BERKEIEY \ librarV UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA / t«^ NOTES AND MARGINALIA, ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE PUBLIC LIFE AND WORKS OF ALFRED TENNYSON, iPOET LAUREATE. BY JEPHSON HUBAND SMITH. Y Gwir yn erbyn y byd. (The Truth against the world. ) Motto in encrusted tiles on the J>aventeni of Entrance Hall\of Mr. Totnyson's House. — Vide Chapter V. LONDON : JAMES BLACKWOOD & CO., 8, LOVELL'S COURT, PATERNOSTER ROW. [All rights reserred.] /i'pz THE EPISTLE DEDICATOEY. For my part, I always gather amusement from a preface, be it awkwardly or skilfully written : for clulness or impertinence may raise a laugh for a page or two. D'IsRAELi's Curiosities of Literature, 155 THE EPISTLE DEDICATOEY. " When a book is first to appear in the world," says a celebrated Erench writer, " one knows not whom to consult to learn its destiny. The stars pre- side not over its nativity. Their influences have no operation on it ; and the most confident astrologers dare not foretell the diverse risks of fortune it must run." # * # * * * I ask only a welcome and God-speed ; hoping that, when thou hast read these pages, thou wilt say to me in the words of Nick Bottom, the weaver, " I shall desire of you more acquaintance, good Master Cob- web. Longfellow's Outre-Mer. vi THE EPISTLE DEDICATOEY. To THE Gentle Reader. Kind friend — (for, knowing his neces- sities and sad strait, he who so addresses you resumes the old method) — to you I dedicate this book. Little claim to con- sideration from the public can be made upon this trifling production. The writer has carefully gathered little notices and facts regarding the Laureate, and can only claim as his the chain that strings the beads together. As old Montaigne says, " I have gathered a poesie of other men's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own." — He fears many things ; he fears the accusation of endea- vouring to place himself under the shadow of a great name ; he fears what may be said of contemporary biography. The Qiiens con- scia recti, however, in both cases remains and gives an inward support. The object THE EPISTLE DEDICATOKY. Vll of these pages was to furnish what a maiden poring over the poet's works would look for — for when people read a great poet they naturally have some curiosity to discover what manner of man he is — to supply what the student, bausing over his book by the midnight oil, might require for his exami- nation; and the slight and unimportant anno- tations more especially are to suggest what might be done by others in this direction — they are a tentative efPort ^^o?^}' encourager les autres — will it succeed ? As regards contemporary biography, it is believed that none of the canons in this respect, none of the decencies that suggest themselves to a man, have been violated ; while the publication of biographical dic- tionaries of this nature, has shown that such things are required, and, within the limits indicated, may be permitted. Iso- Vm THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. lated articles have appeared in the maga- zhies, and in Histories of Literature similar ground, to a certain extent, has been ven- tured upon. The writer is emboldened by flattering recollections of the kind way some previous productions of his pen have been received to hope that these pages may please some ; for it must be confessed that gratitude seems, in this case at least, to be but a lively expectation of future favours. It is felt that it is safer ground to be alluding to all this, than to be stuttering out all the modest things that the writer may have to say. Were he to do this some would perhaps exclaim, *'' Here's a man and he tells us his book is not worth reading— we'll take him at his word." Modesty indeed does seem to be out of date, and the boastful style of t THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. IX the humourous American to whom Byron has been compared, now obtams. As in the course of this book some things are 8aid about Byron that will cause his ad- mirers to be wroth with the present writer, this may as well be added to the heap of his iniquities — ;in for a penny, in for a pound. The author of Gentle Life quotes Prom my youth upward My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men. Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes ; The sun of their ambition was not mine. '' And then," continues the same writer, " the speaker goes on to say that he has watched the skies by night, and stolen knowledge from heaven, and become as one of the Magi, and knows what death is, and the mystery of Eros and Anteros, &c., which to any one who knows anything is all non- sense. The Yankee who puts it into plain X THE EPISTLE DEDICATOEY. language raises a laugh by such bombast ; but Byron mistook it for poetry. ^ Look y'ar, stranger, I am all grit, I am half 'oss, half alligator ; I can jump higher, squat lower, dive deeper, and come out drier than any other man in this mortal world.' '^ Doubtless the writer of these pages is arrogant enough when he gives his little book to the world — it is in itself an asser- tion that he has something to say worth being heard — and in these days when there are so many good books that a man cannot possibly read all that are worthy of his attention, this seems to be plenty of impu- dence in all reason, and requires to be counteracted by a little modesty of de- meanour. It is very natural that the writer should claim the privilege of saying the first unkind things about his book. When a school-boy gives his favourite play- THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. XI thing for a cock-shot, he very reasonably asserts his right to have the first shot ; or Hke the fat man, that Goldsmith tells us of, who in a ship-wreck, when the sailors were pressed by famine and were taking slices ftom his body, insisted with great justice in having the first cut for himself So if the writer in the present case is about to be '* cut up " by his friends or the critics, he begs the same satisfaction of having the first cut himself Hi ! hi ! hi ! Walk up, ladies and gentle- men, walk up. All alive ! The perform- ance is about to commence. A live lion — yet no, this address to the reader has been begun with gravity, and though this little book may be regarded as a peep-show^ it shall be continued with all seriousness, with perhaps a suggestion merely of ''no deception " according to the manner of the Xll THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. conjuror. If the indulgent reader will kindly receive these pages as they are, with more time and leisure a little will be added to them, and an endeavour shall be made to make them less unworthy than they are ; while the unkind things that the severest may say, have already been said by the writer to himself. No one can be more fully aware of the disparity between the subject, and the manner in which it is treated, than the faithful servant of ' those who have patro- nized his penny show. The Writer. CONTENTS. CHA.PTEE I. LECTUEEKS ON TENNTSON. "Wonderful Men. — The Enlighteners of Chaw- bacon and Turnip- tops. — The Advantage of being pleased with Oneself. — Exaggeration. — Miss Edith Heraud's classification of Ten- nyson's Poems. — Contemporary criticisms . CHAPTER II. THE poet's PAEENTAGE, EDUCATION, AND EIEST YOLUMES. The Laureate's Ancestors. — His Brother's Po- etical Productions. — " The Nest of Nightin- gales" at Somersby. — The Born Poet, a Nur- sery Story. — Allusions in the Poet's Writings to his Birth-place. — Tennyson at College. — The Prize Poem, Timbuctoo. — Sydney Smith XIV CONTENTS. PAGE on Timbuctoo. — Poems, chiefly Lyrical, 1830, coldly received. — The Yolumes published by Tennyson iu 1833 and 1842. — Success at Last ........ 11 CHAPTER III. EAELT ANTAGONISTS. Tennyson in Punch, " our Pacetious Contem- porary," under the Nom de Plume of " Alci- biades." — Lord Lytton's Attack onTennyson in his Satire, the New Timon. — Eejoinder from Tennyson — the New and Old Timon. — Lord Lytton's Epic Poem of King Arthur. — Sir Walter Scott, Thackeray, and Mr. BuckstoneMistaken Greniuses! — Tennyson's After.Tliought.~''^\i^tf' " Musty" "Crusty" Christopher North . . . . . 21 CHAPTER lY. IN MEMOEIAM. The Princess and In Memoriam. — Arthur Henry Hallam and the Poet's Sister. — Tragic and Elegiac Poetry. — Milton's Lycidas and Shel- ley's Adonais. — Professor Ingram on the Autobiographical Traces of Tennyson in In Memoriam. — Tennyson's -Scenery taken from Parts of England where he had lived. — At Lincolnshire, Early Life. — At Berk- shire, Marriage. — At Isle of Wight. — CONTENTS. XV PAGE Cockney Tourists. — Luther and the Ener- getic [Reporter. — Tennyson taken into Cus- tody as a Suspected Smuggler ... 35 CHAPTEE y. HONOTJE, TO THE POET. Death of Wordsworth. — Tennyson succeeds to the Laureateship. — Miller's Bavghter said to have first attracted Boy al Attention. — Ode on the Death of Duke of Wellington, his first important official production. — Poetry writ- ten to Order. — Story of Douglas Jerrold. — " Welcome to Alexandra." — Opening of the Exhibition of 1862. — Maud and other Poems, " Caviare to the General." — Tennyson's po- pularity among the Crimean Heroes. — Grraceful thanks for their appreciation of The Charge of the Light Brigade. — Oxford and Cambridge both honour the Poet. — Idylls of the King. — Dedication to Albert the Good. — A Eortnight's Bamble in Portugal, with Mr. F. T. Palgrave. — Enoch Arden and the Northern Farmer. — Baronetcy oftered. — Tennyson's Poems in America. — The Ten- nysonian Society of Philadelphia . . 55 CHAPTER yi. CONTEIBUTIONS TO THE MAGAZINES, ETC. Tennyson's Deference to the Critics. — Lines al- XVI CONTENTS. PAGE tered and Poems suppressed, — Wbat the World loses by the Modesty of True Genius, — Fear of Eidicille suspected. — Mocking Echoes and Parodies. — Mr. W. S. Grilbert's " Whimsical Allegory, respectfully per- verted," from The Princess . . .73- CHAPTEE VII. ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. The Later Attacks on Tennyson. — Squib Liter ature of Grub Street. — Licks at the Lau- reate. — Candid Criticism ! — Izaak AValton's Directions to Anglers. — Unfair Comparison. — The Audience of these Critics. — The Pope and E;Owe School. — Tennyson and Byron, why the Comparison isTJnjust. — StrongEood versus the Tameness of Milton, of Gray, of Goldsmith. — The Gardener'' s Daughter. — Solitude and the Sweet Shady Side of Pall Mall. — Shelley and Keats called Cockney Poets! — A Coincidence of Thought in Byron and Tennyson. — Wordsworth's simple, gen- tle style, ridiculed in The Rejected Addresses 85 CHAPTER YIII. MORE ATTACKS. Stealing the Poet's Thunder.— Is King Arthur a Eidiculous or too Ambitious a Theme ? — Archaeological Eidelity. — The Jousts and CONTENTS. ZVll I'AOE Tournaments. — Truth not to be wasted on Everybody. — Philosophy the Handmaid of Religion. — Hamlet and Faust. — Chaucer's Translation of Boethius. — King James's Pillow. — The Chimera of Science. — Tenny- son's Ambition. — His Retirement. — Poets and Solitude. — Inconsistencies of Critics. — Portraits drawn by Critics. — Congenial Syd- ney Smith on Solitude. — Eemarkable Powers of Penetration of Eugene Aram, the Ee- eluse ........ 105 CHAPTER IX. CEIJMBS FROM THE EOUND TABLE. Dominie Sampson. — Sydney Smith on Writers and Speakers after the Elood. — Authorities on Arthurian Legend. — Percy's Reliques. — David Garrick and " Spoil your oivn Bible, sir !" — Shakspeare, Tennyson, and the Old Ballads. — A Eirst Nibble at the Round Table. — Sir Galaliad. — Christmas and Chan- ticleer, and Evil Spirits. — Gareth andLynette and Noses !— Comic Noses. — Sterne, Eoote, and Dickens. — Leigh Hunt. — Novelists and their Heroine's Noses. — The ''Turn-up" Nose. — La Fontaine at the Chateau Thierry. — TheNez Ret roussS of the Duchess of Bouil- lon. — Lovelace, the Cavalier Poet and Althea 125 b XVlll CONTENTS. PAGK CHAPTER X. THE ORIGINAL EOMAKCES. The Originals and the Arthurs of the Later Poets. — A Hint for Managers. — Milton. — Cervantes and Don Quixote. — Names of Famous Swords. — Merlin and Vivien. — ■ Morte d' Arthur. — The Immortal Druggist of De Quincy's Confessions of an OpiumEater. — Peculiar Modes of going off the Stage of Life 1-47 CHAPTER XL COINCIDENCES OE SnCILAEITIES. How they occur. — D'Israeli on Literary Idling. — Plagiarism. — Sterneand Barton's ^««^o»?y. — A Similarity to Pope — to Chaucer. — The Phrase, " Diamoaid me no Diamonds." — Not too Grood. — Flowers springing from the Dead. — Juventis Mundi. — Better to have Loved and Lost. — Drink to me with thine Eyes. — To know her was to love her. — Doing Good by Stealth. — Woman the Lesser Man. — O that I w ere a Glove upon that Hand ! — Fortune's AVheel — And Recurrences op Thought. — Tears, Idle Tears. — Wroth with Weakness . . . . . .161 CONTENTS. XIX PAGE CHAPTEE XIT. EEPUBLICANISMS AND TENNTSON's GAEDEN". The Latest Seed of Time. — Eepublicanism, Vir- tue rather than Nobility. — The King may make a JSTobleman, but cannot make a G-en- tleman. — Nature's Grentlemen. — The Virtu- ous Villager and the Villainous Squire. — The Grrand Old Grardener. — John Ball and Wat Tyler's Eebellion. — The G-ardeners of Lite- rature. — Glasnevin, the Garden of Britain's Augustan Era. — Mrs. Siddons' Tragic Gar- den. — Tennyson's " Flower Show." — Easy of Imitation, and the Garden Seeds. — The Li- terature of "Wrath, — The Necessary Qualifi- ; cations for a Poet Laureate. — The Eeward of the Grand Teachers of High Truth and Pu- rity aud Gentleness . . . . .183 0—2 CHAPTER I. LECTUREES ON TENNYSON. His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thra- sonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it. * * He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasms, such" insociable and point-devise companions ; such rackers of orthography. Lovers Labour's Losty act v. sc. 1. CHAPTEH I. LECTURERS ON TENNYSON. AVbile Avords of learned length'and thund'ring sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around ; And still they gazed and still the wonder grew That one small head: could carry all he knew. GrOLDSMiTn's Deserted Viilage. A CONSIDERABLE amouiit has been written about Tennyson, or rather, to be more ac- curate, about his works. When I use the word about, I mean touching without entering — a kind of general comment — it scarcely deserves the word criticism in its exact signification ; or if I might be par- doned the use of a homely, inelegant, but at the same time expressive phrase, I should 1—2 4 LECTURERS ON TENNYSON. say there has been a considerable be-slob- bering. Discourse, lecture, and essay have been employed as mediums to present the works of the poet to the public, sometimes aiming at being either critical or analytical, sometimes a mixture of both, and, indeed, sometimes it is hard to discover what they attain, for beyond expenditure of time and words, and total exhaustion of the hearer's patience, nothing else appears to be the result arrived at by some of these produc- tions. Nearly every one of those wonder- ful men that make their way into the re- motest villap^es, and endeavour to enlisfhten the agricultural mind — you know the sort of men I mean, very wonderful men indeed — generally select for a subject Milton, music of the spheres, or something of that sort — most of these have lectured about Tennyson and his works, illustrated with LECTURERS ON TENNYSON; 5 copious extracts for the enlightenment of Chawbacons and Turnip-tops, " Northern farmers/' whom the Laureate himself has depicted. Here is a picture of the country lec- turer, by way of a little farce before the curtain rises on the first act of our play : — The wonderful man nearly always has a tolerably good opinion of himself He comes down to remote country parts to '^ astonish the natives" — for a.t such a result he aims — by a grand lecture in the parish school-room. The rustics gaze at him with amazement and open mouths, and poor country gentlemen and slow-coaches look at him with wonder and surprise, at the brilliant way he gets through his discourse, his unctuous manner, his thorough self-pos- session, all produced by the performance of the wonderful man giving himself thorough b LECTURERS ON TENNYSON. satisfaction. To please tlie world it is very necessary to be pleased oneself. The world does not like sour or even low-spirited people, but it does like tliose who are in good humour with their own sweet selves. It saves Mrs. Grundy the trouble of pleas- ing or amusing them, just as Mr. Grundy is spared the necessity of telling a vain young lady who is very beautiful, and knows it, too, the fact with which she is already so well-acquainted. The world no doubt is lazy, for it likes people to do things for themselves, and when our lecturer from the metropolis brushes up his hair, takes his sip of water, and thoroughly admires him- self from the opening of manuscript till after he closes it — for he delivers the last sentence from memory — his audience, in gratitude for being saved some trouble, yield to him that he is a wonderful man. LECTURERS ON TENNYSON. 7 These men, what they want in genius, make up by brass and impudence, and pro- bably it is the want of these latter qualities that makes people use the unkindly, ex- aggerative expression, — Wonderful men. Obtrusiveness, smartness, and impudence are hurting to some, and so when, though unwilling to accord all praise, they still find themselves forced to acknowledge some degree of merit, they do so beneath the shelter of a hyperbolic expression. For exaggeration is a kind of shelter. Giving a person their due is one thing, but when we give those whom we dislike three times as much as is their right, there is the satis- faction of getting back a good lot of change for the bank-note that has been paid away. There is a satisfaction, also, in the conviction that the praise given is not deserved, is not solid sterling truth, is not that dread- 8 LECTURERS ON TENNYSON. fully stubborn thing — a fact — in short that the praise, being in hyperbole, is a lie. There is, however, one class of lecturers on Tennyson that I would speak of in gentler terms. That is the lecturer whose chief ob- ject is an elocutionary exhibition. And in fact the lecture chiefly serves as a thread stringing together the poems intended to be read. A very distinguished reader re- cently has delivered a lecture of this sort — Miss Edith Heraud, the accomplished tra- gedienne and daughter of the poet. I have thought it worth noting from a newspaper report that Tennyson's productions were classed by her under five heads as follows : I. Simply natural — Claribel. II. Exclamatory — Locksley Hall, III. Pathetic — Oriana, IV. Philosophical — the Two Voices (in- volving the questions of Suicide, Im- LECTURERS ON TENNYSON. 9 mortality, tlie Pre- existence of tlie Soul, and the ultimate Triumph of Christianity), the Palace of Art, In Memoriam. V. Emotional — The Idylls of the King, quoting Arthur's parting with his guilty queen, and the description of his departure contained in La Morte cV Arthur. There are, doubtless, many who dispute the value of contemporary criticism in such pages as these — who believe that a re- gular summing up of an author's merits and demerits cannot be accurately and dis- passionately made till the writer and his generation have passed away. So it shall not here be considered necessary to vie with these country lecturers in eulogistic notices of the present laureate. At the same time, while a part of my purpose shall necessarily be to answer or indicate the answer that is to be made to attacks 10 LECTUREES OX TENNYSON. upon one whom we regard as tlie represen- tative poet of the present era, my en- deavours shall mainly be confined to some notes illustrative of the poet's works, and to gratifying the curiosity that is par- donable, and as far as is allowable, with reference to the circumstances of the life of the present wearer of the laurel. CHAPTER II. THE poet's parentage, EDUCATION, AND FIRST VOLUMES. But who is he with modest looks, And clad in homely russet brown, Who murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than his own ? He is retired as noon-day dew. Or fountain in a noon-day grove ; And you must love him ere to you He will seem worthy of your love. Wordsworth. (Supposed to describe Charles Lamb). CHAPTER 11. ,?, THE POETS PARENTAGE, EDUCATION, AND FIRST VOLUMES. Troth, I have heard it spoken of divers, that >you have very rare and un-in-one-breath-utterable skill, sii". Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, act i. sc. 1 , When heav'n intends to do some mighty thing He makes a poet, or at least — a king. Tatloe, the Water-poet. The Laureate's Ancestors — His Brother's Poetical Pro- ductions — "The INTest of Nightingales " at Somers- , by — The Born Poet, a Nursery Story — Allusions in the Poet's Writings to his Birth-place — Tennyson at College — The Prize Poem, Timbuctoo — Sydney Smith on Timbuctoo — Poems, chiefly Lyrical, 1830, coldly received — The Volumes published by Tenay- sonin 1833 and 1842 — Success at Last.. The ancestors of Alfred Tennyson are of the illustrious families of Lascelles Clayton, 14 THE POETS PARENTAGE, the D'Eyncourt, and other Norman and Saxon lines — the poet is the nephew of the late Right Honourable C. Tennyson D'Eyncourt. His father was the Rev. Dr. George Clayton Tennyson, rector of Somers- by; his mother, who died 1865, was Eliza- beth, the daughter of the Rev. Stephen Fytche. His father appears to have been -a man of varied attainments ; he is said to have possessed no inconsiderable ability as a poet, painter, architect, musician, linguist, and mathematician. The Laureate, the youngest of three sons, was born in 1810, his eldest brothers being Frederick and Charles. The first work of Alfred was a volume of poems written in conjunction with the latter — afterwards the Rev. Charles Tennyson Turner — and was entitled Poems hy Two Brothers — a little volume that is said to have met with the approba- EDUCATION, AND FIRST VOLUMES. 15 tion of Coleridge, and contained the only published productions of Charles. His two other brothers, Frederick and Septimus, have also published poems. So the family has been called " a nest of nightingales." A nursery story is told of the boy Alfred, that when asked what profession he would choose, he always answered, to the amusement of his family, that he intended to be a poet — a faint corroboration of the idea that the poet is born, not made. In after life the Laureate affectionately alludes in his verse to The well-beloved place "Where first we gazed upon the sky ; The roofs that heard our earliest cry. (I/i Memoriam?) The sounds that were about him at Somersby re-sound in the lines of In Me- moriam, the murmuring of the leaves, the bubbling of the swollen brook, the voices 16 THE poet's parentage, of the birds, the lowings of the herds. The pictures, too, of nature are re-pictured in descriptions of the haunts of the hern and crake, the — Gray old grange, or lonely field, Or low morass and whispering reed, Or simple stile from meed to meed, Or sheep-walk up the windy wold. But more of this anon. Tennyson having received his early edu- cation at Somersby where his father was rector, entered Trinity College, Cambridge. It was here as undergraduate in 1829 that he won his first public distinction, for a poem on a subject that it would almost be imagined was purposely selected for its uninspiring nature. The theme was Tim- buctoo — one that would leave some grave doubts upon our minds whether the Cam- bridge dons have not some similar ideas EDUCATION, AND FIRST VOLUMES. 17 about poetry to those of the dog-fanciers who in their calling select sky-terriers and bull-dogs for their extreme ugliness — at least it is difficult otherwise to explain these matters. Plappily the poem was to be in blank verse, or the competitors might have been sorely pressed to discover the rhyme that has been suggested for Timbuctoo, which is brought into use by alluding to the carnivorous propensities of the inhabi- tants who swallowed the missionary and his hymn-hooh, too ! Sydney Smith I think it was who, being challenged to produce a rhyme for Timbuctoo, scribbled down the lines : — In tlie vale of Cassawarrie, By the plain of Timbuctoo, There I ate a missionary — Body and bones and hymn-book, too. A further interest is associated with 18 THE poet's parentage, these college days — his friendship with Arthur Hallam. It has been preferred to tell of this in connection with In Memoriam, in which the memory of the young collegian is embalmed. So, as the novelists say, we must not anticipate. In 1820 appeared Poems, chiefly Lyrical, hy Alfred Tennyson — a volume which it has been remarked showed the 'prentice hand of a minstrel of great promise, but nevertheless the world did not yet give the poet any very warm reception. The public is slow, and requires to be led, the good books must be pointed out to it, and in the throng of the thoroughfare the din is so great that he who would be heard must shout loud and persistently to attract at- tention. Again in 1833 the young poet, now twenty-three, sang, and notwithstand- ing the cold reception of his first venture, EDUCATION, AND FIRST VOLUMES. 19 lie found heart to write the Lachj of Shalott, the Millers Dcmghter, JEnonc, the Lotos Eaters and the QiweR of May, which the present vohmie included. But the world and the critics were still unkind ; the charmer, charm he never so wisely, had not yet succeeded in arresting the pubhc attention, and the poet sank into silence for nine years. At last in 1842, two volumes appeared that won the victory ; they contained Locksley Hall, the Gardeners Daughter, Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Morte d' Arthur, and Godiva. The applause that now greeted Tennyson was almost universal among those who address the public. True it is that to the present day there are some old fogies whom we hear in private society expressing their want of faith in any poets but those of the Pope and Dryden school, 2—2 20 THE poet's parentage. but that counts for nothing — people agree to their hving in the past when they do not aspire to teaching the pubUc. CHAPTEE III. EARLY ANTAGONISTS. Slanders, sir : for the satirical rogue says here, that old men have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes purging thick amber, and plum- tree gum ; and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: All of which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down. Hamlet, act ii. sc. 2. Prithee forgive me, I did but chide in jest : the best lovers use it Sometimes ; it sets an edge upon affection. When we invite our best friends to a feast 'Tis not all sweetmeats that we set before 'em ; There's somethiug sharp and salt, both to whet ap- petite. And make 'em taste their wine w^ell : so methinks. After a friendly sharp and savoury chiding, A kiss tastes wond'rous well, and full o' the grape. Women heware Women. Tragedy by Thomas Middleton, 1657, CHAPTER HI. EARLY ANTAGONISTS. Poets should ne'er be drones, mean harmless things ; But guard like bees their labours by their stings. DuTDEjS'. Tennyson in Punch, " our Facetious Contemporary,'^ under the Nojn de Flume of " Alcibiades." — Lord Lytton'a attack on Tennyson in his Satire, the New Timon. — E-ejoinder from Tennyson — the New and Old Timon. — Lord Lytton's Epic Poem of King Arthur. — Sir "Walter Scott, Thackeray, and Mr. Buckstone Mistaken G-eniuses ! — Tennyson's After- Thought.-— '''Ru^tf "Musty" "Crusty" Christo- pher North. In the almost universal expression of ad- miration, that all the instructors of the 24 EARLY ANTAGONISTS. Million at the period referred to, granted to Tennyson, there was one prominent dissentient. This brings us across a fact, perhaps not generally known, that Tenny- son was a contributor to Punch — " our facetious contemporary" as fine writers are wont to call that publication — but it was as theatrical managers say, " for this occa- sion only." The Tennyson of artists, as we would fain describe Mr. Millais, has, in the same way for an occasion, lent his poetical-painter's brush to Punch. The occasion of Tennyson appearing among those who don the cap and bells of litera- ture was this : — In the very fierce satire, the New Timon, appeared a protest against the new school of poetry, and contained some stinging allusions to " school-miss Alfred." Tennyson published a rejoinder in Punch signed Alcibiades, which has been EARLY ANTAGONISTS. 25 very generally admired, but this has never been repubHshed, while the passage of Lord Lytton's satire was suppressed in the following editions of that work. Bulwer Lytton's New Timon-, though published anonymously, was pretty gene- rally known to have been from the pen of him who at that time had written a volume of poems called Weeds and Wild Floivers, and two novels Falkland and Pelham. It contained the following lines : — Not mine, not mine (0 muse forbid !) the boon Of borrowed notes, the mock-bird's modish tune, The jingHng medley of purloiaed conceits, Ont-babying AYords worth and out-gUtfcering Keats — Where all the airs of patchwork, pastoral chime, Do drown the ears in Tennysonian rhyme ! # # # # Let school-miss Alfred vent her chaste delight, In " darling little rooms, so warm and bright. 26 EARLY ANTAGONISTS. Chant " I'm a-weary". in infectious strain, And catch the "blue-fly singing i' the pane:"*' Tho' praised by critics and admired by Blues, Tho' Peel with pudding plump the puling muse, Tho' Theban taste the Saxon purse controls And pensions Tennyson while starves a Knowles. Tennyson's cliaracteristic rejoinder ap- peared in Punch under the title of THE NEW TIMON AND THE POET. We know him out of Shakspeare's art, And those full curses which he spoke — The Old Timon with his noble heart That strongly loathing, greatly broke. So died the Old ; here comes the New : .Regard him : a familiar face — • I thought we knew him. What, it's you, The padded man that wears the stays : Who killed the girls and thrilled the boys With dandy pathos when you wrote ! O lion ! you that made a noise And shook a mane en papillofes. And once you tried the Muses, too — You failed, sir, therefore now you turn — * Mocking Mariana of the Moated Grange. EARLY ANTAGONISTS. 2t Tou fill! on those who are to you As captain to subaltern. But men of long-enduring hopes, And careless what the hour may bring, Can pardon little would-be Popes And Brummels when they try to sting. An artist, sir, should rest in art And waive a little of his claim : To have a great poetic heart Is more than all poetic fame. But you, sir, you are hard to please. You never look but half content, Not like a gentleman at ease With moral breadth of temperament. And what with spite, and what with fears^ You cannot let a body be ; It's always singing in your ears — " They call this man as great as me !" What profits how to understand The merits of a spotless shirt — A dapper boot — a little hand — If half tbe little soul is dirt ? 28 EARLY ANTAGONISTS. You talk of tinsel ! w'hy we see Old marks of rouge upon your cheeks, Tou prate of nature ! you are he That spilt his life upon the cliques. O Tim on, you .' nay, nay, for shame, It looks too arrogant a jest The fierce old man to take Jiis name ! Tou band- box — off and and let him rest I This has been characterized as out of date, and in truth for the taste of the pre- sent day it is too personal. It is pleasant to think that all the feelings that prompted these utterances have long passed away, and all this had been forgotten by the two writers long before the event occurred that we so lately mourned. The lines, however, may be regarded with an interest as curi- osities — dried specimens for a museum of extinct animals. As in a case of assault, the police magis- trate invariably looks about to see how it EARLY ANTAGONISTS. 29 was provoked, so, by a like inquiry, we fancy we can trace the cause of this attack. Tennyson supposes the Neiv Timoii to be chafing under the thought " they call this man as great as me," and there would appear to be some reason for this idea. The sub- ject of King Arthur has at some time or other occupied the thoughts of the great English bards as a fit theme for a great epic. Tennyson has lingered about the subject for forty years, and one of the latest poets who actually took it up was Sir Edward Lytton — or, as I prefer to call him, Bulwer Lytton, being the name under which he won his first literary distinctions — whose epic poem. King Arthur, is said to have deserved more praise than it has re- ceived. What the great novelist and the great dramatist thought of it himself — liow it was to eclipse his fame in the -30 EARLY ANTAGONISTS. domains of the drama and of romance — - may be gathered from the extract which I shall give. Anger natin^ally arose against another who had taken up a theme from w^hich he expected to reap so much. " I am unalter- ably convinced," he wrote, "that on this foundation I rest the least perishable monu- ment of those thoughts and those labours which have made the life of my life." This I take as a fair explanation of the angry feeling — it might almost be called a justification : it not a little reminds us of the boastful, though true declaration of Horace, Exegi moniimentum cere iJeremiius — I have finished a monument more durable than brass. Nor would this be the first instance of a great genius mistaking where his greatest strength lay. Sir Walter •Scott made a similar mistake, and it was EAULY ANTAGONISTS. 31 curious to hear of Thackeray deeming himself a greater artist than writer when we remember the very poor productions with which his pencil illustrated some of his strongest writing. I have heard, too, that Mr. Buckstone, England's incompar- able comedian, firmly believed, for a long time, that his forte was tragedy ! Though there may have been a provo- cation as w^e have seen, all men of taste believe that nothing is gained by the bandy- ing of personalities. The Poet Laureate was himself the first, it might be said, to see that this mode of attack was unworthy of him, and before a- week had elapsed, after the publication of the rejoinder on the New Timoiiy he had penned an After- Thought, as he entitled some further verses which appeared in Punch (7th March, 1846), under the same nam de plume, Alci- 32 EARLY ANTAGONISTS. blades. The first lines, however, by ex- hibiting a power in another direction than that by which their author was known, had astonished many, who believed the poet's power and strength lay within the limits, shown by his other works. The lines After- Thought, are noted b}^ a correspondent of Notes and Queries, who- remarks that their title is an evident allu- sion by the Poet Laureate to the former verses. As these lines are not generally known, they are given here : — Ah God! tbe petty fools of rhyme That shriek and shout in pigmy wars Before the stormy face of Time, And looked at by the silent stars ; That hate each other for a soDg, And do their little best to bite — That pinch their brothers in the throng. And scratch the very dead for spite ; And strain to make an inch of room For their sweet selves, and cannot bear EAELY ANTAGONISTS. 83 The sullen Letlie rolling doom On them and theirs and all things here. "When one small touch of charity^ Could lift them nearer Grod-like state Than if the crowded orb should cry Like those that cried, Diana great. And /, too, talk and lose the touch I talk of. Surely after all The noblest answer unto such. Is kindly silence when they brawl. In the early part of his career, Tenn}^- son met with another critical antao'onist who had almost been forgotten. Chris- topher North asserted that Tennyson was unable to deal with the commoner feelings of the heart, as contrasted with those of more artificial life, and the poet at the time appears to have resented this, and let loose in some rhymes on "rusty" "musty" '• crusty " Christopher North. On the pub- 3 34 EARLY ANTAGONISTS. lication of the Poems in 1830, Professor "VYUson in BlachcoocVs Magazine recog- nised the promise of the young writer, and, as reviewers are prone to do in such cases, administered a Httle mixture of censure, which, judicious as it may have been, youthful poetic sensitiveness httle relished, and this led to the retaliation on " crusty Christopher" in the volume published m 1833. Tennyson, however, by the gauntlet having thus been thrown down, seems to have resolved to show that his power was not so confined, and to this circum- stance we doubtless are indebted for cer- tain of the poet's later productions, whicl more clearly exhibit the power of sympa- thising with and representing the ordinary, e very-day feelings and passions of the human heart. 1 CHAPTER lY. IN MEMORIAM. To labour to forget, I know is vain ; The fond endeavour toils against itself, And deeper graves the idea 'twoukl efface. * * * # Tame, hmguid minds, whose course ghdes dully on, Yield as the stream to the sharp severing keel, To close as quickly on each transient wound ; Eut woe's deep traces never leave thy breast. EoBEiiT Jephson's Julia, or the Italian Lover, act ii., sc. I. Olympia. — If peace be worth a wish, and love be sncti In every other bosom as in thine. Let the short story on my gravestone tell, " jN^ot loving, nor belov'd, Olympia died." Mentevole. — You never wished more wisely, but forgive me, Pardon my infirmity, 'tis too like madness. Olijnipia. — 'Tis worse, for madmen have their in- tervals, Thine's an eternal rage. Ibid.^ act i. sc 5. 3—2 >■ , ' CHAPTEH IV. IN MEMORIAM. Sne doth tell me where to borrow Comfort in the midst of sorrow , Makes the desolatest place, To her presence be a grace : And the blackest discontents Be her fair ornaments, WiTHEES. — Lines on the Consolation of Poesie^ written in the Fleet Prison. The Princess and In Memoriam. — Arthur Henry Hallam and the Poet's Sister. — Tragic and Elegiac Poetry. — Milton's Lycidas and Shelley's Adonais. — Professor Ingram on the' Autobiographical Traces of Tennyson in In Memoriam. — At Lincolnshire Early Life. — At Berkshire, Marriage. — At Isle oi 38 IN MEMOEIAM. Wight. — Luther and the Energetic Eeporter. — Tennyson taken into Custody as a Suspected Smug- gler. Five years passed and the next volume that came from Tennyson was that quaintly entitled the Princess, a Medley (1847). The Princess boasts a large number of en- thusiastic admirers, and these, too, among; the highest judges. It was followed by la Memoriam (in 1850). The story of the latter probably is best told in its simple dedication : — IN MEMORIAM A. H. H. Obiit MDCCCXXXIII. Consisting as it does of a group of one hundred and twenty-nine poems, it pro- bably long occupied his pen. It was seven- teen years after the event that occasioned IN MEMORIAM. 3*9 them that they were published. " In vain," says Victor Hugo in Ndtre Dame, " may the mourning garments wear out and lose their dye — the heart remains dark as at first 1" Mr. Kobert Buchanan, the poet, in an appreciative paper that appeared in St. PauVs Magazine, uilder the title of Tennyson^ s Charm, aptly compares In Me- moriam to '' a rainbow on a grave." The occasion of this grand work is pretty generally known : — Arthur Henry Hallam, the historian's son, the poet's loved friend and compa,nion at college, died in 1833 at Vienna — In Yienna's fatal walls Grod'a finger touched liim, and he slept. And the poet sought solace — surcease of sorrow, as Edgar Poe would say — in 'Hhe sad mechanic exercise" of his art, or in 40 IN MEMORIAM. such reflections as he gives utterance to when he says, I hold it true wLate'er befall ; I feel it wlien I sorrow most ; 'Tis better to Lave loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. Hallam's remains were brought over to England and interred in the hancel of Cleveland Church, Somersetshire. The cir- cumstance is told in the verse of Tenny- son : — The Danube to the Severn gave The darken'd heart that beats no more ; They laid him by the pleasant shore, And in the hearing of the wave. There twice a day the Severn fills, The salt sea- water passes by, And hushes half the babbling Wye, And makes a silence in the hills. This work of Tennyson's with Milton's IN MEMORIAM. 41 Lycidas and Shelley's Adonais are gene- rally regarded as the three most remark- able productions of the class of tragic and elegiac poetry. The occasion of each is similar — the death of a companion of in- tellectual and moral " unfulfilled renown ;" Milton's on his friend King, who was drowned on his passage to Ireland, and Adonais is the name under which Shelley mourns for Keats. Perhaps w^th more chronological accu- racy the name of Arthur Henry Hallam should have been introduced when refer- ring to Tennyson's collegiate career, but it was preferred to wait till the publication of 1)1 Memoriam. The youth of " unful- filled renown," the historian's son, was about eio'hteen when he was the fellow- collegian of the future Laureate. He is said to have leant rather to poetry than to 42 IN MEMORTAM. the studies of a more rigid kind that lead to academic distinction, such as mathe- matics, for instance, and even to have thought of pubHshing some poems in con- junction with his friend Tennyson. This,, however, was never carried out ; but among the effusions of young Hallam at this time were some Hues addressed to Tennyson, described as " breathing a deep and tender love of nature." Though mathematics had Uttle attraction for him, he won distinctions for English declamation and for essays while at Cambridge. The genius and friendship of " the rugged fanciful sort of fellow, a friend of the family with whom this lad of hope and promise consorted" — for in such terms this intimacy has been described — {Immortals hy Acci- devit, or Flies in Aonher — a paper in the Diiblin University Magazine, 1862), con- IN MEMORIAM. 43 ferred on Arthur Hallam an immortality that has been compared, though purer and iiobler, to that bestowed by Petrarch on Laura ; but In Memoriam, from a biogra- phical point of view, reminds us also of the autobiographical traces that are to be dis- covered in the sonnets of Shakspeare. Pro- fessor Ingram, of Trinity College, Dublin, no mean poet himself, in criticising the works of Tennyson followed out this, and traced these inklings of the poet's own history during this period. He says : — '' Singularly attractive are the glimpses presented here and there through In Memo- riam of the several phases of the fair com- panionship of the friends during the ' four sweet years' in which they walked the path of life together. Now we have remi- niscences of their intercourse in the ' reve- rend walls' where together they 'wore the 44 IN MEMOEIAM. gown/ and where Hallani, the centre of a band of congenial spmts often led the high debate " On mind, and art, And labour, and tlie changing mart. And all the framework of the land. "Again we catch a view of the two friends on their summer tour in Southern France, filling the hours with talk of men and mind, and the large promise of the future, as they walk " By river, fortress, mountain ridge, The cataract flashing from the bridge — The breaker, breaking on the beach. " Or again, the poet has welcomed his friend — ** Fresh from brawling courts And dusty purlieus of the law, to revive faded spirits among the sights IN MEMOHIAM. 45 and sounds of nature, and the social plea- sures of a rural home. We see them as they wander over the hills, and dine in the distant woods — ambrosial banquets — where philosophy and j)oetry are relish to the feast ; or Arthur stretched upon the grass, reads the Tuscan poets amidst a listening- circle ; or in the summer twilight, the poet's happy sister — affianced bride of Hallam — ' flings a ballad to the moon/" These are some of the little lights that In Memoinam throws on the early career of Tennyson, as far as it is connected with that of his mourned friend. Besides this, a little more of Tennyson's biography may be read from his other works. Much of his power as a poet is attributed to his truthful minuteness of description, and this seems to have resulted in a great measure from the circumstance of the poet 46 IN MEMORIAM. availing himself of the scenery, places, and things that had come under his immediate notice, or that surrounded him as he wrote. This has already been referred to as re- gards his birth-place. Shakspeare is said to have had before him, in his mind's eye, at least, Sir Thomas Lucy's park at Strat- ford- on- Avon when he gave those fine pic- tures of woodland scenery that we have in As You Like It. In the same way, to Tennyson's early life having been passed among the fens of Lincolnshire, we owe some of the landscape of his first pictures in which we find him, to" quote from one of Shakspeare's sonnets, like the sun Gilding pale streams witli heavenly alchemy. The " infectious strain'^ of Mariana of the Moated Grange — as it has been seen those lines have been sneeringiy called — IN MEMORIAM. 47 has a double interest on account of the local colouring and as a ShaksjDearian illus- tration, it having been suggested by the character of Mariana in Measure for trea- sure. Though the word grange is properly only applied to the granary or farm of a monastery, in Lincolnshire and the northern counties we learn any lone farm is so called, and these granges are generally moated. It has been observed as somewhat remark- able how the poet has extracted beauty out of the dull landscape of Lincolnshire. Re- ferring to the volume published in 1833, attention has been drawn to the circum- stance that " the scenery throughout is Lincolnshire, with its ^ long dun wolds ribbed with snow,' where ' loud the Nor- land whirlwinds blow,' the ' gray-eyed morn wakes about the lonely moated grange ; 48 IN MEMORIAM. *' Through the marish green and still The tangled water-courses sleep, Shot over with purple and green and yellow. *' ' The windy clanging of the Minster clock' is heard over fields and a landscape which irresistibly recall the flats over which Lincoln Cathedral reigns so proudly ; while Locksley Hall, with its curlews — those 'dreary gleams about the moorland' — its • ** Sandy tracts, And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts, is unmistakably situated at Summer Cotes, on the eastern coast of the county." The next trace we find of Tennyson is in Berkshire. Mary Russell Mitford, in Recollections of a Literary Life, describes the scene : — " A few miles from the villaere of Caversham in Berkshire, near to another spot consecrated by genius, Woodcot the IN MEMORIA.M. 49 early residence of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, and where he wrote several of his most powerful novels, and a turn to the right conducts us to one of the grand old village churches which give so much of character to English landsca^pe. A large and beautiful pile it is. The tower half clothed with, ivy, standing with its charm- ing vicarage and pretty vicarage garden on a high eminence overhanging one of the finest bends of the great river (the Thames) . A woody lane leads from the church to the bottom of the chalk-cliff, one side of which stands out from the road below like a promontory, surmounted by the laurel- hedges and flowery arbours of the vicarage garden, and crested by a noble cedar of Lebanon. This is Shiplake Church, famed far and near for its magnificent oak carving, and the rich painted glass of its windows. 50 IN MEMORIAM. collected long before such adornments were fashionable, by the fine taste of the late vicar, and therefore filled with the very choicest specimens of mediseval art, chiefly obtained from the remains of the celebrated Abbey of St. Bertin, near St. Omers, sacked during the first French revolution. In this church Alfred Tennyson was mar- ried. Blessings be upon him ! I never saw the great Poet in my life, but thousands who may never have seen him either, but who owe to his poetry the purest and richest intellectual enjoyment, will echo and re- echo the benison." It was while in Berkshire that he was asked to write some lines for the Berkshire Volunteers, and he penned some verses known as Riflemen, Riflemen, form, but like most poetry written to order, they can hardly be regarded but as sorry failures. IN MEMORIAM. 5l After the Berkshire epoch of his Hfe he became as some writers describe him, '^ the recluse of Farringford/' At this place, in the Isle of Wight, not far from Carisbrook, he lived till lately, seeing little society, we are told, but that of a few chosen friends, though we have been occasionally told of his having to pay that tax that is extracted from fame — of his being annoyed by the intrusion of cockney tourists and the in- vasion of Yankee "inter- viewers." Yet this sort of thing known as " inter- viewing"in America is not of quite so late an origin as people might imagine. It is told of Luther that he was annoyed in the same manner by the energetic reporter in the shape of his pupils who noted down his Table- Talk. " One day when he was eat- ing some porridge, and had just let fall a capital sentence, he saw a clerk jotting it 52 -fN MEMOKIAM. down at once : upon which, as the story goes, he gave him a spoonful of hot por- ridge upon his head, and told him to put that down, too." An anecdote is related of how, at the Isle of Wight, Tennyson was taken into custody by the coastguard as a suspected smuggler. The night was a rough and stormy one, and wrapped in a great cloak, the poet, among the rocks contemplating the grandeur of the waves, doubtless did look a suspicious character. Stephen Kemble once said at a banquet that the term thief had been applied by some writers to Shakespeare. " Yes, gentlemen," added Kemble, "and they are right; he ivas a thief, the greatest thief that ever hved ; for he stole the sign manual from Nature, and applied it to mankind for the benefit of posterity." So it might be said that IN MEMORIAM. 53 Tennyson ivas a smuggler, full of as stir- ring tales as a smuggler, of moving acci- dents by flood and field, of hair-breadth ^scapes. And might it not be said, has he not, by the force of his wondrous and ex- quisite art, smuggled himself into the affec- tions of England's sons and daughters ? In the Isle of Wight with his wife — a Lincolnshire lady — and a large family — one of them named after his early friend, Arthur Hallam — lived the poet for many years, and from that little spot surrounded by its privet-hedge, issued the voice of a singer who has, perhaps more than any poet, shown the influence of the press on the minds of the whole nation. CHAPTEH V. HONOUR TO THE POET. Touchstone. "Wast ever ia court, shepherd ? Corin. No, truly. Touchstone. Then thou art dama'd, Corin. Nay, I hope, Touchstone. Truly, thou art damii'd ; like an ill- roasted egg, all on one side. Corin. For not being at court ? Tour reason. Touchstone. Why, if thou never wast at court, thou never saw'st good manners ; if thou never saw'st good manners, then thy manners must be wicked : and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd. As You Like It, act iii. sc. 2. CHAPTER Y. HONOUR TO THE POET. Shajl the hero laurels gain Tor ravag'd fields and thousands slain ? And shall his brows no laurels bind. Who charms to virtue human kind ? Chorus. — We will — his brows with laurel bind, Who charms to virtue human kind. ShaJcspeare s Garland. Ode by Gaeeick. That wreath which in Eliza's golden days My master, dear divinest Spenser, wore ; That which rewarded Drayton's learned lays, Which thoughtful Ben and gentle Daniel wore. Grin Envy through thy rugged mask of scorn ! In honour it was given, in honour it is worn. Southet's Lay of the Laureate. Tennyson succeeds Wordsworth as Laureate. — Miller's Daughter said to have first attracted Eoval 58 HONOUR TO THE POET. Attention.— O^e on the Death of the Duke of Welling- ton. — Story of Douglas Jerrold. — "Welcome to Alexandra." — Opening of the Exhibition of 1862. — Maud, and other Poems, " Caviare to the Gene- ral." — Tennyson and the Crimean Heroes. — Ox- ford and Cambridge both honour the Poet. — Idylls of the King.— A. Fortnight's Eamble in Por- tugal with Mr. F. T. Palgrave. — Enoch Arden and the Northern Farmer. — Baronetcy offered. — Tenny- son's Poems in America. In 1850, on the death of Wordsworth, the author of Locksley Hall, the May Queen, and the Miller s Daughter, was appointed his successor to the Laureateship. Besides the salary of that office, he was granted a pension of £200 ; and the famous butt of Canary that is attached as part of the emoluments of the office, and in lieu of which some of his- predecessors preferred to receive a sum of money, the poet of Victoria's era had restored to its orimnal HONOUR TO THE POET. 59 form as in tlie days of Queen Bess. When inviting" the Eev. F. D. Maurice to Freshwater, the Laureate holds out the inducements of " honest talk and whole- some wine." We are told that the Millers Daughter was the production that first at- tracted royal attention to the author, and it has been said that '^ so well known and popular, indeed, had Mr. Tennyson become after the publication of In Memoriamy that it seemed only a matter of course, upon the death of Wordsworth in the folio wiug year, that the privilege of wearing * the laurel greener from the brows of him that uttered nothing base,' should be offered to the poet." As Laureate, his first important production, which may be regarded as official, was his Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, and which, striking a composition as it may be, 60 HONOUR TO THE POET. seems to strengthen in their opinion those who hold that the productions of a Laureate should always be purely voluntary. The close of this piece seems somewhat to jus- tify those who maintain that it can hardly be ranked with his greater poems ; it, how- ever, far surpasses that other piece written to order — that for the Berkshire Rifle Corps. Pegasus is a horse that should not be confined by harness — there is such a thing as inspiration, and it must be waited for, though some people seem to think they can order a poem as they order a pair of boots or a coat. A story is told of a London manager showing Douglas Jerrold into his room, and pointing to him an ad- miral's coat which he had bought cheap at a sale thrown over a chair, told him to write a play for it. This may be practicable to a certain extent in some HONOUR TO THE POET. 61 branches of literature, but certainly not in poetry. When the Prince of Wales married his Danish bride the Laureate doubtless felt a kind of necessity to write his " Welcome to Alexandra," but there were other similar odes which excelled Tennyson's, and it may be confidently said the reason was they were not written from any kind of neces- sity, but by volunteer laureates, who wrote from inspiration — not impelled by any idea of a sense of duty. In the previous year (1862) the Laureate was called upon for another job. It was the occasion of the opening of the Exhi- bition of that year. As usual, there was to be the inaugural ceremony and a grand overture. The overture was by Meyerbeer, and there was a chorale by Dr. Sterndale Bennett to the following words by the Poet 62 HONOUR TO THE POET. Laureate, and which production is given here, as it is not to be found in the pub- lished volumes : — « " Uplift a thousand voices full and sweet, In this wide Hall with earth's invention stored, And praise th' invisible, universal Lord, Who lets once more in peace the nations meet, "Where Science, Art, and Labour have outpour'd Their myriad horns of plenty at our feet. silent father of our Kings to be, Mourn'd in this hour of jubilee, For this, for all, we weep our thanks to thee ! The world- compelling plan was thine, And lo ! the long laborious miles Of Palace ; lo ! the giant aisles, Eich in model and design ; Harvest-tool and husbandry, Loom and wheel and engin'ry. Secrets of the sullen mine. Steel and gold, and corn and wine, Eabric rough, or fairy fine, Sunny tokens of the Line, HONOUR TO THE POET. 63 Polar marvels, and a feast Of wonder, out of West and East, And shapes and hues of Art divine ! All of beauty, all of use. That one fair planet can produce, Erought from under every star. Blown from over every main. And mixt, as life is mixt with pain, ' The works of peace with the woriis of war. And is the goal so far away ?, Far, how far, no man can say, Let us have our dream to-day. O ye, the wise who think, the wise who reign, Prom growing commerce loose her latest chain. And let the fair white- winged peace-maker fly To happy havens under all the sky, And mix the seasons and the golden hours, Till each man find his own in all men's good, And all men work in noble brotherhood, Ereakiug their mailed fleets and armed towers, And ruling by obeying Nature's powers. And gathering all the fruits of Peace and crowned with all her flowers." In this will be observed some of these 64 HONOUR TO THE POET. felicities of language for which Tennyson is noted, such as " We weep our thanks to thee/' and " Secrets of the sullen mine," the usual spirit of sadness in the ex- pression, " rnixt as life is mixt with pain," and in the conclusion will be discovered a hint of the hand that wrote of " the Par- liament of man, the Federation of the world." His next volume after those noticed, Maud, and other Poems, which appeared in 1855, is said to have rather puzzled the critics, and was little better than *' caviare to the general," and though it has since risen in estimation, the subtle and recon- dite art exhibited in the structure of the poem is probably even now only appreciated by a few of its admirers. At this time one of Tennyson's smaller productions became immensely popular among the Crimean HONOUR TO THE POET. 65 heroes. During the Russian war he had penned those lines that are such favourites with pubhc reciters, and which we have all heard murdered, and thundered, and growled, and ranted, and torn in every variety ' of elocutionary exhibition — The Charge of the Light Brigade. Shortly after their publication they were reprinted in a quarto sheet of four pages, with the. following graceful note : — ''Havinof heard that the brave soldiers before Sebastopol, whom I am proud to call my countrymen, have a liking for my ballad on the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, I have ordered a thousand copies of it to be printed for them. No writing of mine can add to the glory they have acquired in the Crimea ; but if what I have heard be true, they will not be dis- pleased to receive these copies of the ballad 5 66 HONOUR TO THE POET. from me, and to know that those who sit at home love and honour them. "Alfred Tennyson. " 8tli August, 1855." , At the commemoration at Oxford the year following, the University created him a D.C.L. — the conferring^ of which hono- rary degree on him w^as considered as merely giving expression to the universal feeling of England. " No one who w^as present at the commemoration," according to one description of the scene, " can forget the splendid reception given to the poet in the Sheldonian Theatre." His own col- lege, Trinity, Cambridge, vied with Oxford in rendering honour to the poet by after- wards having his bust, by Woolner, placed in the vestibule of their library. In 1859 appeared TJie Idylls of the King. The very HONOUR TO THE POET. 67 beautiful dedication prefixed, to the me- mory of " Albert the Good," may in some measure be regarded as an official produc- tion on the occasion of the death of tlje Prince Consort. In August of the same year (1859) we fiud Mr. Tennyson with Mr. F. T. Palgrave and another friend taking a fortnight's ramble in Portugal. A journal of this ex- pedition, written by Mr. Palgrave, ap- peared in the now defunct magazine Under the Croitm. As a matter of course there is little personal here, and he who reads fur biographical purposes must satisfy himself with a fancy — a mysterious cloaked figure that is suggested by a vague " we " that occurs now and ao^ain in the narrative. From the P. and 0. steamer, Yectis, lying in Vigo Bay, we are brought to Lisbon and Cintra. At the latter place the Mo- 5—2 68 HONOUR TO THE POET. nastery of da Cortica was visited as well as Joao de Castro's garden of the Penha Yerde. " Some kind Portuguese friends," writes Mr. Palgrave, " relatives of the owner, gained permission, and led us through the grounds. They brought us to the fountain which traditionally marks the place where Camoens read to the king and court the first cantos of his Lusiad, and repeated on the spot some sonorous stanzas. These, from their resemblance to Gierusalemme and the Orlando, we could partly follow, wondering whether Milton was to them no more than the great poet of Portugal was to us." Colares, Santarem, and a bull fight in a milder, bloodless form, are next seen by the party. It is somewhat disappointing to us of a Paul Pry disposition that we learn nothing of the Laureate here. However, when pub- HONOUR TO THE POET. G9 lisliinof the little memento of this Lusl- tanian expedition, the following dedication was added : — " TO ALFRED TENNYSON. " I am glad to take this opportunity of publishing the journal of a little expedition to the South, in which, besides that of an- other friend, it was my good fortune to enjoy your companionship. We were, in- deed, but a few days in Portugal ; and even had I been better qualified to pene- trate the spirit of the country, leisure and familiarity with the lauguage would have been requisite for the purpose. But we saw enough, to be satisfied that Portugal deserves to be much better known to Englishmen than she is, whether in regard to her features of national interest, or to her amiable and intelliofent inhabitants. 70 HONOUR TO THE POET. It is with tliis sentiment that I offer these brief and imperfect notices, which, such as they are, refer more to what we saw than to what we heard ; and bear also, here and there, too marked a tinge of the feelings or fancies of the moment. But it seems to me best not to chano^e what was then written-^-althouQ^h I smile when I now read some of the following reflections ; and you, should you chance to read them, will perhaps smile also. " Hsec olim memirisse javabit ! " F. T. P. "December, 1868." After the Idylls of the King, the next volume that came from the Laureate con- tained Enoch Arden and the Northern Faryner. About this time (1864) a baron- etcy was said to have been offered HONOUK TO THE POET. 71 to him which the scourger of that proud, scornful lady of rank, Lady Clara Yere de Yere, in the best possible taste de- clined. It is unnecessary to say that Tennyson is appreciated beyond the limits of the British islands ; he has also ardent admirers in the land of Stars and Stripes — or as the jocose would say, in the land of wooden nutmegs. An indication of this is to be found in the fact that across the Atlantic there was established, in 1869, "the Tennysonian Society of Philadelphia. In a letter to the Secretary of that Society, acknowledging the compliment, the poet furnishes them with a very characteristic motto. He writes simply and gracefully as follows : — 72 HONOUR TO THE POET. *' September 9th, 1869. " Dear Sir, " You have done me honour in asso- ciatmg my name with your Institution, and you have my hearty good wishes for its success. Will the following Welsh motto be of any service to you ? I have it in encrusted tiles on the pavement of my entrance hall : Y Givir yn erhyn y hyd (The Truth against the world), a very old British apothegm, and I think a noble one, and which may serve your purpose either in Welsh or English. Your letter arrived when 1 was away from England, or it would have been earlier answered. *' Believe me, yours truly, '^A. Tennyson." f CHAPTER YI. CONTHIBUTIONS TO THE MAGAZINES, ETC. Her angel's face, As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright. And made a sunshine in the shady place. Spenser's Faerie Queene^ book i. cant. iii. st. 4. CHAPTER VI. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MAGAZINES, ETC. Short swallow-fligLits of song, that dip Their wings . . . and skim away. In Memoriam, xlvii. Tennyson's Deference to the Critics. — Lines altered and Poems suppressed. — What the "World loses by the Modesty of True Genius. — "Fear of Ridicule suspected. — Mocking Echoes and Parodies. — Mr. W. S. Gilbert's " Whimsical Allegory, respectfully perverted," from the Princess. Some detached pieces by Tennyson have appeared in the Cornliill and Macmillans Magazines, as well as Once a Week and Good Words. It is said when he has conde- scended to give the magazines any scrap that he would allow to go to the public, 76 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MAGAZINES. that tlie number sells rapidly by thousands without having any other special attractions. But he is a scrupulous poet, and fully carries out the limce labor ac mora (the labour and tediousness of the file) even in the apparently most trifling productions. Besides his carefulness he has another qua- lity which he has exhibited more than once — great deference to the critics. He has, indeed, as has been seen, occasionally re- sented an adverse criticism, where he con- sidered that the critic was at fault. There is, it maybe observed, a difference which should ever be borne in mind, between a criticism — no matter how severe — and an attack. It bears an analogy to the law of libel, which distinguishes between fair comment, or criticism for the public advantage, and a shot, disguised as it may be in that garb, in order to conceal the personal enmity or spite. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MAGAZINES. 77 Many lines that were cavilled at were in subsequent editions altered by the poet. There are people who hold that some of these alterations were made with undue submission to his critics — the modesty of true genius. Some of these that w^e dis- cover were doubtless suggested by the poet's own taste, for the genuine artist never believes his work to be finished, but gives it touches after touches, and even still believes it capable of improvement. Edmund Waller, in a well-known couplet, has very justly said — ■ Poets lose half the praise they should have got Could it be known what they discreetly blot. AYhat would some not give to be allowed to pick up the rejected scraps that pro- bably lie about the study of the Laureate. The first rough drafts of a poem, the coarse 78 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MAGAZINES. sketch that a pamter has made when his conception for a picture has first dawned upon him, the very scrap of paper on which he has tried his colours, have a deep in- terest, and betray genius as surely as a finished work. The world loses much by the sensitive nature of writers of true genius, while it is inundated with the rubbish of the coarser kind of men. A piece is withheld from the world that it would deem very beautiful, but the author looks at it nervously, and a thousand blemi- shes appear to. his eyes, with his finer perceptions, and he puts it back into his desk, and says, " Not yet," and there it re- mains awaiting his final touches to it, but it never comes forth. That Tennyson's deference to the critics has led to the alte- ration of some lines, has been noticed, but it would seem that we have also thereby CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MAGAZINES. 79 lost some entire poems. A reader of Ten- nyson has treasured up in his memory some few Hues of a Uttle poem that he liked " in the days that were ;" he takes up a volume from a drawing-room table to read them once again, but they are not to be found. We think we see an unnecessary dread of ridicule, or fear of an accusation of child- ishness, in the suppression of the pieces containing the following lines — the first of which is simply entitled " A Song," the second " Darling Koom,'^ and appeared only in the edition of Tennyson's Poems of 1833:— Who can say why to-day To-morro^v vvili be yesterday I Who can tell why to smell The violet brings back the time Of youth and joyous prime ? The cause is nowhere to be found in rhyme. The practical, unpoetical mind of course 80 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MAGAZINES. would see no beauty in these lines, and the question in them would most probably evoke a practical and unpoetical answer, but some of the grandest lines of Tenny- son's have met with equally unkind treat- ment. For instance, what could be more cruel than — I hold it truth when I recall Last London's season's joyous spell, 'Tis better to have danced not well, Than never to have danced at all. Many doubtless attribute the disappear- ance of the lines '' Darling Little Room," to Lord Lytton's satire. The pleasure de- rived from being shut up in a study or library, holding converse, as it were, with the noblest minds of all nations and ages, has not met with ridicule, nor has the idea expressed been called childish, but appa- CONTHIBUTIOXS TO THE MAGAZINES. 81 rently to some people it is that fatal step that brings one to the ridiculous, to go from the sublimity of a library or study to the " darling little room " of the poor student — Oh, little room, my heart's delight, Wherein to read, wherein to write, No little room so exquisite. The student's room, it may be said, is to him a kingdom as truly as the old ballad- writer exclaimed, " My mind to me a king- dom is." It has been seen that other persons known by the assumed title of Comic Writers, have occasionally endeavoured to use the Laureate's lines for their peculiar purpose. But these mocking echoes or parodies do little harm — perhaps the re- verse. One writer, who cannot be classed 6 82 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MAGAZINES. among these writers of raere parodies, Mr. W. S. Gilbert, produced at the Olympic Theatre '' A Whimsical Allegory, respect- fully perverted" from the Princess. When this was brought on the stage (January, 1870) people were tired of what is under- stood by burlesques, and this clever drama- tist has shown that success can be attained without nigger break-downs, music-hall songs, outrageous puns, or jingUng rhyme. We cannot, however, expect all burlesque writers to become authors of pieces like this, or like Pygmalion and Galatea. The quiet subtle humour of the following lines have been characterised as perfectly irresistible : — But if we fail — oli then let hope fail, too ! Let no one care a penny how she looks ! Let red be worn with yellow, blue with green, Crimson with scarlet, violet with blue / CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MAGAZINES. 83 Let all your things misfit, aiid you yourselves At inconvenient moments come undone ! Let hair-pins lose their virtue ; let the hook Disdain the fascination of the eye ; The bashful button modestly evade The soft embraces of the button-hole ! The Laureate himself does not seem to have more entered into, understood, and busied himself with women's grievances. 6—2 CHAPTER VII. ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. Which you approve not, So speaks the frowning prelude of your brow. Count of Nar bonne — Tragedy by Robt. Jephsok. Take back your hasty words That called me wise or virtuous, while you offer Such shallow fictions to insult my brain. Ibid. What they have done against me I am not moved with. If it gave them meat Or got them clothes 'tis well ; for that was their end. Only amongst them, I am sorry for Some better natures, by the rest drawn in, To run in that vile line. Dialogues prefixed to Jonson's Poetaster. CHAPTER YIL ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. If this be counsel It comes with such a harsh and boisterous breath, I more disceru the freedom, than the friendship. EoBT. Jephson's Julia, or, the Italian Lover, act ii. sc. 7. Squib Literature of Grrub Street. — Candid Criticism. — Tzaak AYalton's Directions to Anglers. — Unfair Comparison. — The Audience of tbese Critics. — The Pope and Eowe School. — Tennyson and Byron, why the Comparison is Unjust. — Strong Yood versvs the Tameness of Milton, of Gray, of Goldsmith. — The Gardener s Daughter. — Solitude and the Sweet Shady Side of Pall Mall. — Shelley and Keats called Cockney Poets! — A Coincidence of Thought in Byron and Tennyson. — "Wordsworth parodied in Rejected Addresses. We now come to some of the later attacks that have been made on Tennyson, and 88 ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. whicli I have already glanced at in some of my observations. Tennyson lias met with some very severe handling by the critics. Curiously enough, it seems to have been all brought on him by friends of his cause, and from whom he may accordingly well ask to be saved. Indeed, the very admiration of those who appreciate him may be said to have secured him this hos- tility, for the wild, mad enthusiasm of those who love him excites the anger of some rival rhymsters to an uncontrollable pitch, and they wildly tear at the unfortunate poet. The savagery and atrocities of re- viewers are nothing new. Byron himself encountered it, and Johnny Keats was slain by ^' the Quarterly so savage and tartarly," not actually killed, or, as we say in Ireland, ''not kilt intirely, only mur- dered." ATTACKS ON" TENNYSON. 89 ContrastiDSf what mIo:lit be called the " squib" literature of the past generation with the productions of latter-day antago- nists, it is amusing to observe the hearty way our ancestors used to " pitch into" their adversaries, and the warmth of lan- guage with which they were prone to flavour their discourse. The strength of the invectives used by the pamphleteer — the pyrotechnist of Grub Street — gives us a lively notion of political controversy in the "good old times." The favoured bard who has held the office of Poet Laureate has been, ever since the institution of the post, subject to a certain kind of jealousy and consequent attacks. The number of missiles levelled at the heads of former Laureates made the post no enviable one in old times, espe- cially w^hen each year and on the return of 90 ATTACKS ON TENNYSOX. the birthday as well as other occasions he had to produce an official ode as food for his enemies ; but the rough, rude lam- poons, rancorous abuse, coarse mud-throw- ing of past generations is nothing to the seemingly calm, unimpassionate, but insi- dious thrusts that are made in the shape of candid criticisms in the nineteenth cen- tury. Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe, Bold I can meet — perhaps may turn his blow ; But of all the plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, Save, save, oh, save me from the Candid Friend. Canning's New Morality, xxxvi. These seemingly mild critics seem to have taken their rule from old Izaak Wal- ton's Complete Angler, or the Contemjjla- tive Mans Recreation, where is laid down the famous dictum of exquisite and delicate ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. 91 ferocity, recommending his pupil in the gentle art of angling not to seize the worm too roughly, nor £lx him rudely on the hook, but to handle him gently withal, and t7^eat him as a friend. A merely pretty poet would have been nigh snuffed out by the faint praise and sneering that has been kindly bestowed by these gentlemen on Alfred Tennyson. As an instance of the criticism of our own days, it seems to me unfair, though done in all candour, to compare Tennyson as Tennyson has been compared with Shak- speare or Byron or Shelley ; for although the nineteenth century singer may greatly admire each of those poets, may even in his own poetry in some things show this admiration, yet he is as unlike them all as well can be. And when we think of the powerful, but repulsive tragedy of the 92 ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. Cenci, the fierce misanthropy of Byron, or the necessarily strong dramatic situa- tions of Shakspeare, we see before us a critic wildly crying out for '' stormy winds, intolerable thunder, grim murder, earth- quakes, and mad revenge." — I quote the words of one of Tennyson's most coolly ferocious critics — all required to be poured into every poem no matter its subject, ad libitum. But the worst about the matter is this, that much of what is said by the author of the Poetry of the Period (an article, which appeared in Temple Bar magazine, in 18G9, supposed to have been the production of a gentleman who achieved distinction some years previously by a clever satirical poem) has justice with it, and is true as regards actual fact, though it may not atfect the question whether Tennyson is a great poet, or that future ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. 93 generations will endorse the verdict of the pi'esent. But in hterature there is no pre- siding judge to discard certain evidence as irrelevant, and consequently not to be allowed to prejudice the minds of the jury. It is not all readers who idly take up a magazine to read it over the fire that dis- criminate between what is irrelevant and what is not, and the influence of these cool •articles is considerable, for people are lazy about forming opinions — as Puff in Sheri- dan's farce the Critic says, " the number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed.'^ Further, there are persons we meet devoid of poetic taste, who in their school- days proceeded from Watts' Hymns, " How doth the little busy bee " and " Let dogs delight " — to learn bits of Pope and Dryden, and w^ent to the theatre to see 94 ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. Rowe's Fair Penitent or Jane Shore, and whose brains might perhaps in their younger years have been a little more per- vious to the poetic muse. However this may be, there are persons who have not really any poetic taste, and yet they think they admire and appreciate some work that pleases them, merely because they know it, or from association. Did you never remark an old gentleman particularly admiring a passage from one of the poets that he is able to repeat from memory, and did you never suspect that his admiration was a necessary preface to the little exliibition of elocution that followed ? Now such as these — that is, persons fed on Eowe and Watts and Pope — would place Rowe for instance miles superior to Tennyson, and > ^ould swallow the depreciatory corrobora- tion of their opinion with infinite gusto, ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. 95 and being strengthened in their views would afterwards be emboldened to pro- claim in public what tliey only thought before, and would have been ashamed of exhibiting ignorance by uttering. In the article we have referred to — for we have preferred to take one of the strongest of Mr. Tennyson's opponents, and a fair representative of what most of the school have urged, rather than Quix- otically to encounter the whole body en masse — this writer at the outset seems to exult in getting to his side such people as I have attempted to describe, though of course he does not allude to his future adherents quite so unflatteringly as I have done ; he points however very distinctly at this school of readers — specimens of whom I think are known to us all. One of this critic's modes of assailing 96 ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. Tennyson is by stating what he has not that are beauties in the three poets that he has chosen — and as I think unfairly — to compare him with. This reminds me of a little bit of criticism by Spalding on Shelley which it will be readily seen is not likely to be alluded to. In Shelley " we want " says Spalding, '' sympathy, with ordinary and universal feelings." This Tennyson pre-eminently has. But then our friend of the Temple Bar says we want — he does not distinctly say it, but nevertheless he does say it — we want the wild misanthropy of Byron. We are reminded of the cruel parody — Man wants but little hero below. j^But wants that little strong — and begin to fancy that the critic in his early years was nurtured in the wings of ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. 97 the Victoria Theatre, or the Port St. Mar- tin, and so cannot exist without thunder and murder and the other concomitants of thriUing melodrama. In a certain sense Tennyson is tame. So is Shakspeare's As You Like It, Goldy's Traveller and Deserted Village, or Gray's Elegy. You might as well compare Miss Braddon and the Vicar of Wakefield or Rasselas as Tennyson with Byron. In Democritus in London, these ^^ tame " per- formances are alluded to, and it is stated as the writer's thorough conviction that the booksellers of the Row in the nine- teenth century would hardly give the fifteen pounds doled out by the memorable Samuel Simmons for Paradise Lost. Piety and truth, gentleness and beauty, delicate wit and humour have given place to stronger sentiments. 7 98 ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. We must now come to the Byronic grandeur and the wild misanthropy — the peppery stimulants. The lines for instance that everybody knows, by Byron, On Soli- tude, are doubtless very fine, indeed ; our pleasure in them at the same time is al- loyed. Can we forget that they are the feelings of one who had discovered, Midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to feel, and to possess And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless : ^F ^F "fF 'fc tP "t? This is to be alone : this, this is solitude ? Instead of this — and here is Tennyson's great crime — we have the following confes- sion of his guilt : — Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love. News from the humming city comes to it ATTACKS OX TENNYSON. 99 In sound of funeral or of marriage bells : And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear The windy clanging of the minster clock ; Although between it and the garden lies A league of grass, wash'd by a slow, broad stream, That, stirr'd with languid pulses of the oar, AYaves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on, Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge Crown' d with the minster- towers. The fields between Are dewy -fresh, browsed by deep-uddered kine, And all about the large lime feathers low, The lime a summer-home of murmurous win^s. Incidentally the ^^ lazy lilies " and the '^ murmurous wings " are marked as copies from Shelley and Keats respectively. It is presumed the following lines from the Ode to a Nightingale are those by Keats alluded to:— Mid-May's eldest child The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of bees on summer-eves. t — Z 100 ATTACKS OlS" TENNYSON. The favourite lines from the Princess (canto vii.), which have the additional similarity of an alliterative tendency, might as justly have been referred to : — Sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but ewevj sound is sweet ; Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn, The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees. It is to be noted that Keats with his Ode to a Nightingale , and Shelley with his lines To the Skylark, were both in their day called " cockney poets ;" but the mistakes of criticism and the reversal of the judg- ments of the critics by succeeding genera- tions is a large theme to open. The Temple Bar critic goes on to con- trast the nearness of the garden to the city in the Laureate's lines, with the love ATTACKS ON" TENNYSOX. 101 of Rotten Eow or Piccadilly, or with that of him who sings of " the sweet shady side of Pall Mall/' and querulously the writer exclaims he is too much of a poet for that, but not enouo'h for the Pobinson Crusoe solitude of " converse with Nature's charms," of Byron. Yet Tennyson seems to have narrowly escaped earning this critic's entire approba- tion, for listen : — " I am a part of all that I have met," is a line that we have in our poet's Ulysses. Here we have a proof of the poet's admira- tion of Byron, for imitation it is held is true admiration, and this thought it will be remembered occurs in Childe Harold : — I live not iu myself but I become Portion of that around me, and to me Iliijh mountains are a feelins:, but the hum of human cities torture. 102 ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. Now what a chance was this ! Here we find or may imagine we come across Tenny- son drinking of the water of life, but the good part remains at the bottom of the cup and he does not finish the draught ; he still loves a garden not far distant from the city, and he does not tear his hair and roll his eyes, wildly exclaiming that cities are to him a torture ! I do not desire to appear for one instant to be unappreciative of the grandeur of the muse of Byron. Such would recoil on myself and betray extreme poverty of mind. I have already indicated that it may be fairly asserted that the two poets do not compare ; but in attempting a com- parison — and this it is to be remembered is initiated by others — as high a position in poetry should be claimed for the pure, free, lark-like singing as for that which ATTACKS ON TENNYSON. 103 reflects the tired, jaded, hlase man of the world. Some assurance that these attacks on the gentle nature of Tennyson's muse are not sufficient to blot out the name from among the great poets, may be derived from the fact that the satirical and mocking pens of Horace and James Smith, in the Rejected Addresses in the crudest manner ridiculed the simple, gentle style of Wordsworth, poked most shocking fun at the very characteristics that formed some of his chief beauties, and that poet is still believed in. The Bahys Debut is doubtless hard upon the Bard of Rydal Mount, it aims a blow at the most delicate of styles of poetry ; but the fame of the Laureate's predecessor has not been thereby extiuQ-uished. CHAPTER VIII. MOilE ATTACKS. — Bards with envy-aching eyes Behold a tow'ring eagle rise, And would his flight retard. Shakspeare s G a?- land. —Ode by Garrick. Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue; But, like a shadow, proves the substance true. Pope's Essay on Criticism, line 445. CHAPTER VIIl. MORE ATTACKS. Goe light a candle ; by that light make try all How the night spends itselfe by the Sun Dyall. Lines On a Sun Dyall in Divine Fancies Digested i7ito Epiyrammes, Meditations, and Observations, by Eeas. Quakles. 1638. Stealing the Poet's Thunder. — Is King Arthur a E-idiculous or too Ambitious a Theme ? — Archaeolo- gical Tidelity. — The Jousts and Tournaments. — ■ Philosophy the Handmaid of Eeligion. — Hamlet and Faust. — Chaucer's Translation of Boethius — King James's Pillow. — The Chimera of Science. — Tennyson's Ambition. — His Retirement. — Incon- sistencies of Critics. — Portraits drawn by Critics. — Congenial Sydney Smith on Solitude. — Remark- able Powers of Penetration of Eugene Aram, the Recluse. I SHOULD little care to enter the lists with 108 MORE ATTACKS. all Tennyson's antagonists. I fear also that but a scanty amount would be added to the public stock of information thereby. We all know the small value of opinion, and regard facts only as reliable, and almost come to think of these criticisms as dis- putes on what there is no disputing — ac- cording to an old Latin dictum — namely matters of taste. It must only be yielded that the poet who holds the post of Lau- reate is ever to be subject to these attacks — " a lick at the Laureate," as old Colley Gibber, who was impenetrable, called them. So various are the modes of attack affected by these critics one might as well combat the many-headed monster — " Cut off the head the tongue still is wagging," or as Pope says : — Destroy his fib or sopliistry — in vain ! The creature's at his dirty work again. Prologue to the Satires, line 91. MORE ATTACKS. 109 There are the stop-watch critics depicted by Sterne — there are those who pull out their tape-measure and apply it to the poet's lines — and the critic, with Lindley Murray's English Grammar ; he is also blamed for not being easily translated, so that, like Tristram Shandy, Tennyson might exclaim, ** Twas not by ideas — by heaven ! his life was put in jeopardy by words." The master of the purest English, Addison, shares this censure, for Doctor Johnson remarks it would be impossible to translate that author, " on account of the free use he made of the idiom of the lan- guage." Then there are the critics who enliven dull pages of disparagement with faint praise, after which follows little choice quotations, reminding us of old Dennis, the play-wright, rising in a violent passion in the pit of the theatre, when he found the 110 MORE ATTACKS. players using the thunder that he had in- vented, with an oath, '' See how the rascals use me ! They will not let my play run ; and yet they steal my thunder !" The reader of the arbiter elegantiarum may, however, thank those writers though they do steal Tennyson's thunder, for it is the only relief — the only compensation for wading through that kind of stuff. It is equally unjust, when pages after pages pro- ceed, depreciating, without, in the lawyer s phrase, " showing cause." He is an abler critic, too, who boldly produces the passage at length, of which by his art he endeavours to make the reader take his view, not but that these depreciators are sometimes found to be doing such a thing as garbling quo- tations. Nothing would be gained by referring to the loose generalities that pour so ghbly in MORE ATTACKS. Ill such a phrase as one which asserts that GarefJi and Lynette is " full of the same faults and absurdities " as (of all the poems) the Idylls of the King ! — the Arthurian fable must be what is referred to as being absurd. Ben Jonson ridicules it — this can easily be understood, for his strength lay in his intimate knowledge of the Greek and Boman classics, and many young gentle- men fresh from college doubtless prefer Homer's heroes and revel more in Mr. Swinburne's poetry than in the blameless king and his table round. But though Homer's epic has its grandeur, it does not follow that there are not other epic subjects, and that the English poet may not natu- rally seek these in his own country. The Arthurian stories may be referred to as " the antic capers of a rude people," but then Tennyson can hardly consistently be 112 MORE ATTACKS. charged by the same critic with having selected too ambitious a subject. That the theme, however, was a fit one we have ample testimony ; the minds of Milton, Spenser, and in the present century of Scott, Southey, and Lord Lytton, revolved upon it, so it can scarcely be said that the choice of a subject was unfortunate. How- ever, it must be admitted the Poet Lau- reate, indeed, was considerably at fault if he imagined that he could woo the ma- thematician or, say, the political economist from his studies, or that he would be able to render unnecessary that surgical opera- tion that Sydney Smith says is necessary for some people to ' undergo before they can comj)rehend works of imagination. Tennyson may not be an archaeologist — Scott says of himself that he was not. Yet the power of the Wizard of the North in MORE ATTACKS. 113 dealing with these subjects for his own peculiar purpose, and reproducing to the life the manners, times, customs, &c., has not been questioned, but on the contrary, has been borne witness to by antiquarians of repute. An instance or two of Tenny- son's archaeological fidelity may be glanced at. "Arthur's Savage Consort," as de- picted by the old writers, might have tempted many another poet to step a pace away from truth — not so with Tennyson. As she was, as history or legend painted her, so she is in the poet's pages. The heroes of Homer are fabled, so is much of the Arthurian romance, and, as we all know, the existence of King Arthur even is denied by some. Be this as it may, tales told by the romancists of Brittany, and which were the first printed books in Eng- land, form the theme for the latter-day 8 114 MOEE ATTACKS. jDoets, and the old stories telling as they do of the deeds of chivalry, the jousts, and tournaments, it cannot be regarded as parachronism, if the poets do not refrain from cutting out the very life and essence of the original tales. Though tournaments were not in fashion in Arthur's days, we would hold in small esteem the limited mind that would deal so ruthlessly with the Arthurian romances, as to adopt strict chronological accuracy. It was Charles Lamb who said that " truth was precious, and not to be wasted on everybody," and in the same way reli- gion and religious thought may pervade a man, but should not be wasted on all occa- sions. We don't want texts of Scripture inscribed in railway carriages and waiting rooms, nor a revival of the manners of the old Puritans, with the sacred words and MORE ATTACKS. 115 names perpetually on their lips, and applied to the commonest trifles and events of daily life. Yet there is a useful auxiliary called philosophy. The philosophy of Hamlet is not to be sneered at, nor is that study so bounded a thing that it can be literally true that Faust learned " all that philosophy can teach." It is true philosophy does not show the road to happiness to everybody — the same may be said of all that is called by the name of knowledge. It appears somewhat monstrous to hear persons talking of the " bootless problems," "the emptiness and hollowness," or the " vain subtleties of philosophy.'^ What is the poet without his philosophy ? One of the labours of Chaucer, the father of Eng- lish poetry, was a translation of Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy. That attractive writer Washington Irving, alluding to it, 8—2 116 MOflE ATTACKS. describes it in language that might in a great measure be applied to In Memoriam. '* It is the legacy of a noble and enduring spirit, purified by sorrow and suffering, bequeathing to its successors in calamity the maxims of sweet morality, and the trains of eloquent but simple reasoning, by which it was enabled to bear up against the various ills of life. It is a talisman which the unfortunate may treasure up in his bosom or, like good King James, lay upon his nightly pillow." Philosophy may be called a happy al- chemy of the mind, that turns the baser metals into gold, and it may be remembered that though the alchemists of old did not find what they laboured and searched for, their labours and searches were not al- together vain or bootless, but were pro- ductive of knowledge, and they advanced MOEE ATTACKS. Il7 science. As another writer has expressed it, thouo'h all sciences have their chimera (their dreams) after \A^hich they run and are never able to catch, and though it may be impossible to find them out, it is of advantage to seek them, for useful things are picked up by the way. So philosophy, though it may strive towards the unattain- able, the pursuit may not be altogether called vain. In the exact sciences there is also the unattainable — in mechanics, per- petual motion — in astronomy, the longitudes — in geometry, the squaring of the circle, have not yet been arrived at. And as in mathematics there is a simple thing that the carpenter has at his fingers' ends, called practical geometry, which serves his pur- pose as well as if he had mastered the six books of Euclid, so there may be found what may be called a working philosophy. 118 MORE ATTACKS. It should perhaps be added that while what has been called a working philosophy is upheld, a caution may be administered against those half-read talkers and pedants who have indeed a very dangerous weapon in their hands. A mere dip into German j)hilosophy will not do. This is what Bacon refers to when writing on atheism. He says that a little philosophy is a dangerous thing — the hint, probably, of Pope's well-known lines, as to "a little learning." Two more circumstances uj)on which accusations have been founded, are Tenny- son's ambition and his retired mode of life. As regards the first it may be safely as- serted that no man can aim too hiofh in art. Tennyson doubtless aims at attaining the excellence of Milton. That does not prove, however, that he hopes to succeed. As to the second shot, a little more must be said. MORE ATTACKS. 119 Most poets have found it necessary to go to *' tlie cool sequestered shade " for con- templation ; to use the cjuaint expression of an old writer, they " sequester themselves from the hurly burly of the worlde/' and their retirement has not suggested that they were consequently contracting their sympathies with ordinary mortals. Neither is the poet, in the present case, in his se- clusion, the world-forgetting or by the world-forgot. It is an old accusation, this want of sympathy with ordinary feelings and passions, and has already been alluded to in these pages. It may be observed with reference to this illiberal attack, how much the poets of all times have sung in praise of solitude and retirement. This is a very different charge from that made by the critic, with so much emphasis, on '^the garden not quite 120 MOKE ATTACKS. bejond tlie busy world." Alluding to some contradictory criticisms on Ben Jonson, Barry Cornwall says, " Thus tliey write in order to sliow us of how little value is opinion, and that nothing can be relied on except facts." It reminds of how when John Wilson Croker, having published anonymously a very fierce satire, he j^^ifter- wards humourously added his portrait, as drawn by the various critics. " He is an infamous scribbler," said one. " He is a well-educated gentleman," said another. One publication, dealing in comparisons, said, " He is a monkey, and a lawyer, and a tavern waiter, and a dancing master, and a trout stream" — all, of course, in different parts of the work ; and according to the manner of the times he is similarly de- scribed in another reply to his satire, by the epithets dragon, badger, goose, and Judas MORE ATTACKS. 121 Iscarlot. Croker adds, " These sketches, ivhen reconciled together, will, I dare swear, make a most strikino* likeness." It is a stronger testimony in favour of se- clusion than that of the poet's to find one, of ':he ready wit and sparkling talents that Syd- ney Smith possessed, speaking in its favour — with such social gifts one would not be surprised to find him saying everything for society. He, however, said, " A man can do without his own approbation in much society, but he must make great exertions to gain it when he is alone ; without it I am convinced solitude is not to be en- dured." It seems also hard, though not per- haps impossible, for a man who mixes much in the world, especially in the busy part of it, to be a poet. He must see too much of the hoUowness and selfishness, the petty strifes, the shams, the tricks, to be 122 MORE ATTACKS. able to keep his mind, his soul, pure and elevated. That separation from the world strength- ens the power of understanding men — the power of understanding the human heart— and adds to the appreciation or rather ap- prehension of character, seems a hazardous statement, but, nevertheless, that it is so is borne out by instances that have come under every one's own observation. The anomaly, as it seems, might be accounted for by the freshness with which the student who emerges from his retirement regards what passes before him, and what is so common to others as not to attract ordinary observation excites his attention. An in- stance of this is Eugene Aram. A very carefully-drawn character is that of the schoolmaster in Lord Lytton's family, on whose history the novel is founded. So MORE ATTACKS. 123 faithfully is the portrait drawn, so ap- parent is the undeniable impress of truth, that no excuse will be needed for its being here quoted : — " Some men emerge from their seclusion and find, all at once, a power to dart into the minds, and drag- forth the motives of those they see ; it is a sort of second sight, born with them, not acquired. And Aram, it may be, rendered yet more acute by his profound and ha- bitual investigations of our metaphysical frame, never quitted his solitude to mix with others without penetrating into the broad traits or prevalent infirmities their characters possessed. In this he differed from the scholar tribe, and even in ab- straction was mechanically observant and vigilant.'^ CHAPTER IX. CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. — What ails me, may I not, as well as they Eake up some fur-worn tales, that smothered lay In chimney corners, smoked with winter fires, To read and rock to sleep our drowsy sires ? jN"© man his threshold better knows, than I Brute's first arrival, and first victory ; St. Greorge's sorrel, and his cross of blood ; Arthur's round board, or Caledonian wood, Or holy battles of bold Charlemaine ; "What were his knights did Salem's siege maintain ; How the mad rival of fair Angelice Was physicked from the new-found paradise : High stories these. Hall's Satyres, book vi. CHAPTEE IX. CRUMBS mOM THE ROUND TABLE. Descriptions of the fairest wig'its, And beauty maKing beautiful old rhyme, In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights. Shakspeaee, Sonnet evi. Dominie Sampson. — Sydney Smith on "Writers and Speakers after the Flood. — Authorities on Arthu- rian Legend. — Percy's Reiiqiies. — David Garrick and " Spoil your own Bible, sir !" — Shakspeare, Tennyson, and the Old Ballads. — A First Nibble at the Round Table. — Sir Galahad. — Christmas and Chanticleer, and Evil Spirits. — Gareth and Lynette and Noses !— Comic Noses. — Sterae, Foote, and Dickens. — Leigh Hunt. — Novelists and their Hero- ine's Noses. — The " Turn-up" Nose. — La Fontaine at the Chateau Thierry.— Lovelace, the Cavalier Poet, and Althea. Within the limits of this little book it would be impossible to write of the Ar- thurian legends with any satisfaction. 128 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. Opening this subject Alps on Alps do in- deed arise, and, like Dominie Sampson in the library, we might, at the sight of the numerous and ponderous tomes on chivalry and romance, grin like an ogre, throw up our arms and, swinging them like the sails of a windmill, shout '' Prodigious !" till the roof rung — not with our raptures, but with our dismay, for as Sydney Smith remarked on some voluminous writers or long-winded speakers, these people forget that there was such a thing as the Flood. " If they had lived before it," he says, " with the patri- archs, they Diight have talked any stuff they pleased ; but do let them remember how little time they have under the new order of things." It may, however, be here noted that the inquirer can consult the following authorities : — Owen's Camh. Biog., Whit- taker's History of Manchester^ Geoffrey of CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 129 Monmouth's History of the Britons, War- ton's History of English Poetry, Buchanan's Ilistoria Scotia, Ellis's Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, Dunlop's His- tory of Fiction, Nennius's HistoriaBritonum, &c., &c., &c. An attempt also has been made to popu- larize the old stories in Romances of the Middle Ages, by Greorge W. Cox and Eustace Jones (Longmans, 1871), in which the principal stories are given in half the space occupied by Sir Thomas Mallory's version. An account of these originals, it may be added, is to be found in the Dis- sertation on the Ancient Metrical Romances prefixed to the Arthur Ballads, in Percy's Reliques of Antient English Poetry — a work that we have another reason for men- tioning here. 9 130 CRUMBS FEOM THE EOUND TABLE. Bishop Percy's collection of old ballads seems to be a book ever destined to have a great influence on poets. Sir Walter Scott was suckled on that glorious collection, and the influence of the old ballads on Tenny- son is plainly to be traced. I remember to have seen a modernized version, yet, with all its good intentions to make the "reliques" more acceptable to the million, that is as great a mistake as a Bowdlerized Shakspeare. David Garrick, perhaps irre- verently, though at the same time empha- tically, said to the prim parson who soli- cited his subscription for a Family Shak- speare, " Spoil your oivn Bible, sir, but let ours alone." The antique look may be a little distasteful to a child — and it is in tender years that the acquaintance should be begun — still with a parent's help he will be enabled to make out enough to awaken CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 131 his curiosity, and in after years will return to the volume with double zest and pleasing reminiscences of early childhood. Percy's Reliques may be called in the consanguinity of literature a cater-cousin to Shakspeare. It is deserving of remembrance that Shak- speare's works — and these ballads are largely used by him — contain the following allusions which may be referred to as illus- trations of Tennyson : — King Cophetiia and the Beggar, vide Tennyson's piece of the Beggar Maid — 2nd part Henry IF., act iv. sc. 3 ; Richard II. ; Love' s Labour'^ & lost, activ. sc. 1 ; Borneo and Juliet, act ii. sc. 1. Guinever in the Boy and the Mantle — Love's Labour's Lost, act iv. sc. 1. Camelot, where Arthur held his court in the west, alluded to in King Lear, act ii. sc. 2. A distich from Sir Bevis, quoted, ibid., act iii. sc. 4. The little that is to be said in this chap- 9—2 132 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. ter on the legends of Arthur and his Table Round can only be compared to the small bite of sheep grazing on ground that larger cattle have gone over, or it would perhaps be more proper to liken it to the nibble of a mouse at a big round cheese. As a first nibble Sir Galahad may be taken — the Knight of Purity, ■ "Witli manly grace, Yet maiden meekness in his face — as Scott describes him in the Bridal of Triormain. Here are Tennyson's lines on which a note is to be made : — Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres I find a magic bark ; I leap on board : no helmsman steers : I float till all is dark. A gentle sound, an awful light I Three angels bear the holy Grrail : CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 133 With folded feet, in stoles of white, On sleeping wings they sail. Ah, blessed vision ! blood of Grod ! My spirit beats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory slides. And star-like mingles with the stars. "When on my goodly cbarger borne Thro' dreaming towns I go, The cock crows ere the Christmas morn, The streets are dumb with snow. This was an old superstition as regards Chanticleer that he crows all night, the night before Christmas, to drive away bad spirits who retire " swindging the scaly horrors of their tails " at the sound, and as Horatio in Hamlet says, ^' So I have heard, and do in part believe it." In the first act of the wonderful play the ghost, it will be remembered, retires when the cock crows : — Bernardo. It was about to speak, when the coc k crew. 134 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. Horatio. And then it started like a gnilty thing Upon a fearful summons. I have heard The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god of day ; and, at his warning, "Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, The extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine : and of the truth herein This present object made probation. MarceUus. It faded {i.e., vanished) on the crowing of the cock. Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes "Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, This bird of dawning singeth all night long ; And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad ; The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike, JSTo fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm. So hallow'd and so gracious is the time Leaving the bird of dawning we come to rather a different subject, namely, noses ■ — " beaky" ones the hmnourist probably suggests, but he is wrong, it is quite the reverse ; it is such a nose as Lynette's, CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 135 wliicli slie " nipt with petulant thumb and finger" at Gareth, the kitchen-knave as she calls him, that occasions a few notes as to how the authors have treated that feature. The nose is a feature of all others that from them has received, full attention. It seems, however, to be regarded chiefly as susceptible of comic treatment. Bardolph, who carried the lantern in the poop, and w^ho is told to put his nose between the sheets and do the office of a warming-pan, reminds us of the old lines Nose, nose, nose, nose, And who gave thee that jolly red nose? Sinniment and ginger, nutmegs and cloves, And that gave me my jolly red nose. Havens ceoft's Beuteromela. How unctuously Sterne in Tristram Shandy discourses on Slawkenbergius' jDro- 136 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. boscis — it can hardly be called a nose — that kept the town of Strasburg from eat- ing, drinking, sleeping, or praying for seven-and-twenty days with excitement. It seems that the subject was a standing joke in Sterne's time. It is told that in Tate Wilkinson's company of theatrical performers that went the York circuit — by which means, probably, the circumstance that is about to be told came under the notice of the Hev. Mr. Yorick — there was a famous fiddler who was nightly saluted by the gods with " Play up. Nosey !" It became so celebrated a joke that Foote alluded to it in one of his prologues : — Have you not all roared from pit to upper rows, And all the jest was — wliat ? a fiddler's nose ; Pursue your mirth, each night the joke grows stronger Eor as you fret the man his nose looks longer. Nor could so powerful an instrument CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 137 of merriment escape Dickens. In Little Dorrit we have a Monsieur Rigaud, on whose face when he laughed a change took place, as the author of FicJcwicJc describes it, more remarkable than prepossessing. His moustache went up under his nose, and his nose came down over his moustache in a very sinister and cruel manner. After- wards in the same book, a man is travelling along the road to Chalons, and comes to a cabaret called the Break of Day ; the man turned the handle of the Break of Day door, and limped in. The mysterious in- dividual wrapped in a great cloak is made known to the reader by one of those charac- teristic touches of Dickens — an observation is made by some one which causes the nose of this person to come down and the mous- tache to go up. I believe there is a facetious work on 138 CRUMBS EBOM THE ROUND TABLE. tills rich subject called Notes on Noses, but tliouofb Lavater, after describino^ a nose of the highest order, enthusiastically exclaims, *' For such a nose a man might give king- doms !" few seem to have taken up the subject so seriously. It might be written on pathetically and sadly, for not to men- tion the blue noses of which Artemus Ward discourses, what is more gloomily tragic than the faces of some comedians — at least they call themselves so — who with a mere daub of red paint on their noses imagine that the place of vis comica can be sup- plied. Novelists with their feminine characters deal largely in finely -chiselled noses, and poets talk of the straight nose, but they seem to get no further. " The poets have been puzzled to know what to do with it,'^ says Leigh Hunt. " They are generally CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 139 contented with describinof it as straiofht and in good proportion. The straight nose, quoth Dante — II dritto naso. ' Her nose directed streight/ says Chaucer. ' Her nose is neither too long nor too short/ say the Arabian Nights . Ovid makes no men- tion of a nose. Ariosto says of Alcina's (not knowing what else to say) that envy could not find fault with it. Anacreon contrives to make it o-o shares with the cheek. Boccaccio, in one of his early works, the Ameto, where he has an epithet for almost every noun, is so puzzled what to say of a nose, that he calls it odorante, the smelling nose." Leigh Hunt goes on to notice a difficulty that commentators have with Catullus as to whether the poet wrote " Salve, nee nimio puella naso " — Hail, damsel, with bj no means too much nose — ■ 140 CEUMBS FROM THE HOUND TABLE. or " Salve, nee minimo puella naso" — Hail damsel, with bj no means nose too little. In the same article it is observed, " Marie Antoinette was not the worse for an aquiline nose," at least in her triumphant days, when she swam through an antecham- ber like a vision, and swept away the understanding of Mr. Burke (it might be added in connection with the present sub- ject — and caused him to lament that the age of chivalry was gone so that ten thousand swords might leap from their scabbards, etc. !). But if a royal nose has anything to do with a royal will she would have been the better for one of a less dominant description at last. A Boman nose may establish a tyranny : according to Marmontel, a little turn-up nose over- threw one. At all events, it is more femi- CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. • 141 nine ; and La Fontaine was of Marmontel's opinion. Writing to the Duchess of Bouillon who had expressed a fear that he would grow tired of Chateau Thierry, he says : — Peut-on s'ennuyer en des lieux Honores par les pas, eclaires par les yeux, D'une aimable, et vive Princesse, A pied blanc et mignon, a brune et longue tresse ? Nez trousse, c'est uu cbarme eucor selou mon sens, C'en est meme un des plus puissants. Pour moi, les temps d'aimer est passe, je I'avoue ; Et je merite qu'on me loue De ce lib re et sincere aveu, Dont pourtant le public se souciera tres peu. Que j'aime ou n'aime pas, c'est pour lui meme chose. Mais s'il arrive que mon coeur Retourne a I'avenir dans sa premiere erreur. Nez aquilins et longs n'en seront pas la cause. How can one tire in solitude and nooks Graced by the steps, enlighten'd by the looks, Of the most piquant of Princesses, With little darling foot, and long dark tresses ? 142 CRUMBS FROM. THE ROUND TABLE. A turn-up nose, too, between you and me, Has something that attracts me mightily. My loving days I must confess are over, A fact it does me honour to discover; Though I suppose whether I love or not That brute, the public, will not care a jot. The dev'l a bit will their hard hearts look to it. But should it happen some fine day, That anything should lead me round that way, A long and beaky nose will certainly not do it. What has been a difficulty with other poets, so long apparently unsurmountable and consequently evaded, has been mas- tered by Tennyson. A late novelist has remarked that we need no longer have recourse to the French language for the word retroussee. for we have in the English language a phrase now supplied that fully answers the purpose. It was hitherto almost despaired of as impossible with any decorum to give one's heroine this species CRUMBS FKOM THE ROUND TABLE. 143 of nose and still preserve seriousness. As one of the reviewers remarked, the unhappy author who might attempt it, together with his heroine, is sure to be laughed at. Doubtless the digression that has here been committed is a long one. With the purpose of illustrative notes, as well as a deep feeling of gratitude which it has been shown has been most fairly earned, less could hardly be said on the following pas- sage from the latest Arthurian Legend : — Gareth, having been released from his vow to serve as a kitchen thrall, is made a knight in secret by King Arthur, and promised the first quest. He has not long to wait, for That same day there passed into the hall A damsel of liigh lineage, and a brow May-blossom, aud a chetk of apple-blossom, Hawk-eyes; and lightly was her slender nose Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower. 144 CRUMBS FHOM THE ROUND TABLE. Naturally this damsel with such a nose is of a pert disposition, and we find her call- ing her knight by such names as dish- washer, broach-turner, scullion, and kitchen - knave ; and on one occasion she is described as having Nipt her slender nose "Wifcli petulant thumb and finger, shrilling " Hence ! Avoid, thou smellest all of kitchen grease." In Gareth and Lynette occurs a thought pleasing to so many of the workers and bread-winners in this work-a-day world, to many *' chained to the drudgery of the desk's dark wood," that The thrall in person may be free in soul, suggesting, it may be observed, memories of the lines of the Cavalier poet, Richard Lovelace, to his Althea : — Stone walls do not a prison make Nor iron bars a cage ; cru:mbs from the round table. 145 Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage : If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, Angels alone that soar above Enjoy such liberty. 10 CHAPTER X. THE OEIGINAL ROMANCES. JIne ii300b io huxnz, oi'bt toinc ta bdnkc, olbe fmnbcs \o he rouit^rsattt, mxb 0.1b c b^^kce io vzwH in. Oilie b00kc5 haxte great abbniitagc ^f the nt\3)tf tohklt is, t^ ii3it, that th^ei) s^eake the tnteth, thc^ haue Qraitite, mxh Iboz sh^tu authoritieof Inhich it follotueth that toe mag reab them toithout scvxx^h anb alltbge th£m toithaut shame. The Familiar Epistles of Sir Anthonie of Gueuara Preacher, Chronicler, and Counseller to the Emperour Charles the Eifth. Translated out of the Spanish tongue by Edward Hellowes, G-roome of the Leash. Imprinted at London for Ealph Newbeeeie, 1577. 10—2 CHAPTER X. THE ORIGINAL ROMANCES. Herein inay be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, bia- manity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowards, murder, hate, virtue, and sin ; do after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renown. And for to pass the time this book shall be pleasant to read it ; but for to give faith and belief, that all is true that is contained therein, ye be at your liberty. Prologue by Caxtois' to Sir Thomas Malory's Morte (T Arthur, The Originals and the Arthurs of the Later Poets. — A Hint for Managers. — Milton. — Cervantes and Don Quixote. — Names of Pamous Swords. — Mer- lin and Vivien. — Morte cf Arthur. — The Immortal [ Druggist of De Quincy's Confessions of an Opium Eater. — Peculiar Modes of going off the Stage of Life. 150 THE ORIGINAL ROMANCES. It is unnecessary to refer to the importance of the Arthurian Legends. The inquirer into the history of Uterature is aware of all tliat. The reader, however, may be here reminded of one leading fact that three of these pieces, San G)xtel, Fercival, and Lan- celot du Lac were among the first prose romances in the French language. Origi- nally, it may be mentioned, they were com- posed in metre, being the easiest mode of holding them in memory before the days of printing. Among the books that issued from Caxton's press w^as the Morte cVAr- thur (1485), a translation by Sir Thomas Malory, from the French. To the student of Chaucer and Spenser and even Shak- speare some knowledge of these romances is a help. One of these that celebrates the deeds of Richard Cceur-de-Lion, the pecu- liar patron of chivalry and consequently a THE ORIGINAL ROMANCES. 151 favourite with the old minstrels — printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 15iZ8, is referred to by Shakspeare in King John (act i. sc. 1), and after the manner of the dramatist's mad people, a distich is put into the mouth of Edgar in King Lear (act iii. sc. 4), as has been noticed, taken from the romance of Sir Bevis. In these pages there has been found occasion to mention those later authors who have occupied themselves with the blameless king, or with the lesser lights that revolved round that great light. It is somewhat to be regretted that Sir Walter Scott's renown as a novelist has, to a great degree, thrown a shadow over such pieces as the Bridal of Triermain. It is to be feared that a similar fate will belong to Lord Lytton's King Arthur, as his fame as novelist, dramatist, or essayist principally 152 THE OEIGTNAL EOMANCES. occu23ies attention. Dryden also took up the theme and adapted it for stage pur- poses. He produced *^ a dramatic opera '' which, though named here, appears to have been more a vehicle for music and machi- nery than a work of literary importance. Here is a hint for managers who might be able to do something striking in the way of scenic effect with Sir Galahad and the Vision of the Holy Grail. Garrick after- wards altered and revived Dry den's piece, and with the aid of what is described as ^' splendid scenery " it proved a success, though the "splendid scenery" was pro- bably very different from what in the days of Telbin and Brew would be considered such. Sir Richard Blackmore is to be added to the list, for his poem on the subject is an im- portant work — in size ! The " endless line " is an epithet that Pope has endur- THE ORIGINAL ROMANCES. 153 ingly fixed to the name of the industrious versifier who was one of those who were Sleepless themselves to give others sleep: Milton, who long hung about the subject with love, seems to have been scared from it by the satire of Cervantes which had brought chivalry and its belongings into ridicule for a time, though it is to be re- membered that it has been shrewdly suspected that Cervantes was himself, at one period of his life, as much bitten with the mania as Don Quixote whom he laughs at. ''I betook me," says Milton, describ- ing his youtliful studies, " among those lofty fables and romances, which recount in solemn cantos, the deeds of knighthood, founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over all Christendom." After a noble vindication of the romances 154 THE OEIGINAL ROMANCES. from the intolerant and illiberal attacks of some writers of tlie time, Milton records how " from the laureat fraternity of the poets, riper years and the ceaseless round of study and reading led him to the shady spaces of philosophy." Through Paradise Lost it may be remembered occur allusions to this early reading of What resounds In fable or romance of Uther's son, Begirt with British and Armoric knights. Book i. line 578. • And in the Ninth Book he refers to his choice of a subject, and how he discarded the classic : — ISTot sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deem'd, chief mastery to dissect, With long and tedious havock, fabled knights In battles feigned : the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom THE OEIGINAL KOMANCES. 155 Unsung : or to describe races and games Or tilting furniture, emblazon'd shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knigbts At joust and tournament. The Arthurian legend tells us that at the great battle of Badon, near Totnes, in Devonshire, the king slew 470 men with, his good sword Caliburn or Excalibur, given him by Merlin, and his lance Kone : his shield bore the name of Pridwin. There were other swords, famous like King Ar- thur's Excalibur, but Bobadil — Ben Jonson's master creation — considered none like his. *' It is the most fortunate sword that ever rid on poor gentleman's thigh ; shall I tell you, sir ? you talk of morglay, excalibur, durindana, or so : but I lend no credit to that is fabled of ^em, I know the virtue of mine own, and therefore I dare the boldier maintain it." Morglay was the sword of 156 THE ORIGINAL ROMANCES. Bevis of Southampton, renowned in ancient ballad, while Durindana as the sword of Orlando, as may be remembered, makes a figure in the romance of Don Quixote (vol. iii. chajD. xxvi.). Besides these the following are a few that occupy a conspicuous posi- tion : — Rinaldo's, in Orlando Furioso, is called Fusberta ; Askelon was St. George's sword ; Doolin, of Mayence, celebrated in French romance, had a sword that he called Merveilleuse (wonderful) ; the sword of Haco the First, King of Norway, was called Quern-biter (foot-breadth) ; Edward the Confessor's l^lunt sword of State, em- blematic of mercy, was known as Curtana, and the Boyal sword of England bore that name up to the reign of Henry III. Ma- homet's scimitar, which fell to his share out of the spoil of the battle of Bekr, was called Dhu'l Fakar, which means " the THE ORIGINAL ROMANCES. 157 Trenchant," quite a different word from the Indian one for a religious beggar, and shall I add, no connexion with the Fakir of Oolu — the latest offspring of Barnumism. A sword being called an '* Andrew Ferrara," merely refers to a celebrated maker, as a waterproof coat is called a Mackintosh, or a violin a Straduarius. That wonderful old man. Merlin, from whom Arthur obtained his sword, and who succumbed to the fascinations of Vivien, though at first he half disdained her, and Though doubtful felt the flattery, and at times Would flatter his own wish in age for love. And half believe her true, suggests memories of Samson and Delilah — it is really only an example that is fre- quently to be found, of history repeating itself One of Merlin's prophecies was of 158 THE ORIGINAL ROMANCES. the king, wliicli i'S given in an old chronicle printed at Antwerp, 1493, "He sayd that his deth shall be doubteous and shullen for evermore — for men wyt not whether that he lyveth or is dede." For a long time, indeed, it was believed that King Arthur had not died, but that he had merely gone away until his wounds were cured, and would again return and lead the Britons on to victory. Legend tells of his being borne away down the river in a barge, as is described in Tenny- son's Mo7'te d Arthur. And the idea has been repeated about others. Mr. De Quincy,inhis Confessions of an Opium JEater in his wonderful description of the druggist that first sold him opium, says " He has ever since existed in my mind as the beatific \?ision of an immortal druggist, sent down on earth on a special mission to myself. THE ORIGINAL ROMANCES. 159 And it confirms me in this way of consider- ing him, that when I next came up to London I sought him near the stately Pan- theon, and found him not : and thus to me, who knew not his name (if indeed he had one), he seemed rather to have vanished from Oxford Street than to have removed in any bodily fashion. The reader may choose to think of him as possibly no more than a sublunary druggist ; it may be so ; but my faith is better : I believe him to have evanesced or evaporated — so unwill- ingly would I connect any mortal remem- brances with that hour, and place, and creature, that first brought me acquainted with the celestial drug." It is too evident a fact to be asserted, that the druggist, whether an ordinary in- dividual or not, is immortalized in the 160 THE ORIGINAL ROMANCES. amber of De Quincy's Confessions. De Quincy adds : — " Evanesced : — tliis way of going off the stage of life appears to have been well- known in the 17th century, but at that time to have been considered a peculiar privilege of blood-royal, and by no means to be allowed to druggists ; for about the year 1686, a poet of rather ominous name (and who, by-the-bye, did ample justice to his name), viz., Mr. Flat-man, in speaking of the death of Charles II., expresses his surprise that any prince should commit so absurd an act as dying : because, says he, *' ' Kings should disdain to die and only disappea7'.^ They should abscond^ that is, into the other world." King Arthur may be said to have so absconded, though so un- poetical a phrase is unpleasant. CHAPTEE XL COINCIDENCES OR SIMILARITIES. Mayhap ye will look into my basket, kind masters and fair mistresses. I have cheap wares and light ones. Nothing that smacks of a friar's cow], or an astrologer's petticoat, or a leech's sleeping draught ; but flaunting love-knots and sweet comfits, and spiced ginger-bread and painted rattles in plenty. Come ! give me a small coin to feed on, and I will give ye a small folly to laugh at. Anciejst Autoltcus, quoted by Eliza Cook. Jottings from my Journal. 11 CHAPTER XL COINCIDENCES OR SIMILARITIES. Some words excel in verfcue and discover A rare conclusion thrice repeated over. QuAKLES, on " Scriptum Est.'" Divine Fancies. The voice is Jacob's voice ; but the hands are the hands of Esau, Genesis xxvii. 22. How they occur. — D'Israeli on Literary Idling. — Plagiarism. — Sterne and Barton's Anatomy. — A Similarity to Pope — to Chaucer, — The P&rase, " Diamond me no Diamonds." — Not too Grood. — Flowers springing from the Dead. — Juvents. Mundi. — Better to have Loved and Lost. — Drink to me with thine Eyes. — To know her was to love her. — Doing Good by Stealth. — Woman the Lesser Man. — tbat I were a Glove upon that Hand ! — For- tune's Wheel. — And Eectjreences of Thought. — Tears, Idle Tears. — Wroth with Weakness. • 11—2 164 COINCIDENCES OH SIMILARITIES. I WOULD notice here what some writers have alluded to as the undesigned coinci- dences of Tennyson. No one can so fully understand how these occur as the literary man. A man's reading becomes a part of his mind, and with pen in his hand the thoughts suggested by other writers flow from his brain as if they were his own cre^ition ; the result of old reading coming across his mind is perfectly undistinguish- able from what is purely original thought ; but, apart from this, two writers, one of whom has never read the works, or kuown in any way the ideas of the other, may fall into the same line of thought. The elder D'Israeli in his Curiosities of Literature has noted down some very curious poetical similarities of the greatest poets, but at the same time the pursuit of collectiug these has been characterized, and COINCIDENCES OR SIMILARITIES. 1G5 doubtless justly so, as a kind of literary idling. Some people have 'indulged in this and gathered together similarities between lines in In Memoriam and certain passages in Shakspeare's sonnets. This shall not be pursued here, it would be preferred to make a few random notes of scattered por- tions of the poet's works. To give the reader an instance of these undesigned coincidences or recurrences of thought, and to show the absurdity of the idea of pla- giarism, it may be mentioned that the lines about to be given from Pope are so well known that if borrowing or anything of that kind were attempted — if such was necessary to so rich a thinker as Tennyson — it would be sure to lead to detection. Plagiarists go to obscure or forgotten writers. Thouirh we don't hold Sterne to 166 COINCIDENCES OK SIMILARITIES. be a plagiarist he may be instanced here, as there is jnst a show of plausibihty in the accusation. When he availed himself of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy that book was little read — the work which students and literary men have since made so much use of appears to have been almost un- known when Sterne first appeared on the horizon — but Sterne has fully re-paid that author for what he took, by the attention that he has directed to his work. The Tennysonian coincidence that may be given here as an instance is in the fol- lowing lines from Pope's Eloisa and Ahe- lard, and from In Memoriam — Pope's lines are : — When tbouglit meets thougM ere from the lips apart, And each warm wisli springs mutual from the heart. COINCIDENCES OR SIMILARITIES. 167 Tennyson has it : — And thought leapt out to wed with thought, Ere thought would wed itself with speech. ►I- The following lines acknowledge that the idea enunciated in them has been sung by another : — This is a truth, the poet sings, That sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering hap- pier things. Locksley Hall. Either Dante's Inferno (book v. st. 121) or Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide (book iii. line 1625) is here referred to, and a similar idea is expressed by Boethius in his work on the Consolations of Philosophy (lib. ii.) As a kind of marginalia illustrative of some of Tennyson's pieces the following notes are made, suggested by Hues of the 168 COINCIDENCES OE SIMILAEITIES. Laureate's — it would, however, be mani- festly absurd to speak of these as similarities. When in one of the Idylls of the King (Elaine) the poet uses the angry form of expression " Diamond me no diamonds, prize me no prizes," he avails himself of a very favourite Elizabethanism. All the dramatists of the period use it, Shakspeare and Beaumont and Fletcher especially, while in the one play, A New Way to pay Old Debts, Massinger makes use of it on at least three separate occasions. It occurs also in an old book bearing the appropriate title of Microcynicon ; or, Six Snarling Sa- tires (1599). The force of the expression for dramatic purposes may be seen by the following ex- tract. On the entry of the Duke of York (Shakspeare's Richard IL act ii. sc. 3) Bolingbroke kneels addressing him, COIXCIDENCES OE, SIMILARITIES. 169 My noble uncle ! The Buke of York. — Show me tliy humble beart, and not tby knee, whose duty is deceivable and false. BoUngbroke. — My gracious uncle ! — ■ York. — Tut, tut ! Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle. I am no traitor's uncle ; and that word — grace, in an ungracious mouth, is but pro- fane. " She is all faults that hath no faults at all," sings Tennyson, evidently believing in the idea of Wordsworth (and which it will be seen he carries further) — of A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food ; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. Lines hegimiing " She was a phantom of delight." And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land. In Memoriain, xviii. 170 COINCIDENCES AND SIMILARITIES. Lay her i' the earth ; — ' And from her fair and unpolluted flesh, May violets spring ! Hamlety act v., sc. 1. The idea of roses and other sweet flowers growing out of the breast of a dead maiden occurs in some of the old ballads, and it is also remembered, by the facetious use of it in the song popular some years ago, of Lord Lovel, We are ancients of the earth And in the morning of the times. The Day Dream. — V Envoi. This thought occurs in Bacon's Advance- ment of Learning (book i., ed. 1605), but even there it is not the first time it was uttered. We are referred to Giordano Bruno's Cena di Cenere, published in 1584, and it also occurs in George Hakewill's COINCIDENCES AND SIMILARITIES. 171 Apologie or Declaration of the Poiver and Providence of God in the Government of the World (London, 1627), and in Pascal's preface to Treatise on Vacuum. The French have a proverb " Cevix qui n'aiment pas, ont rarement de grandes joies : ceux qui aiment, out souvent de grandes tristesses." — " Those who do not love, rarely experience great enjoyments, while those who do love often suffer great griefs." So then the conclusion must be come to that 'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all. May not the French proverb have suggested the thought contained in these lines, at all events they seem the inevitable result to be arrived at ; and the sentiment uttered by the poet, however this may be, appears 172 COINCIDENCES AND SIMILAEITIES. to have been believed in by " our lively neighbours." Look tliro' mine eyes with thine. True wife, Eouncl my true heart thine arms entwine ; My other dearer life in life, Look thro' my very soul with thine ! The Miller's Daughter. Drink to me only with thine eyes And I will pledge with mine ; Or leave a kiss but in the cup, And I'll not look for wine. Ben" Jonson. The Forest. To Celia. Tennyson's words are not the words of rare old Ben, but the idea, if not the same, at least is similar, and this chapter, be it remembered, is cautiously headed '' Simi- larities." , '^ Such a one do I remember, whom to look on was to love. Locksley Ball. COINCIDENCES AND SIMILARITIES. 173 To know her was to love her. Rogers' Jacqueline. To see her is to love her. — Buens' Bonny Lesley. A like expression is used by the American poet Halleck, and also by Sir Humphrey Davy, and Garrick, writing the epitaph of the dramatic writer Havard — whom "Hea- ven applauded when the curtain fell " — for his tombstone in the parish churchyard of Co vent Garden, describes him as An honest man beloved as soon as known. But Dora stored what little she could gave, And sent it them by stealth, nor did they know AYho sent it. Dora. Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame, Po good by stealth, and blush to find it fame. Pope. — Epilogue to the Satires, line 1*35. Ilalph Allen, whose unassuming benevo- 174 COINCIDENCES AND SIMILARITIES. lence is recorded in Pope's lines, distin- guished himself while postmaster of Bath, by some mail-coach reforms, but he is best remembered as the friend of Fielding, who has gratefully handed down his portrait to posterity in the character of Allworthy, in the novel Tom Jones. Woman is the lesser man, and all tby passions matched with mine Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine. Locksley Hall. And yet believe me, good as well as ill. Woman's at best a contradiction still — Heaven, when it tries to polish all it can Its last, best work, forms but a softer man. Pope, Moral Essays^ epistle ii., on the Characters of Women. This idea of man's rib all the world has made up its mind to accept, says the author of an article entitled The Weaker Vessel. COINCIDENCES AND SIMILAEITIES. 175 And I would be the necklace, And all day long to fall and rise" Upon her balmy bosom, "With her laughter or her sighs, And I would lie so light, so light, I scarce should be unclasp'd at night. The Miller's Daughter. See how she leans her cheek upon her hand ! 0, that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek. Romeo and Juliet. A contemporary writer of Shakspeare, Shirley, ridicules this, mucli after the man- ner burlesque writers of the present day unmercifully seize hold of the love scenes of modern plays — Oh that I were a flea upon that lip, &c. Enid's song in the Idylls of the King of '' Fortune and her Wheel/' seems to have 176 COINCIDENCES AND SIMILARITIES. been suggested by Kent's address to that goddess in King Lear (act ii. sc. 2) : — Fortune, good night : smile once more; turn thy wheel. It may be remembered that in another part of this play (act i. sc. 2), Shakspeare allows Fortune and the ruling of the stars to have as little influence as Enid in her song admits of, when she declares that " man is man and master of his fate." " This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick of fortune we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars." "Tut," exclaims Edmund, Gloster s son, " I should have been what I am had the m.aidenliest star in the firma- ment twinkled on my birth." It has been seen how the poet, wander- ing among the lonely farms of Lincolnshire, in like manner fashioned in his mind from Shakspeare, the dejected Mariana, in one of those granges. COINCIDENCES AND SIMILARITIES. 177 ►I- To conclude this chapter, a note must be made of a couple of instances, in which — shall it be said ? — Tennyson exhibits a simi- larity to himself — he does not derive a hint from another poet, but seems, as it were, to steal from an earlier production of his own. Scarcely any author is free from these repetitions or recurrences of thought, and instead of regarding them as any fault, they might be looked upon with fondness. Mr. Lewes, on the other hand, writing of the Principles of Success in Literature^ speaks of this as *' the difficulty of disen- gaging the mind from the thraldom of sen- sation and habit, and escaping from the pressure of objects immediately present, or of ideas which naturally emerge, Imked^ together as they are by old associations. We have to see anew, to think anew. It 12 ]78 COINCIDENCES AND SIMILARITIES. requires great vigour to escape from the old and spontaneously-recurrent trains of thought." This is to a great extent true, but how valuable to the student of the man through the medium of his writings, are these evidently uppermost ideas in the mind of Shakspeare, for instance. We all know G. P. B. James's characteristic and recurrent opening of a novel — his two tra- vellers on horseback, winding their way down a mountain road, in the red sunset, the one dark and elderly, the other young and fair, &c. This far-famed repetition will save further examples. There are, however, other characteristics besides those of diction and the mannerisms of authors. Men who are constantly writing are apt to have some principal leading ideas, and some scraps of information, probably from child- hood, that are continually revolving in their COINCIDENCES AND SIMILARITIES, 179 minds, and which unconsciously fall from their pen. The ease with which such anecdotes, facts, similes, or whatever they may be, flow from the writer, frequently causes them to constitute some of the most admired portions of his writings. As an in- stance, take one of our greatest novelists, Thackeray himself ; how often the oriental custom of throwing the handkerchief to the accepted lady, has been appositely and effectively introduced by him in his pages. Such passages as these often are thus among his best, and it is not to be doubted that if a collection of the Beauties of Thack- eray was compiled,- such as Dodd's Beauties of Shakspeare, that not only would the judicious selector cull his most Thackeray- esque passages, but among these beauties would be found the greater part of his si- 12—2 180 COINCIDENCES AND SIMILARITIES. milarities. By their proximity, and also by the absence of connection, the mind not being carried on so rapidly, these would be the more easily recognised. Such is the case with regard to Shakspearian similarities, which must strike the reader who takes up the well-known volume of Beauties referred to. In Tennyson idle tears and idle sorrows — " the helpless wrath of tears," that we have in Enoch Arden — appears more than once. Eyes with idle tears are wefcy Idle habit links us yet — The Miller'* s Daughter — is echoed in the line : — Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean. The Princess^ canto iv. " Weakness to be wroth with weakness," is one of the remembered lines of LocJcslcf/ Hall, and in the Idylls of the King, where Geraint is about to strike at the dwarf, COINCIDENCES AND SIMILARITIES. 18 1 but refrains, a slight iteration may be noticed : — His quick instinctive hand Caught at the hilt, as to abolish him ; But he, from his exceeding manfalness, And from nobility of temperament, Wroth to be wroth with such a worm, refrained. CHAPTER XII. REPUBLICANISMS AND TENNYSON's GARDEN. Haste to the gardens of delight, Blest scene ! where plenteous pleasures grow ; "Where fruits luxuriant charm the sight. And court the hand from ev'ry bough. 'No churls are bid to Nature's treat ; The goods the Gods provide employ ; To thank the givers, pluck and eat, And satisfy the soul with joy. Judith. — A sacred drama by Bickeestaff. A gardein saw I ful of blossomed bowis, Upon a river, in a grene mede, There as swetenesse evermore inough is, With floures, white, blewe, yelowe, and rede, And colde welle streames, nothing dede (i.e., not stagnant), That swommen fulle of smale fishes light. With finnes rede, and scales silver bright. Chaucer's Assembly of Foides. — Mr. Robert Bell's edition, p. 196. What can ennoble sot or slaves or cowards ? Alas ! not all the blood of all the Howards. Pope's Essay on Man, ep. iv. CHAPTEE XII. REPUBLICANISMS AND TENNYSON's GARDEN. Second Cloivn. "Was he (Adam) a gentleman ? First Clown. He was the first that ever bore arms. Second Clown. Why, he had none. First Clown. J What, art a heathen ? How dost thou understand the scripture? The scripture says, Adam digg'd ; Could he dig without arms ? Hamlet, act v. sc. 1. The Latest Seed of Time. — Eepublicanism, Virtue rather than Nobility. — The King may make a Nobleman, but cannot make a Gentleman. — Na- ture's Gentlemen. — The Virtuous Villager and the Villainous Squire. — The Grand Old Gardener. — Wat Tyler's Rebellion. — The Gardeners of Litera- ture. — Glasnevin, near Dublin, the Garden of Britain's Augustan Era. — Mrs. Siddons' Tragic Garden. — Tennyson's " Flower Show." — Easy of Imitation and the Garden Seeds. — The Litera- ture of Wrath, &c. I 186 REPUBLICANISMS AND Noting such trifling similarities as that of the poet caUing himself the latest seed of time (in Lady Godiva) with Macbeth ask- ing the witches if they can look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not, seem fairly to come into the class that incurs the depreciatory condemnation of the elder D'Israeli, in the same way, the motto that so many nobles have inscribed on their escut- cheons declaring a preference to cling to the word virtue rather than nobility, which is an idea that is to be found in another form in the verse of Tennyson, may be looked upon in the same light. It can scarcely come under the designation of a poetical similarity, but may be more justly spoken of as an idea long existing in the minds of the people till the poet comes and gives to the airy nothing a local habitation Tennyson's garden. 187 and a name. These things bear a resem- blance to what Pope has said of true wit — True wit is nature to advantage dress' d, What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed. Essay on Criticism, part ii. The Poet Laureate in saying in Lady Clara Vere de Vere, " Tis only noble to be good," asserts what in other words has been said before numberless times. To use Touchstone's expression when he is about to rhyme the name Rosalind for hours ** For a taste :" — memories are suggested of Ben Jonson s Nor stand so mucli on your gentility, "Which is an airy, and mere borrow'd thing "From dead men's dust and bones ; and none of yours, Except you make, or hold it. Evert/ Man in his Humour, act i. sc. 1. Claude Melnotte, the gardener's son, fur- nishes the well-known clap-trap for the 188 EEPUBLICANISMS AND gods of the theatre. " Ah, I was a gentle- man until I turned conspirator ; for honest men are the gentlemen of nature " (Bulwer Lyt ton's Lady of Lyons, act iii.). Then there is the old story of the poor woman asking the king to make her son a gentle- man, and the king replying that he could make him a knight, but heaven only made gentlemen, on which I think there is an old ballad with Burns' s thought. The king can mak' a belted knight. Another old ballad in Percy's collection, Winefrida, supplies us with the line To be noble we'll be good. Then we have the Transpontine and East- end melodrama that so frequently exhibits the virtuous villager with a flowered waist- coat that he thumps as he proclaims to the villamous squire that " an honest heart ever beats beneath," &c. Tennyson's garden. 189 To come to the classics we have in Juve- nal (sat. viii. line 20) ; Nobilitas sola est atqiie unica virtus — Virtue is the only true nobility — or as it has been paraphrased : The insolence of pedigree and the pomp of titles are reduced to nothing when con- trasted with the dignity of true virtue. The following few mottoes jotted down at random will indicate the frequent occur- rence of the idea. Nobilitatis virtus, non stemma, character. Virtue, not pedigree, should cliaracterize nobility. Motto of Eakl of Geosyenoe. Virtus mille scuta. Virtue is as good as a thousand shields. Eael oe ErriNGHAM. Virtus sola nohilitat. Virtue alone ennobles. LoED "Walscouet. Virtute, non verbis. By virtue not words — not by patent. Eael or Keeey and Maequis or Lansdowis^e. 190 REPUBLICANISMS AND The incidental allusion made to Mel- notte, the gardener's son, reminds me that I have a little to say about " Tennyson and his garden " — that is his garden in a poetical sense. This naturally springs from what has been spoken of, for in Lady Clara Vere de Vere, the old gardener, as Tennyson calls Adam, is referred to. Erom yon blue sky above us bent The grand old gardener and bis wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Here is the question that is asked in the old republican war-cry used by John Ball in Wat Tyler's rebellion according to Hume,* but which appears to have long existed in Germany as a proverb : — * "When Adam delved, and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman ? Tennyson's garden. 191 So Adam reutte und Eva span j Wer was da ein eddelman. In connection with this Shakspeare's Richard II. (act iii. sc. 4) may be re- ferred to, where the Queen addresses the gardener in the Duke of York's grounds : — Thou, old Adam's likeness, Set to dress this garden. We have also in Hamlet (act v. sc. 1) the grave-digger in that wonderful scene of almost boisterous merriment that preludes the sombre tragic utterances that follow, claiming dignity and importance, as men are wont to do, for his occupation. " There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers ; they hold up Adam's profession." Much might be said about literature and gardens, for since the days of Cicero and 192 REPUBLICANISMS AND his Tusculanum, of Epicurus and the "philo- sophers of the garden," there has been an intimate connection. Looking to Enghsh literature the subject brings back memories of Swift, in Sir Wilham Temple's garden, being shown by WiUiam" III. how to cut asparagus after the Dutch fashion, and of the order that Sir William gave to have his heart placed there in a silver casket underneath the sun-dial that stood opposite the window of his library. A proud name may be claimed for Glasnevin, near Dublin ; it might be called the garden of Britain's Augustan age. In this neighbourhood wrote Swift, Steele, Parnell, and Tickell, and here, on the banks of the little stream known as the Tolka, in what are now the Botanic Gardens of the Royal Dublin Society, but which were then the gardens of the last-named poet, a straight avenue Tennyson's garden. 193 of yew-trees is shown tliat was planted by the directions of Addison, and beneath w^hich the essayist of the Spectator is be- lieved to have composed the balla^d of Colin and Lucy, and very probably meditated many a paper for the Tatler which his friend Steele had then just started. Among the children of the drama we find Kemble taking delight in the occupa- tion of cultivating flowers, while the garden of Mrs. Siddons was characteristically planted with all the gloomiest and most tragical evergreens. Box-trees, fir, cypress, ivy, and the cneorum tricoccum, or the " widow wail " used by the Koman ladies in funeral processions, were a few that indicated the owner to be the Tragedy Queen of Sir Joshua Reynolds' picture. Cowper may also be added to the poeti- cal list, and Pope, too, may be named as one 13 194 REPUBLICANISMS AND That in trim gardens takes liis pleasure. II Penseroso. Poetry and flowers are indissolubly wedded ; tlie old collections of- songs are even frequently called garlands. Robert Browning, in a graceful dedication of* a selection from his own works which fol- lowed a similar volume of the Laureate's, writes : — " This, such as it may prove, contentedly looks pale beside the wonder- ful flower show of my illustrious predecessor — dare I say my dear friend? — who will take it all — except the love in the gift — at a mere nosegay's worth." But all do not write in so appreciative a spirit as the great brother poet, and there are some who can sneer at Tennyson, at trim parterres, flower-seeds, watering pots, and the garden that he loves, " not wholly in the busy world nor quite bevond it," Tennyson's garden. * 195 wliich he paints in the Gardener s Daugh- ter. x\s if the poet rested upon that piece, he at one time when attacked compared himself to a gardener. Easy of imitation Avas the thrust that apparently stung and called forth a reply. There is a peculiar interest attached to some productions whose origin can be traced to some personal circumstances. At least such works cannot be accused of want of sincerity which Mr. Lewes has very truly pronounced to be the grand principle of success in writing. To the literature of Wrath, if it may be so called, belongs Byron's English Bards and Scotch Eevieivers, a fierce retort elicited by the harsh criticism" of his first volume, the Hours of Idleness. Shakspeare's Justice Shallow, who is pilloried for his judgment in the poaching scrape that tradition has 13—2 196 BEPUBLICANISMS AND handed down; Gay's Hare and Many Friends, occasioned by his disappointment in seeking place at Court ; and Swift's Directions to Servants, in which the sceva indignatio that burnt in his breast at the indignities he suffered at Moor Park broke out, all belong to this class, and may be called very striking works. One of Tenny- son's little contributions to this department was a rejoinder, to those who said that he was objectionably easy to be copied, that all can grow the flower now that they have got the seed which originally came from his garden. Imitation — to alter the maxim of Eoche- foucauld — may be looked upon as the homage that the minor poet pays to merit. Certain writers are particularly easily copied, and Macaulay might be named among others, whose style and manner, Tennyson's garden. 197 while it is to be regarded in the highest light, may be caught and reproduced. The mere servile imitator of either cannot hope for fame ; a copy, no matter how close, is almost always inferior to the original pic- ture, independently of the fact that it lacks the great merit called originality. If, then, mere imitators of Tennyson, who have grown the seed from his garden, have not reaped fame thereby, it is no exception to the general rule — but that a poet might not enrich his mind and his productions from a study of the Idylls of the King, In Memoriain, or the Princess, could hardly be seriously asserted. It has been said of Tennyson that he is acquainted with the great models of his art both in ancient and modern times, and well versed in scientific knowledge, without which he could hardly aspire to represent 198 REPUBLICANISMS AND fully the poetic elements of the Dineteenth century. Another essential quahfication, if it may be so called, for the post of Lau- reate, might be suggested, and this it has been seen Tennyson possesses in an eminent degree — that qualification is that he should be well imitated. Shakspeare has been to a certain degree imitated by all dramatists, while Pope was followed by a host that echoed his cadences. To imitate does not necessarily mean to produce a duplicate or to touch or attain the object, as is easily seen by the use of the word in the title of a book on a higher subject by old Thomas a Kemj)is. The. representative poet to deserve being so designated should have disciples and followers ; the prince of poets like other princes should be The glass of fasbion and the mould of form, Tennyson's garden. 199 or as the same idea is to be found else- where, • • The glass, the school, the book "VYhere subjects' eyes do learn, do read, do look ; ill short, should be a model, should possess an individuality, should be original, of course, and have a large influence over the poets of the age. To those thinking differently from me, and who may have regarded my veneration as words of mere enthusiasm, a request might be made. They might be asked to remember the honoured place that should be accorded to the teacher of high truth and noble gentleness, for — as is inscribed 200 TENNYSON S GAUBEN. on the tomb of one of Germany s great teachers, Fichte — THE TEACHERS SHALL SHINE AS THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE FIRMAMENT, AND THEY THAT TURN MANY TO RIGHTEOUSNESS AS THE STARS FOR EVER AND EVER. Gro little booke, Q-od send tliee good passage, And specially let this be th j prayere, Unto them all that would thee read or hear, "When thou art wrong, after their helpe to call Thee to correct in any part or all. Belle Dame Sa?is Mercie. Attributed to Chatjcee. As these pages were opened in the character of the proprietor of a show, it is right that before the Kghts are turned down, the showman — or, as he generally more ambitiously styles himself, the mana- ger — should step before the curtain to say a few words in dismissing his audience. Thanking them for their past patronage, he 13—3 202 l'envoy. refers to future productions and then wishes them good-night. But perchance my audience have long before this gone to sleep and calm repose. If happily not I shall imitate the worthy manager, and in confidence whisper to the reader that I have a little more to say, some more in readiness, and that I shall hope again to appear before an indulgent audience with *' new scenery, dresses, and decorations." Prompter, drop the curtain ! — as Belphegor says, " The mountebank's performance is over." THE END. James Blackwood & Co., Publishers^ BLACKWOOD'S Eniijerjsal ^Eibrarn of Stanliarl) Jlutltors. In royal 8vo, cloth, Illustrated, ^s. each. 1. THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, with his Corres- pondence and Conversations. By Jamks Uoswell, Esq. Edited, with copious Notes and Biographical Illustrations, by Edward Malone. Unabridged edition. Illustrated. 2. THE COMPLETE WORKS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Comprising his Letters, Essays, Plays, and Poems. With a Memoir by Professor Spalding, and a fac-simile of a character- istic and humorous Letter of Goldsmith to a Friend, and. other Illustrations. 3. 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Un- abridged, with Portrait and other Illustrations. 8. ROBINSON CRUSOE, OF YORK, MARINER; with an Ac- count of his Travels round Three Parts of the Globe, with Eight Illustrations by Zwecker, engraved by Dalziel, and Eight Steel Illustrations by Stothard, engraved by Charles Heath. 9. ANECDOTES, LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC, illustra- tive of the Characters, Habits, and Conversation of Men of Letters and Science. Edited by William Keddie. Illustrated. 10. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS. Trans- lated from the Arabic. New edition, with 100 Illustrations. Series to be continued. 8, LoveWs Courts Paternoster Roiv^ London, James Blackivood & Co., Publishers, JiiUc-Slulling Scries. Elegantly bound in cloth, and Illustrated, small post 8vo, <^s. cloth. 1. YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: Showing the Principles which raised a Printer's Boy to First Ambassador of the American Republic. By Henry Mayhew. 8 Illustrations by John Gilbert. 2. ROMANCE AND REALITY. By L. E. 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