincts of their race, they lived and still live, in the imaginative memories of the past. For them the future held little store of earthly gain, and yet they made the whole world their debtor.

Even in the courts of the conqueror Saxon their strange and beautiful poetry won favour, and in a later century the Norman kings and barons welcomed eagerly the wandering minstrels from Brittany and Wales. But it was not from these scattered sources that Celtic traditions became a European possession, as a brief statement of literary history will clearly show.

The first recorded mention of Arthur's name occurs in a brief and anonymous _History of the Britons_, written in Latin in the tenth century, and attributed to Nennius. This history is curiously amplified in the twelfth century by Geoffrey of Monmouth, first in a story dealing with the prophecies of Merlin, and later in a _History of the Kings of Britain_. This book, with its brilliant description of the court of Arthur, gave the legend a widespread popularity. It was four times within the same century translated into French verse, the most famous of these renderings being the version of Wace, called _Le Brut_, which makes some addition to Geoffrey's original, gathered from Breton sources. In the same century, too, Chretien de Troyes, the foremost of Arthurian poets, composed his famous cycle of poems.

Of all these manifold sources Tennyson was confessedly ignorant. Where the details are not of his own invention, his _Idylls of the King_ rest entirely upon Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, which Caxton printed in 1485, supplemented in the case of _Enid and Geraint_, and _The Marriage of Geraint_ by a translation of the Welsh _Mabinogion_ by Lady Charlotte Guest.