UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORN A. SAN D EGC 
 
 3 1822027006360 
 
 Poet | qupeate/ 
 
 Arthur Jenkinson
 
 3 1822027006360 
 
 Jkc-c^
 
 
 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
 
 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 
 
 poet laureate 
 
 A BRIEF STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND POETRY 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR JENKINSON 
 
 MINISTER OF THE PARISH OF INNELLAN 
 AUTHOR OF "A MODERN DISCIPLE" 
 
 " That God, which ever lives and loves, 
 One God, one law, one element, 
 And one far-off divine event 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
 IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 LONDON 
 JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET 
 
 MDCCCXCII 
 
 15365
 
 TO MY 
 
 FATHER AND MOTHER 
 
 WITH REVERENCE AND GRATITUDE 
 I DEDICATE 
 
 Cbis little 36ook.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS little book is mainly occupied with Lord Tenny- 
 son as a great moral and religious teacher. It has 
 been my wish to provide a short introduction to his 
 poems that are concerned with the highest spiritual 
 problems. I have put together whatever interesting 
 facts I could gather regarding his life and surround- 
 ings that help us to understand the man and his 
 teaching. In setting before myself this aim, I have 
 not forgotten that Tennyson was a great poet rather 
 than a philosopher or theologian, and that we do 
 him a certain injustice in attempting to consider the 
 substance of his message apart from its poetic form. 
 But it must be borne in mind that although a poet, 
 his chief vocation was not to delight or amuse. No 
 philosopher or theologian has been so widely re- 
 cognised as the teacher and prophet of his age as 
 Tennyson. Thousands reverence him as the spiritual 
 leader who brought them out of the wilderness of
 
 viii PREFA CE. 
 
 religious doubt into the promised land of a larger 
 faith. Indeed, great poets like Wordsworth, Brown- 
 ing, Tennyson have increased the tendency to turn 
 away from the accredited teachers of morals and 
 religion to the poets. There is a wide-spread feel- 
 ing that with reference to the supreme interests of 
 life they are less entangled by foregone conclusions, 
 that they are more honest and sympathetic, and see 
 deeper into the eternal realities. 
 
 "I dare to say," exclaims Archdeacon Farrar, 
 " that I have learnt more of high and holy teaching 
 from Dante, and Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, 
 Browning, and Tennyson, than I have learnt from 
 many professed divines ; " and he goes on to say that 
 " next to the immediate teachings of the Spirit of 
 Christ, the Hebrew Prophets, and the Apostles of 
 the New Testament, he would place the illumined 
 souls of the few supreme Christian poets of the 
 world." 
 
 I have in this little volume specially drawn the 
 reader's attention to the fact that when Lord Tenny- 
 son was confronted by the negations of the under- 
 standing, he fell back on the primary beliefs and 
 intuitions of tHe heart. Baffled and tormented by
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 questions he could not answer, he exclaimed, " I have 
 felt." I have noticed that this cannot be the final 
 attitude of the Christian consciousness to the pro- 
 blem of existence. Heart and intellect, faith and 
 reason, cannot be in absolute antagonism. We can- 
 not be content with such a dualism. What I have 
 most briefly suggested, and would emphasise again, 
 is that this appeal to faith and feeling is really an 
 appeal to the soul in all the wealth of its experience 
 against a crude and imperfect logic. It is all that is 
 best and noblest in man's nature and history rising 
 up against denial and doubt. I want the reader to 
 realise that there is no quarrel between Faith and 
 Eeason; the quarrel is rather between Faith and 
 what Thomas Carlyle has very properly called the 
 "logic-chopping" faculty. There is in our primary 
 beliefs in God, Duty, and Immortality the deepest 
 reason ; they are Reason in its most intense and con- 
 crete form, and will therefore be able to justify 
 themselves against the scepticism of the age. We 
 look confidently forward to a comprehensive Chris- 
 tian philosophy that will harmonise all the elements 
 at present in conflict. 
 
 The various books from which I have derived
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 help are referred to in the course of the work. I 
 should especially like to mention my obligation to 
 Mr. George Easter, of the City Library, Norwich, 
 and his assistants. That ancient city is my birth- 
 place, and I was staying there when it was sug- 
 gested to me to write this book, and Mr. Easter 
 most kindly gave me all the help in his power. 
 I have also much pleasure in thanking Messrs. 
 Macmillan & Co. for permission to quote from Lord 
 Tennyson's poems. 
 
 A. J. 
 
 THE MANSE, INNELLAN, ARGYLESHIKE, 
 November 1892.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. THE GOLDEN DAWN 3 
 
 II. FIRST FLIGHTS OF SONG 15 
 
 III. COLD WINDS OF DISCOURAGEMENT . . -33 
 
 IV. THE SHADOW FEARED OF MAN . . . 4 1 
 
 V. DARKNESS AND SILENCE 51 
 
 VI. SUNSHINE AND SONG AGAIN 67 
 
 VII. MERIDIAN SPLENDOUR 8 1 
 
 VIII. THE LONG AFTERNOON IOI 
 
 IX. SUNSET AND EVENING STAR 119
 
 I. 
 
 THE GOLDEN DAWN. 
 
 "The Poet in a Golden Clime was born, 
 With Golden Stars above." The Poet.
 
 " Thus, while at times before our eyes 
 
 The shadows melt, and fall apart, 
 And, smiling through them, round us lies 
 The warm light of our Morning Skies 
 
 The Indian Summer of the heart I- 
 In secret sympathies of mind, 
 
 In founts of feeling which retain 
 Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may find 
 
 Our Early Dreams not wholly vain ! " 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE GOLDEN DA WN. 
 
 " The child is father of the man ; 
 And I could wish my days to be 
 Bound each to each by natural piety. " 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 LiNCOLNSHiKE has been so often described as a region 
 of marsh and fen, that in the popular imagination 
 the whole county is a dreary level of misty pasture- 
 land, only partially recovered from the swampy mor- 
 asses and shallow lagoons where formerly nothing 
 flourished but luxuriant crops of sedge and reed, 
 among which every variety of wild-fowl found a 
 happy home : 
 
 " A flat malarian land of reed and rush," 
 
 across which the bitter Norland blast sweeps in 
 winter; and where in summer monotonous grassy 
 plains are unrelieved save by an occasional wind- 
 mill or lonely church, with here and there a soli-
 
 4 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 tary willow or ash overhanging tangled and shallow 
 streams. 
 
 But such is not the case. There are, it is true, 
 not a few outlying corners in the Fen District un- 
 reclaimed, and there must have been many more 
 eighty years ago. And in these the traveller may 
 still find some solitary fen-man who ekes out a 
 precarious existence by fowling and fishing, netting 
 and snaring, and by cutting the sedge and reeds 
 that grow in thick fringes along, the sides of these 
 marshes. But, for the most part, the Fen Dis- 
 trict itself, through the unwearied efforts of its 
 hardy inhabitants during the last two centuries, has 
 become one of the richest corn - growing parts of 
 England. The change wrought by the " Northern 
 farmer" on Thurnaby Waste has gone on every- 
 where. 
 
 But further, it must be borne in mind that a con- 
 siderable portion of the county was never fen-land 
 at all. There is an extensive range of moderately 
 high ground stretching from north to south all 
 along its western border ; and to the east the 
 chalk tract of the wolds sweeps up from the fen- 
 land, forming a hilly district some fifty miles in 
 length and seven or eight in breadth. 
 
 Not far from where the southern extremity of 
 these wolds sinks towards the fens, nestles the little 
 hamlet of Sbmersby; so called, probably, by the
 
 THE GOLDEN DA WN. 5 
 
 descendants of the roaming Norsemen, who first 
 made their home there, because "the birds and 
 flowers seemed to tell how the sun lovingly lingered 
 over it." It is a sequestered and peaceful spot, far 
 away from the large excitement that stirs in the 
 great world beyond the circle of its protecting hills. 
 The nearest towns are Horncastle and Spilsby. It 
 consists of about half a score cottages scattered in 
 quiet nooks round about a tiny church and rectory, 
 and appears to have never possessed a population 
 of more than sixty or seventy souls. Far away 
 from the world, even yet, at the time when our 
 story begins, it must have seemed like one of those 
 old religious settlements, whither the faint echoes 
 of the great movements stirring the century came 
 in softest murmurs, and at long intervals, when 
 they came at all. 
 
 Somersby has one great advantage in its situation. 
 It is within walking distance of a great variety of 
 scenery, where, if Nature does not clothe herself in 
 her more majestic and lovely forms, she at least 
 appeals with strange power to the imagination and 
 heart. Southward, what remains of the fens may 
 be seen. On a bright summer's day, this district is 
 resplendent in purple and yellow, green and gold ; 
 or, at evening, it 1 has a strange eerie aspect as the 
 wide- winged sunset of the misty marsh " and 
 sunsets are nowhere more beautiful than in these
 
 6 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 wide, level reaches fades away in the red west, 
 and spectral shadows sweep silently around, and the 
 soft wind rises and sighs among the tall reeds, over 
 which the evening star has set her watch. Away in 
 the east are the long sandy tracts across which the 
 plunging seas sweep far inland, and then again 
 withdraw " their moon-led waters white," leaving 
 behind many a still salt pool. To the north there 
 are the ridged wolds, their grey sides belted with 
 clusters of noble trees, and from which may be 
 heard the gentle chiming of bells as the sheep seek 
 their wattled folds. 
 
 One day, nearly eighty years ago, the wind was 
 sweeping across these Lincolnshire wolds, and tossing 
 the elms and poplars in the old Rectory garden of 
 Somersby into wild disorder, when a little child, 
 with shining locks and large brown eyes, ran from 
 the house, and throwing out his arms to the wind, 
 exclaimed in an ecstasy of delight 
 
 " I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind." 
 
 This was Alfred Tennyson, and this, I believe, was 
 the first line of poetry he ever composed. He was 
 born on the 6th of August 1 809, and was then about 
 five years of age. 
 
 His father, the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, 
 LL.D., was a tall, handsome man, " high-souled 
 and high-tempered," renowned for his great strength
 
 THE GOLDEN DA WN. 7 
 
 and varied accomplishments. He was also said to 
 possess "a certain hardness of temperament, which, 
 combined with other high qualities, won respect 
 rather than love." On being presented to the Rec- 
 tory of Somersby (united with Bag Enderby) in 
 1 808, he removed thither with his young wife, who 
 was the daughter of the Rev. Stephen Fytche, Vicar 
 of Louth, and whom he had married three years pre- 
 viously. In the course of years they were blessed with 
 a large family of twelve children, of whom Alfred was 
 the fourth, the eldest dying in infancy. Dr. Tenny- 
 son came of a good old stock. He could trace his 
 family through a long descent, in which were blended 
 "the middle-class line of the Tennysons, and the 
 noble and even royal line of the D'Eyncourts." He 
 watched over the education of his children, who seem 
 to have held him in the deepest honour and affec- 
 tion ; but he died in 1831, at the comparatively early 
 age of fifty-two. 
 
 The poet's mother lived to the advanced age of 
 eighty-five, and according to Lord Tennyson's testi- 
 mony as he returned a middle-aged man from her 
 grave, " she was the beautifullest thing that God 
 Almighty ever made ! " l " Mrs. Tennyson," says 
 Mrs. T. Ritchie, " was a sweet and gentle and most 
 imaginative woman, so kind-hearted that it had 
 passed into a proverb. . . . She was intensely, fer- 
 
 1 Times for October 12, 1892. Letter from Bishop of Exeter.
 
 8 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 vently religious, as a poet's mother should be." 1 It 
 was doubtless from her that her sons inherited their 
 poetic gifts. There can, I think, be little doubt 
 that personal experience breathes through the lines 
 in the " Confessions of a Sensitive Mind " beginning 
 with the words 
 
 " Would that my gloomed fancy were 
 As thine, my mother." 
 
 Happy in their parents, the old Eectory was an 
 ideal home for this remarkable family picturesque, 
 rambling, quaint; the dining-room, erected by Dr. 
 Tennyson, with its long, pointed, stained-glass win- 
 dows, giving it a semi-ecclesiastical appearance. It 
 stands upon the slope of a hill, looking down upon 
 a dainty lawn and old-fashioned garden, where yet 
 stand the " seven elms " of which the poet sings in 
 his "Ode to Memory," although the "poplars four" 
 and the " towering sycamore " are gone. It was one 
 of those fair homes of refinement and peace that are 
 the sweetest feature of English life, and which you 
 must go far to find elsewhere. Hard by stands the 
 modest church, and within the churchyard an ancient 
 Norman cross, its very seclusion saving it from de- 
 struction in the ages of Puritanic zeal. All round 
 about is a pretty well-wooded pastoral country. At 
 the foot of the glebe runs the brook of which the 
 1 Harper's Magazine, December 1883.
 
 THE GOLDEN DA WN. 9 
 
 poet so often sung, and close by is a picturesque 
 glen known by the old, monkish name of Holywell, 
 where the mavis and the blackbird herald the early 
 spring and the robin sings his plaintive notes, among 
 the lengthening shadows, to the dying year. 
 
 Among these scenes Alfred Tennyson passed 
 his childhood and youth. "You may see," wrote 
 Thomas Carlyle to Emerson, "that he is a native 
 of moated granges and green flat pastures, not of 
 mountains and their torrents." Every feature of 
 interest was photographed upon his memory and 
 reproduced in his poetry. Our first impressions are 
 the strongest. The scenes of youth become part of 
 our very selves ; they tinge our thoughts, they mould 
 our minds, they haunt our imaginations through 
 life. It was so with Tennyson. In after life he 
 dwelt far away from these Lincolnshire scenes, but 
 we read none of his poems without being reminded 
 of them, and, of course, such poems as " The May 
 Queen," " Locksley Hall," " The Northern Farmer," 
 "The Northern Cobbler," "The Village Wife," and 
 many others, belong wholly to Lincolnshire. When 
 he sings about the rivulet in the flowery dell, the 
 building rook in the windy tall elm tree, the wild 
 marsh-marigold that shines like fire in swamps and 
 hollows grey, the long grey fields and the dry dark 
 wold, the oat-grass and the sword-grass, and the 
 bulrush in the pool, and a thousand other such-like
 
 io ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 things, we know that his heart has gone back to the 
 home where he saw the dawn of life. 
 
 In this happy old Lincolnshire Rectory the family 
 lived an ideal life. Not only was the father a 
 man of varied gifts, something of a poet, painter, 
 architect, musician, and man of general culture, 
 and the mother devout, imaginative, gracious, but 
 brothers and sisters were all distinguished for their 
 attainments. They were a "nest of nightingales;" 
 the air of the house was full of song. Frederick 
 and Charles became no mean poets, whose published 
 works, but for the overshadowing genius of Alfred, 
 would have secured wider recognition. Shut up in 
 this remote village, with few companions outside 
 their own large circle, they knew little of the world 
 beyond their native hills. Even the news of the 
 battle of Waterloo did not reach them until some 
 time after it was fought. But they lived their own 
 ideal life, in which the spirit of romance and chivalry 
 mingled with the influences of pious living. In their 
 games they became transfigured into ancient knights 
 and kings, and waged again the battles that once 
 shook the world. Within doors they played at 
 authorship, and could no sooner write than they 
 wove their ideas of life into verses and romances 
 long and endless Alfred's, which lasted for months, 
 being called "The Old Horse." 
 
 In such a numerous family, special attachments
 
 THE GOLDEN DA WN. 1 1 
 
 between the brothers and sisters would be sure to 
 be formed, and between Alfred and Charles, who 
 was the elder of the two by some twelve months, 
 there existed a close bond of sympathy. It is said 
 that he was the first to discover Alfred's gift for 
 writing verses ; for putting a slate into his hands 
 one Sunday afternoon when their elders were at 
 church, he told him to write a poem on the flowers, 
 which he did in blank verse, after the model of 
 Thomson's " Seasons." He won from Charles the 
 admission, "Yes, you can write." Such is the story 
 as told by Mrs. Eitchie, although Mr. Alfred Church 
 says that Lord Tennyson's impression was that the 
 first subject of his muse was " The Death of Julius 
 Ceesar." 1 This incident took place at Louth, whither 
 the two boys had gone to attend the Grammar School. 
 There Alfred remained until 1820, learning, as far 
 as he remembers, very little. About this time both 
 he and Charles returned to Somersby, and for the 
 next eight years were taught by their father. Fre- 
 derick, the eldest son, had gone to Eton. Few are 
 the glimpses we get of them during those eight 
 years. Charles and Alfred appear to have been 
 inseparable. They went for long walks together, 
 and both earnestly cultivated poetry. Alfred was 
 passionately fond of Scott and Byron, and when, in 
 1824, the news reached Somersby that Byron's short 
 1 " The Laureate's Country," p. 53. By Rev. A. J. Church.
 
 12 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 career had reached its untimely end, his young 
 admirer, then a boy of fifteen, walked into Holywell 
 Glen in a fit of inconsolable grief, and carved on 
 the sandstone, "Byron is dead." "I thought," he 
 said long afterwards to a friend, " the whole world 
 was at an end; I thought that everything was 
 over and finished for every one, and nothing else 
 mattered." 
 
 During these years he is generally pictured as a shy 
 student, wandering about book in hand, or wrapped 
 up in some deep reverie; which, however, does not 
 altogether agree with Lord Tennyson's own recollec- 
 tions of that period. 1 According to the testimony 
 of Mrs. Eitchie, his first efforts in the way of poetic 
 expression were little appreciated by his relations. 
 His grandfather, it is said, once asked him to write 
 an elegy on his grandmother, who had recently died, 
 and when it was written he put half a guinea in 
 his hand, saying, "There, that is the first money 
 you have ever earned for your poetry, and take mv 
 word for it, it will be the last." 
 
 1 "The Laureate's Country," p. 31.
 
 II. 
 
 FIRST FLIGHTS OF SONG. 
 
 The Poet hath the child's sight in his breast 
 And sees all new. What oftenest he has viewed 
 He views with the first glory." E. B. BROWNING.
 
 "A Poet hidden 
 In the light of thought, 
 Singing hymns unbidden, 
 Till the world is wrought 
 To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not." 
 
 SHELLEY.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 FIRST FLIGHTS OF SONG. 
 
 " God sent His singers upon earth, 
 
 With songs of sadness and of mirth, 
 That they might touch the hearts of men, 
 And bring them back to Heaven again." 
 
 LONGFELLOW. 
 
 MR. R. H. HUTTON, in an exceedingly suggestive 
 essay on Tennyson, 1 has said that his earliest efforts 
 consisted of brilliant pictures without a soul in them, 
 but that after he had encountered " the shadow fear'd 
 of man," they became infused with a spirit that could 
 create its own music. I think this judgment cor- 
 rect, although, as I shall endeavour to show in this 
 chapter, Tennyson was always something more than 
 an exquisite literary artist. From the beginning he 
 was an earnest thinker, whose art was made to mini- 
 ster to the highest interests of man's spiritual life. 
 Still, as might be expected, most of his early poems 
 are distinguished more for their delight in the vision 
 of beauty than for their spiritual insight. We have 
 now to consider those first flights of song which 
 
 1 Macmittan's Magazine, December 1872. 
 
 '5
 
 1 6 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 preceded the richer music that flowed from his harp 
 later on. 
 
 Already we have seen that Dr. Tennyson gave his 
 boys ample opportunity to live their own life. It 
 soon became evident that the Muse of poetry had 
 already won their hearts. There is an old nursery 
 story that Alfred had always declared that he would 
 be a poet. Although strong and healthy, Charles 
 and he never seem to have engaged in any out-of- 
 door sports. But books were their constant com- 
 panions. They read widely and to good purpose. 
 They took long walks together, and were always 
 writing verses. Frederick, the eldest in the family, 
 was away at college, and the other brothers were too 
 young to share their interests. Thus these two were 
 always together. 
 
 Charles was not only the elder of the two, but 
 was in every way fitted to encourage and guide his 
 brother. All who knew him unite in describing him 
 as a beautiful soul. In after years he became a 
 clergyman, and wrote exquisite sonnets, and was 
 known as Charles Tennyson Turner. Dr. Alex. H. 
 Japp says, 1 "The beautiful soul is seen in every 
 movement of his muse. . . . His mind is like a 
 crystal to take the shape and colour of what is pre- 
 sented to it, and seen in that crystal all is transformed, 
 beautified." Mrs. Ritchie, in her delightful "Remi- 
 1 "The Poets and the Poetry *of the Century," p. 53.
 
 FIRST FLIGHTS OF SONG. 17 
 
 niscences," says he was " gentle, spiritual, very noble, 
 simple. I once saw him kneeling in a church, and 
 only once again. He was like something out of 
 another world, more holy, more silent, than that in 
 which most of us are living." In the seventy-ninth 
 poem of "In Memoriam " there is a lovely reference 
 to Charles and those early years. Notice also the 
 exquisite poem written in 1879 as a preface to his 
 brother's sonnets. 
 
 For nearly eight years Charles and Alfred lived this 
 free and happy life at Somersby. Slowly a consider- 
 able stock of verses accumulated, and in 1 827 a little 
 volume entitled " Poems by Two Brothers " appeared. 
 The publisher was Mr. J. Jackson of Louth. The 
 preface states: "The following poems were written 
 from the ages of fifteen to eighteen, not conjointly, 
 but individually, which may account for their dif- 
 ferences of style 'and matter." Numerous footnotes 
 and quotations from a vast variety of authors indicate 
 the amazing industry of the young poets and the 
 seriousness with which they had already taken life. 
 Mr. Jackson showed great enterprise and insight, 
 that he not merely undertook to publish this volume, 
 but agreed to pay the boys ten pounds for the copy- 
 right, and actually paid them twenty pounds. So the 
 grandfather's prophecy was soon discredited in a very 
 pleasant way. There is a great interest in this little 
 book, a single copy of which, only the other day, 
 
 B
 
 1 8 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 fetched almost as much as was originally paid for the 
 copyright. It has never been republished, and yet 
 here are collected, as into one small basket, the first 
 fruits of two gifted minds, one of which has, for 
 more than sixty years, enriched the whole English- 
 speaking world with priceless harvests of song. 
 
 The next year Alfred Tennyson followed his two 
 brothers, Frederick and Charles, to Trinity College, 
 Cambridge. This was a critical moment in his life. 
 He was nineteen years of age. . He now passed into 
 a great centre of intellectual life. There is no place 
 in the world more significant to a highly imaginative 
 and thoughtful youth than an ancient University. It 
 is not merely that he there meets with those who will 
 help him to unlock the doors to the rich stores of 
 wisdom accumulated from all past times, and with 
 eager young minds enthusiastic and fearless in their 
 search for truth ; but the University itself stands as 
 the noble representative of the great traditions of 
 human knowledge. If he is at all capable of being 
 touched by the true spirit of the place, he will tread 
 its courts, for the first time, with mingled awe, 
 modesty, joy. A day or two after Lord Tennyson's 
 death I visited Cambridge, and walked across the 
 quadrangle of Trinity, and round to the beautiful 
 " Backs," and over the picturesque bridge that crosses 
 the willow-veiled Cam, and up the stately " Avenue 
 of Limes." The whole splendid pile of buildings,
 
 FIRST FLIGHTS OF SONG. 19 
 
 with its hall, chapel, library; its lawns, gardens, 
 trees, rich in their autumn tints, seemed to me trans- 
 figured in the solemn and pathetic beauty of the 
 October sun, and I could .not help wondering what 
 he, who then lay in the majesty of death, thought of 
 all that exquisite loveliness and stately dignity when 
 he first gazed upon it on that far-off day in October 
 1828 on which he went up to keep terms. He has 
 not told us, but another visit was paid to Cambridge, 
 years after, when his mind was full of thoughts of 
 his lost friend Arthur Hallam. The eighty-seventh 
 poem of "In Memoriam " not only recalls this visit, 
 but also presents a vivid picture of the joys and 
 friendships of his old college days. 
 
 He went up to Cambridge in 1828 and left in 
 February 1831, through the premature death of his 
 father. He never seems to have devoted himself 
 seriously to the regular college work. Nevertheless, 
 his stay there had much to do with the development 
 of his mind and with his future career. Not only 
 did he meet with Hallam at Cambridge, of whom I 
 shall speak later on, but also a wide circle of young 
 men distinguished for culture, brilliancy, and force, 
 most of whom attained to eminence in after life. 
 There were Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Hough- 
 ton), Henry Alford, afterwards the accomplished 
 Dean of Canterbury ; James Spedding, J. M. Kemble, 
 W. H. Brookfield, Merivale, afterwards Dean of Ely ;
 
 20 ALFRED TENNYSON 
 
 Eichard Chenevix Trench, who became Archbishop of 
 Dublin, and a sweet Christian poet ; John Sterling, 
 Edward Lushington, afterwards Tennyson's brother- 
 in-law and Professor of Greek at Glasgow University ; 
 Lord Stanley, and some others. In the canto of 
 " In Memoriam " just referred to, these gifted minds 
 are represented as " the band of youthful friends " 
 who used to meet in Hallam's rooms for debate. 
 They formed a little society for this purpose," called 
 the " Apostles," to become a member of which was 
 a mark of distinction. 
 
 Amid all the enthusiasms of this new life, it is 
 evident that Tennyson kept steadily before him 
 the vocation to which he felt consecrated. It was 
 during his first year at Cambridge that he wrote 
 " The Lover's Tale," which was published in 1833, 
 but immediately withdrawn, because the author felt 
 " the imperfections of the poem ; " but seeing that it 
 was mercilessly pirated, and that what its author 
 had deemed scarce worthy to live was not allowed 
 to die, it was enlarged and completed and given 
 to the public in 1879. In 1829 he gained the 
 Chancellor's Medal for English verse, the subject 
 being the apparently unpromising one of Timbuctoo. 
 
 The next flight of song is still of living interest, 
 seeing that the best of what was then given to the 
 world is contained in his published works under the 
 head of "Juvenilia."
 
 FIRST FLIGHTS OF SONG. 21 
 
 In 1830 Tennyson committed to the press the 
 volume entitled " Poems : Chiefly Lyrical." It 
 contained fifty-three pieces, nearly half of which 
 have been withdrawn, and those which the poet has 
 permitted to remain have been touched and retouched 
 again and again. In these poems we recognise at 
 once the truth of Arthur Hallam's remark, "that 
 there is a strange earnestness in Tennyson's worship 
 of the beautiful." Everything is wrought in with 
 pre-Raphaelite completeness of detail, and yet all is 
 suffused by a rich, glowing, luxuriant imagination, 
 so that the poet is no mere copyist. The whole is 
 lifted into the region of pure art. It has been 
 remarked by Professor Dowden that the beauty of 
 Tennyson's work in some degree veils its strength. 
 Roses do not stick like burrs, and yet the rose's 
 loveliness is only "power garmented in beauty." 
 
 Those poems are the most powerful in which the 
 whole effort is to give ideal expression to some 
 profound thought or feeling. Take, for example. 
 "Mariana." The poem is founded on a few words 
 taken from Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure," 
 Act iii., Scene I, "There at the moated grange re- 
 sides this dejected Mariana." This lady had been 
 forsaken by Angelo, because her marriage dowry had 
 been accidentally lost, and Tennyson has entered by 
 . imaginative sympathy into her feeling of utter lone- 
 liness and desolation. The aim of the poem is to give
 
 22 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 a word-picture of one forsaken and forlorn. The 
 utter dreariness of the maiden's soul, who waits for 
 one who does not corue, holds the luxuriant fancy in 
 check, and constrains it to the portrayal of this 
 feeling. There is not a sentence, from the first line, 
 that speaks of the black moss crusted upon the 
 flower-pots, to the last cry, " Oh, God, that I were 
 dead," which does not help to bring out the con- 
 trolling emotion. 
 
 In this volume, written when the author was 
 only twenty years of age, as we might expect, the 
 pure love of beauty, and "rapturous satisfaction 
 with the joy of its visions" are the prevailing 
 features. But there are not lacking evidences of 
 deeper things. I confess that the more I read 
 these early poems, the more I marvel at their 
 maturity of thought. " Supposed Confessions of a 
 Second-rate Sensitive Mind " show that this youth- 
 ful poet had already brooded deeply over those 
 great spiritual problems with which, in after years, 
 he would grapple with luminous insight. As his 
 friend Hallam suggested, the mood portrayed in 
 the poem was "rather the clouded season of a 
 strong mind." It is the picture of a soul which 
 has seen and felt the power and the beauty of 
 religious faith, but, struck with a great wave of 
 doubt, tosses and drifts upon a wild sea of unrest. 
 
 That he had already formed the highest ideal of
 
 FIRST FLIGHTS OF SONG. 23 
 
 the poet's mission we know. The verses on "The 
 Poet " bear witness to that. The volume was well 
 received by all his friends received, I might say, 
 with enthusiasm by them. The Westminster Review 
 ended a most appreciative criticism by expressing 
 the hope that one possessed of such great gifts 
 would prove true to his own lofty ideal of the poet's 
 mission. 
 
 In the February of 1831 Tennyson hurried from 
 Cambridge in consequence of the serious illness 
 of his father, and he did not return again. His 
 father died the following month (March i6th). 
 That Dr. Tennyson filled a large place in the affec- 
 tions of his children, we know from the tender 
 feeling with which our poet referred to him two 
 years later in the lines addressed to J. S. (James 
 Spedding). 
 
 Dr. Tennyson was buried in Somersby church- 
 yard ; but by a happy arrangement the old Rectory, 
 with all its sweet and pathetic associations, remained 
 the home of the widowed mother and children for 
 a few years longer. 
 
 During the winter of 1832 our young poet pub- 
 lished another volume of poems. It included most 
 of the pieces now contained in his printed works 
 under the title "The Lady Shalott, and other 
 Poems." We find in it the same marvellous delicacy 
 and refinement, the same elaboration, and delight
 
 24 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 in the vision of beauty; but also a wider range 
 of feeling, and deeper and richer thought. The 
 necessary limits of this little book forbid anything 
 more than a glance at one or two of l^he poems 
 with the view of indicating the development of 
 the poet's mind. This is, however, the less to be 
 regretted, since the volume contains many of 
 Tennyson's best known and best loved pieces, whose 
 beauties every one can recognise. " The May Queen," 
 " The Lotus-Eaters," " The Miller's Daughter," are 
 universal favourites. The last of these poems is said 
 to have been the first that attracted the notice of 
 Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Albert. " The 
 poetry of married life," says Dr. Peter Bayne, "is 
 there expressed, perhaps, for the first time, and so 
 well that it might be the last." l 
 
 " The Palace of Art" indicates the high-water mark 
 of Tennyson's thought at that period. It is to 
 my mind one of the most significant poems ever 
 written. It is an allegory, and is accompanied 
 by an introduction which explains its meaning; 
 not that there is any difficulty in understanding 
 the lesson from the poem itself 
 
 " He that shuts Love out, in turn shall be 
 Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie 
 Howling in outer darkness." 
 
 ," p. 275.
 
 FIRST FLIGHTS OF SONG. 25 
 
 "It is," says Henry Van Dyke, "an aesthetic pro- 
 test against gestheticism." 1 Its aim is to exhibit 
 in forms of perfect poetic beauty the hollowness 
 and vanity of a life in which mere Culture, ^stheti- 
 cism, Pleasure have taken the place of God, Huma- 
 nity, Duty. A gifted soul breaks away from all the 
 ties of religion, love, and charity, and goes to live 
 in a palace by itself. The palace is one of matchless 
 splendour, built upon a lofty crag-platform, far away 
 from the common herd that range and breed in the 
 plain below. Everything is constructed with the 
 most rare and elaborate magnificence. Through the 
 shining oriels the light falls in subdued tones, and 
 in the midst of gorgeous loveliness the royal throne 
 is placed, hung round with paintings of the wise 
 and great, and there the proud spirit takes up 
 her abode 
 
 " My soul would live alone unto herself 
 In her high palace there." 
 
 Communing with herself, she cries 
 
 " All these are mine, 
 And let the world have peace or war, 
 'Tis one to me." 
 
 In the midst of her splendour she reveals the utmost 
 intellectual pride 
 
 1 " The Poetry of Tennyson."
 
 26 
 
 " I take possession of man's mind and deed, 
 
 I care not what the sects may brawl ; 
 I sit as God, holding no form of creed, 
 But contemplating all." 
 
 And then her absorption in selfish pleasure hardens 
 into indifference for others, and lastly into cold, 
 
 cruel contempt 
 
 V 
 
 " God-like isolation which art mine, 
 I can but count thee perfect gain, 
 What time I watch the darkening droves of swine 
 That range on yonder plain." 
 
 
 Now I ask, Is not that a true and vivid picture 
 
 of what has ever been the spirit of those who have 
 given themselves up to their own selfish enjoyment, 
 to the neglect of duty and love, and all the sweet 
 charities of life ? It is the worship and glorification 
 of self, as old as ancient Babylon, but' ever appearing 
 in new forms. And under all forms it comes, at 
 last, to lose all sense of brotherhood, all pity for the 
 weak and miserable, all sense of the duty and service 
 which wealth and culture owe to those less fortu- 
 nate. Even love and beauty are honoured only so far 
 as they can minister to personal enjoyment. And 
 Tennyson, although he conveys the truth in words 
 of matchless music and in pictures of exquisite 
 beauty, declares that this life of selfish pleasure is 
 a cursed life, and can only end in hollow mockery,
 
 FIRST FLIGHTS OF SONG. 27 
 
 disappointment, and madness. The joy of this proud 
 sinful soul continued for three years, and then 
 suddenly she fell, "struck through with pangs of 
 hell " 
 
 " Back on herself her serpent pride had cnrl'd, 
 
 ' No voice,' she shriek'd in that lone hall, 
 ' No voice breaks thro' the stillness of this world : 
 One deep, deep silence all.' " 
 
 The reader will find it a very suggestive study to 
 compare "The Palace of Art" with "The Poet's 
 Vow" by Mrs. Browning. The central thought is 
 the same, and although Mrs. Browning's poetry 
 has not the exquisite music of Tennyson, she has 
 worked out her idea not less powerfully. In one 
 or two stanzas she strikes higher notes than are 
 found in " The Palace of Art." " The Poet's Vow " 
 is introduced with the significant quotation 
 
 " be wiser thou, 
 
 Instructed that true knowledge leads to love ! " 
 
 The poem tells us that a poet determined to cut 
 himself off from everything and everybody that 
 could disturb the serenity of self-culture 
 
 " Here me forswear man's sympathies, 
 
 His pleasant yea and no, 
 His riot on the piteous earth 
 
 Whereon his thistles grow, 
 His changing love with stars above, 
 
 His pride with graves below."
 
 28 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 He gives his wealth to his friends, urges his oldest 
 friend to marry the lady to whom he himself was 
 betrothed, whilst he goes away to a lonely castle, 
 absorbed in the pursuit of culture. Before he de- 
 parts his friend warns him of his fatal error 
 
 " And thou, distant, sinful heart, 
 
 That climbest up so high 
 To wrap and blind thee with the snows 
 
 That cause to dream and die, 
 What blessing can, from lips of man, 
 Approach thee with his sigh ? " 
 
 The sequel is worked out with splendid power. 
 Rosalind dies heart-broken by his cruel neglect, 
 but loving him and praying for him to the last. 
 She leaves a scroll to be put in her open coffin, 
 which was to be laid at the door of the lonely castle. 
 The proud self-sufficient man unbolts his door at 
 midnight to view the sky. The soft light of the 
 stars falls upon the face of the dead. He takes up 
 the scroll and reads of all her love and 1 prayers for 
 himself, and then the heart, so long neglected in the 
 ambitious pursuits of culture, asserts its claim, and 
 in one loud wail of grief he falls upon the corpse. 
 When they come at dawn of day to bear away the 
 coffin, he is found lying dead beside it. 
 
 The spiritual meaning of each poem is essentially 
 the same ; but much may be learned from comparing 
 the method of each writer.
 
 FIRST FLIGHTS OF SONG. 29 
 
 Alfred Tennyson wrote his poem when he was 
 not more than twenty-three, and yet to my mind 
 it is one of the most powerful and original concep- 
 tions in literature. Here we are taught by one who 
 had drunk deeply of the fountains of Art, that Art 
 cannot take the place of Religion; that Culture, 
 and Refinement, and Knowledge must not be put in 
 the place of Love, Duty, Service. Is it not a lesson 
 our age needs? Is there not an attempt in our 
 midst to revive the old Babylonian principle of life, 
 the principle which esteems fine gold more precious 
 than a man, which seeks in some " enchanted world 
 of refined and consummate pleasures " the joy which 
 can only be found in the realisation of Christ's ideal 
 of life ? And yet, surely it is not wrong to pas- 
 sionately love beauty, music, art, culture. No ; the 
 sin was absorption in these ; it was the sin of isola- 
 tion and selfish exclusiveness, the sin of proud con- 
 tempt for the ignorant and wretched. And therefore, 
 with a fine reasonableness, the poet asks that the 
 beautiful palace be not pulled down, for when the 
 proud soul has purged away its guilt and learned 
 the blessedness of self-sacrifice, then, perchance, it 
 may return to its former home, for it will not go 
 back alone.
 
 III. 
 
 COLD WINDS OF DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 " And in the air there was a touch of cold."
 
 ' A paleness took the Poet's cheek : 
 ' Must 1 drink here ? ' he seemed to seek 
 The lady's will with utterance meek : 
 
 ' Ay, ay,' she said, ' it so must be ; ' 
 (And this time she spake cheerfully), 
 ' Behoves thee know World's cruelty.'" 
 
 E. B. BROWNING.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 COLD WINDS OF DISCOURAGEMENT. 
 
 " Once, in a golden hour, 
 I cast to earth a seed ; 
 Up there came a flower, 
 The people said, a weed." 
 
 IT is desirable now to pause for a moment in order 
 to look round and ask what heed the world was 
 giving to this young singer. " The Poems by Two 
 Brothers " attracted very little attention. Only one 
 contemporary criticism has been unearthed. It ap- 
 peared in the Literary Chronicle on May 19, 1827. 
 "This little volume," says the appreciative critic, 
 " exhibits a pleasing union of kindred tastes, and 
 contains several little pieces of considerable merit." 
 How far the boys were encouraged privately it is 
 impossible to say. The venerable grandfather, it 
 seems, had not changed his opinions regarding his 
 grandson's poetical gifts. He was told, " Your 
 grandson, Alfred, has made a volume of poems," 
 and replied, " I had sooner have heard that he had 
 made a wheelbarrow ! " l 
 
 1 "The Laureate's Country," p. 63. 
 
 33 r.
 
 34 ALFRED TENNYSON. . 
 
 The prize poem on "Timbuctoo" (1829) received 
 a remarkable notice in the Athenceum from the pen 
 of John Sterling. The reviewer affirmed that the 
 poem "indicated really first-rate poetic genius," and 
 "would have done honour to any man that ever 
 wrote." Arthur Hallam (who had also tried for the 
 prize) wrote to W. E. Gladstone on September 14, 
 1829: "The splendid imaginative power that per- 
 vades it " (Tennyson's poem) " will be seen through 
 all hindrances. I consider Tennyson as promising 
 fair to be the greatest poet of our generation, per- 
 haps of our century." 
 
 When the volume of 1830 ("Poems: Chiefly 
 Lyrical ") was published, it was welcomed with de- 
 light by the author's associates. The praise at the 
 time seemed to many extravagant ; but in the light 
 of the poet's subsequent pre-eminence, we can now 
 only look upon it as remarkable critical sagacity, 
 recognising the elements of future greatness in the 
 first efforts of genius. John Stuart Mill wrote a 
 most appreciative criticism of it in the Westminster 
 Review. Arthur Hallam did the same in the English- 
 man's Magazine. Several other writers of note also 
 gave a sympathetic and encouraging welcome to the 
 young poet. 
 
 But this chorus of praise could not be allowed 
 without an emphatic disclaimer. Those who had 
 spoken were only the generous friends of the author ;
 
 COLD WINDS OP DISCOURAGEMENT. 35 
 
 the real, authoritative voices of criticism had not yet 
 been heard. It was high time they saved " Alfred " 
 from his friends. The first to undertake this duty 
 was Professor Wilson (Christopher North). He was 
 a man of great gifts, possessing pathos, humour, and 
 a wonderful power of wild, wanton, withering sar- 
 casm, and at that time exercised an immense power 
 in literary circles. But he was waging a deadly war 
 against what he called the " Cockney School," and 
 as he looked upon Tennyson as a disciple of that 
 school, he assailed him in a truly athletic fashion. 
 There is no need to recall all his violent abuse. It 
 was the more unpardonable that he was not without 
 insight into his victim's gifts. "I admire Alfred, 
 and hope, nay, trust, that one day he will prove him- 
 self a poet." But this admiration did not restrain 
 his truculent delight in heaping ridicule upon the 
 young author. "Drivel, and more dismal drivel," 
 "and even more dismal drivel," are the terms in 
 which he expresses his scorn. The final blow from 
 his tomahawk is administered in his criticism of 
 "The Owl:" 
 
 " Alfred is the greatest owl; all he wants is to be 
 shot, stuffed, and stuck in a glass case, to be made 
 immortal in a museum." 
 
 In defence of Wilson, the passages in which he 
 speaks highly of his victim's work are often pointed 
 out ; but, of course, they are useless in the face of
 
 36 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 all this scorn and bitterness. It is much more to 
 the point to recall the fact that there were weak- 
 nesses and defects in Tennyson's early work which 
 only too easily laid him open to the attacks of an 
 enemy. And the most interesting fact about the 
 whole assault now is, that the young poet recognised 
 this, and, instead of breaking his heart over the un- 
 generous criticism, set himself earnestly to remedy 
 the imperfections of his work. Nearly half the poems 
 that appeared in 1 830 have been suppressed, and those 
 that have been retained have had their objectionable 
 features removed. At the time, of course, Tennyson 
 felt the injustice of the attack, and was provoked 
 into the following retort, which, however, no longer 
 appears among his published poems : 
 
 " You did late review my lays, 
 
 Crusty Christopher ; 
 You did mingle blame and praise, 
 
 Rusty Christopher. 
 When I learnt from whom it came, 
 I forgave you all the blame, 
 
 Musty Christopher ; 
 I could not forgive the praise, 
 
 Fusty Christopher." 
 
 Wilson's criticism appeared in Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine in May 1832. Six months after its appearance 
 Tennyson published his second volume, and in July 
 1833 it was assailed by one of those monstrously 
 unjust and malignant criticisms which were a dis-
 
 COLD WINDS OF DISCOURAGEMENT. 37 
 
 grace to the literature of the period. It came out 
 in the Quarterly, "the hang, draw, and Quarterly," 
 as it was rightly named, and James Gibson Lockhart, 
 sometimes called "The Scorpion." because the sting 
 of his writings was usually in their latter end, was 
 believed to have written it. The article was clever, 
 bitter, and utterly unscrupulous, and could have been 
 written with no higher motive than to wound Tenny- 
 son, by holding his poems up to contempt and scorn. 
 He opens fire in a tone of ironical compliment, re- 
 gretting that he has not had the pleasure of seeing 
 Mr. Tennyson's first volume, but proposing to atone 
 for all his apparent neglect by introducing " to the 
 admiration of our more sequestered readers a new 
 prodigy of genius another and brighter star of 
 that galaxy or milky way of poetry of which the 
 lamented Keats was the harbinger." He then pro- 
 ceeds, through many pages, to seize upon every 
 weak expression, and hold it up with mock serious- 
 ness for admiration. He assures the poet that, 
 "even after he is dead and buried, as much sense 
 will still remain as he has now the good fortune to 
 possess." 
 
 And yet malicious, unjust, and bitter as the 
 criticism was, the writer was far too keen not to 
 detect the defects of Tennyson's earlier work. The 
 blemishes to which he pointed in mock praise were 
 real blots upon the work, and the poet showed the
 
 38 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 strength of his own character, that in the end he 
 really profited more through the merciless treatment 
 he received from his bitter critic than he did from 
 the fervid admiration of his friends. No one would 
 now think of justifying the spirit in which the 
 Quarterly Review article was written ; no one would 
 venture to say that it was wise, fair, discriminating. . 
 It was one of those cruel blows which, had Tennyson 
 not been a man conscious of his own powers and 
 mission, might have crushed him. There can be no 
 doubt that the rough treatment which Keats re- 
 ceived from the same Eeview helped him into an 
 untimely grave. But Tennyson had the strength 
 and wisdom to profit by the attack, and thus he 
 early learned the lesson, which all of us would do 
 well to take to heart, that a man may often gain 
 far more good from a candid, even -an unjust and 
 unscrupulous critic, than from all the adulation of 
 his friends. And in this way we must mark this 
 critic as "a slavish minister for good" in the life 
 of Tennyson.
 
 IV. 
 
 THE SHADOW FEARED OF MAN. 
 
 " In Vienna's fatal walls, 
 God's finger touch'd him, and he slept."
 
 ' Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep ! 
 
 He hath awakened from the dream of life. 
 "Pis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep 
 With phantoms an unprofitable strife." 
 
 SHELLEY.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SHADOW FEARED OF MAN. 
 
 " As we descended, following Hope, 
 There sat the shadow fear'd of man, 
 Who broke our fair companionship." 
 
 IF the enthusiastic homage of noble minds is a 
 true test of worth, then Arthur Henry Hallam, 
 Tennyson's bosom friend at Cambridge, was one 'of 
 the select few of the world's choice spirits. He 
 died in 1833, before he had reached his twenty- 
 third year; and yet men of the most brilliant gifts 
 and culture deemed it a high privilege to enjoy his 
 friendship, and when his beautiful life came to 
 a sudden, and, as it seemed, untimely end, they 
 mourned for him as for a beloved brother. Had 
 we only the testimony of him who sung of his lost 
 friend in words of imperishable pathos and state- 
 liness, we might have thought that Hallam stood 
 transfigured in a glory imparted by the singer. 
 But all who approached him felt the wonderful spell 
 of his noble character, and were deeply impressed 
 with his remarkable gifts. His father said of him,
 
 42 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 " He seemed to tread the earth as a spirit from 
 some better world." Mr. W. E. Gladstone, who 
 in those far-away years was his schoolfellow at 
 Eton, declared long ago that even then he was in 
 a position to say 
 
 " I marked him 
 
 As a far Alp ; and loved to watch the sunrise 
 Dawn on his ample brow." 
 
 " Among those who were blessed with his friend- 
 ship," Mr. Gladstone goes on to say, "there was 
 no one who did not feel at once bound closely to 
 him by commanding affection and left far behind 
 by the rapid growth and rich development of his 
 ever-searching mind." Eichard Monckton Milnes 
 (afterwards Lord Houghton) wrote: "I hold his 
 kind words and earnest admonitions in the best 
 part of my heart. I have his noble and tender 
 letters by my side." Henry Alford, the late Dean 
 of Canterbury, whilst his memory was still green 
 thus sung of him : , 
 
 " Gentle soul, 
 
 That ever moved among us in a veil 
 Of heavenly lustre ; in whose presence thoughts 
 Of common import shone with light divine, 
 Whence we drew sweetness as from out a well 
 Of honey pure and deep ; thine early form 
 Was not the investiture of daily men, 
 But thou didst wear a glory in thy look
 
 THE SHADOW FEARED OF MAN. 43 
 
 From inward converse with the spirit of love ; 
 And thou hadst won in the first strife of youth 
 Trophies that gladdened hope and pointed on 
 To days when we should stand and minister 
 To the full triumphs of thy gathered strength." 
 
 It is well that we can supplement " In Memoriam" 
 with these remarkable testimonies to the unique 
 beauty and strength of Hallam's character. They 
 invest the " In Memoriam " with a new interest and 
 charm. They assure us that the bereaved poet did 
 not yield to loving exaggeration. The imperishable 
 and exquisite lines which embalm his grief for his 
 lost friend gain an added preciousness, for they are 
 not only the most pathetic and stately music ever 
 offered at the shrine of friendship, but they also 
 throw a true and clear light upon him of whom the 
 poet sings. 
 
 It was to this man, so universally beloved and 
 honoured, that Tennyson became bound by one of 
 those rare friendships which shine, in an age of 
 polished indifference and artificial sentiment, like 
 the calm and stately stars above the shifting and 
 uncertain lights of the earth. 
 
 Arthur Hallam was born in 1811, and was there- 
 fore more than a year younger than Alfred Tenny- 
 son. But his opportunities had been great, and 
 his mind, also, by its own native force, unfolded 
 its rare powers very early. His father was Henry
 
 44 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 Hallam, the celebrated historian, and lived in Lon- 
 don. Twice whilst still a boy Arthur Hallam had 
 stayed with his parents in Italy and Switzerland for 
 some months, where he had made himself perfectly 
 familiar with French and Italian, and then, after 
 a brilliant career at Eton, where, however, he 
 showed more preference for English literature and 
 modern culture generally than for the old classical 
 learning, he proceeded to Cambridge. Never very 
 strong, he did not attempt any of the University 
 honours. But his great gifts and charming spirit 
 were speedily recognised, and drew around - him the 
 choicest minds in the University. He was a sym- 
 pathetic and earnest student of modern literature 
 and contemporary thought, and a most engaging 
 speaker. A society called "The Apostles," because 
 its number was restricted to twelve, was formed. 
 Weekly meetings were held in Hallam's rooms for 
 free discussion, and it was considered a mark of 
 distinction to be one of its members. We get 
 glimpses in "In Memoriam" of these delightful 
 meetings and of the attractiveness of Hallam. See 
 especially Cantos Ixxxvii., cix., and ex. 
 
 In the lines addressed to W. H. Brookfield there 
 is this pathetic reference to Hallam 
 
 " How oft with him we paced that walk of limes 
 Him, the lost light of those dawn golden times, 
 Who loved you well ! Now both are gone to rest."
 
 THE SHADOW FEARED OF MAN. 45 
 
 It is clear that Tennyson's love and appreciation 
 of his friend were amply reciprocated. Hallam was 
 one of the first to recognise his friend's exceptional 
 gifts. "If," says Dr. Alexander H. Japp, "Tenny- 
 son saw in Arthur Hallam powers which exceeded 
 his own, so that he was ever learning from him, 
 Arthur Hallam saw also the power and the promise 
 of greatness in his friend. On one occasion, when 
 he had accompanied Tennyson to his native home, 
 he remarked of the house that many in future times 
 would make pilgrimages to it to behold where a 
 great poet was born ; which attests a remarkable 
 insight in so forecasting a companion's future." 1 
 We are told by Hallam's father that it was the 
 intention of these two friends to publish their poems 
 together. 
 
 In 1832 Arthur Hallam graduated and left Cam- 
 bridge. He went to reside with his father at 67 
 Wimpole Street, London, the dark house in the 
 long unlovely street, the number of which he used 
 in his humorous way to impress on the minds of 
 his friend by saying, " You know you will always 
 find us at sixes and sevens." He was intended for 
 the law, and entered at the Inner Temple. 
 
 But although thus divided from Tennyson, their 
 friendship had become cemented in a very beautiful 
 way. I will let his own letter to Trench, afterwards 
 1 " The Poets and Poetry of the Century," p. 106.
 
 46 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 Archbishop of Dublin, tell its own tale: "I am 
 now at Somersby, not only as the friend of Alfred 
 Tennyson, but as a lover of his sister. An attach- 
 ment on my part of near two years' standing, and 
 a mutual engagement of one year, are, I fervently 
 hope, only the commencement of a union which cir- 
 cumstances may not impair, and the grave itself 
 not conclude." 
 
 Many are the glimpses we get in " In Meinoriam " 
 of those delightful vacations spent at the old Eectory 
 of Somersby. Here is a scene on the garden lawn : 
 
 " Wich-elms that counterchange the floor 
 Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright ; 
 And thou with all thy breadth and height 
 Of foliage, towering sycamore ; 
 
 How often, hither wandering down, 
 
 My Arthur found your shadows fair, 
 
 And shook to all the liberal air 
 The dust and din and steam of town. 
 
 He brought an eye for all he saw ; 
 
 He mixt in all our simple sports ; 
 
 They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts 
 And dusty purlieus of the law." l 
 
 But the reader must turn to the poem itself to 
 realise all its beauties. 
 
 But an awful shadow was about to fall upon all 
 
 1 Canto Ixxxix.
 
 THE SHADOW FEARED OF MAN. 47 
 
 this ideal beauty and happiness. For this sweet 
 circle of gracious friends the whole world was about 
 to be changed, darkened, charged with sorrow and 
 anguish. A message would suddenly reach them 
 which would sweep away all this ideal peace and 
 shake life to its foundations, and fill their souls for 
 a season with sharp conflicts and doubts. In one 
 black moment the whole beauteous vision would 
 shrink up and disappear, and in its place would 
 stand the awful shadow feared of man. Arthur 
 Hallam had never been strong; he had suffered 
 from a determination of blood to the brain. During 
 his residence, however, at Cambridge he had im- 
 proved ; the symptoms of a deranged circulation 
 had disappeared, and although he often suffered 
 from pains in the head, his friends thought they 
 were only ordinary headaches. In the autumn of 
 1833 he accompanied his father on a Continental 
 tour; but on returning to Vienna from Pesth, a 
 wet day gave him a slight fever. The end was very 
 sad, and left in many hearts a sorrow that could not 
 soon be put aside. The father had been out for a 
 walk in the streets of Vienna, and coming back, 
 found his son lying on the sofa. Supposing that he 
 was only taking a short rest, he sat down by his 
 side to write his letters; and then by slow and 
 imperceptible degrees the strange stillness of Arthur 
 began to awaken a certain anxiety in his mind.
 
 48 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 Drawing near to see why he did not move or speak, 
 he found that all was over 
 
 " In Vienna's fatal walls, 
 God's finger touch'd him, and he slept." 
 
 " Those," wrote the broken-hearted father, " whose 
 eyes must long be dim with tears brought him home 
 to rest among his kindred and in his own country." 
 He died on the I5th of September 1833, but it was 
 not until the 3rd of January 1834 that ^is remains 
 were laid to rest in the chancel of Clevedon Church, 
 " a lovely spot hanging on the side of a hill over- 
 looking the Bristol Channel." 
 
 This was the great sorrow that broke in upon the 
 sweet peace of Tennyson's life, and shattered for 
 ever every inclination to rest satisfied with the vision 
 and worship of beauty. It was this blow that raised 
 for him all the deepest and most awful questions the 
 human soul can face the worth and meaning of life, 
 the reality of God and immortality ; questions which 
 the poet faced with reverence and yet with courage 
 through dark lonely years of silence and suffering, 
 and by the answer to which, found through faith in 
 the " Strong Son of God," he was able to pierce the 
 mist of tears, and to see the grave of his beloved 
 friend arched with a rainbow of immortal hope.
 
 V. 
 
 DARKNESS AND SILENCE. 
 
 1 Proffering the riddles of the dread unknown, 
 Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone, 
 Questioning the centuries from their veils of sand." 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 " We demand 
 
 To know Him first, then trust Him, and then love, 
 When we have found Him worthy of our love, 
 Tried by our own poor hearts, and not before : 
 He must be truer than the truest friend, 
 He must be tenderer than a woman's love, 
 A father better than the best of sires ; 
 Kinder than she who bore us, though we sin 
 Oftener than did the brother we are told, 
 We poor ill-tempered mortals must forgive, 
 Though seven times sinning threescore times and ten." 
 
 0. W. HOLMES.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 DARKNESS AND SILENCE. 
 
 " But O for the touch of a vanished hand, 
 And the sound of a voice that is still." 
 
 THE great movement of thought begun in the 
 eighteenth century, and still in its full onward sweep 
 amongst us, has been described by one who has 
 studied it with penetrating insight as a progress 
 "through negation to reaffirmation," through de- 
 struction to reconstruction, in Carlyle's language, 
 through the " Everlasting No " to the " Everlasting 
 Yea." 1 It is seen "mirrored" in the spiritual his- 
 tory of our greatest thinkers. Its representatives in 
 Germany are Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Goethe. In this 
 country such names as Coleridge, Thomas Arnold, 
 Wordsworth, Carlyle, Maurice, Tennyson, indicate 
 its progress and some of its characteristic features. 
 
 All these men felt the inadequacy of the old 
 
 formulas to meet modern problems. With varying 
 
 success they attempted some re-statement of the 
 
 spiritual truths and hopes on which man's higher 
 
 1 " Hegel," by Professor Edward Caird.
 
 5 2 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 life depends. They help us because they courage- 
 ously faced and laid the grim spectres and doubts 
 from which others only turned away in terror. 
 Through all their conflict with traditionalism they 
 retained their faith in man's spiritual nature and 
 destiny. They saw that the shallow rationalism of 
 the past had no adequate answer for the new scien- 
 tific materialism ; that it only starved man's higher 
 nature, and dried up the divine fountains of poetry, 
 and left no worthy place for religion. They sought 
 an explanation of the universe which was large 
 enough to embrace all ascertained facts, and which 
 would not leave out God, Duty, and Immortality. 
 
 A vast spiritual movement like this necessarily 
 involves much suffering. It is easy to misunderstand 
 it. Some will dread it ; some will yield to it ; many 
 will only recognise isolated features of its striving 
 elements. Men look on the old foundations as they 
 crumble away ; they often do not see the new edifice 
 rising from a more substantial base. And thus for 
 all earnest men a period of transition is one of dark- 
 ness, conflict, silence. It is the critical moment of 
 their lives. There is danger of becoming a mere 
 destroyer or a mere reactionary. The noblest issue 
 is that which succeeds, by way of a deeper insight, 
 in reconciling the new culture with all that is helpful 
 and true in the old faith. 
 
 We have now reached the period in the life of
 
 DARKNESS AND SILENCE. 53 
 
 Lord Tennyson in which these considerations are of 
 special interest. We may be sure that under any 
 circumstances he would have been profoundly in- 
 fluenced by the great intellectual movement of his 
 age. After the death of Arthur Hallam he stood 
 outwardly where he was before, but inwardly he 
 was changed. We have almost nothing of a directly 
 biographical character to guide us, with respect to 
 this period. For ten years he preserved an almost 
 unbroken silence. He had few friends and lived 
 very much alone. Our best hope of knowing any- 
 thing of the development of his mind during those 
 lonely and silent years is from the poems he after- 
 wards published; and of these, I think that "The 
 Two Voices " and " In Memoriam " give us the best 
 clue. But it must be borne in mind that whilst 
 "The Two Voices" appeared in 1842, in the first 
 volume that broke the long silence, " In Memoriam " 
 did not appear until 1850, eight years later, and 
 that, therefore, we may expect to find a maturity of 
 thought in it which we do not discover in the earlier 
 poem. I shall, in this chapter, only refer to "In 
 Memoriam " in so far as it gives a fuller statement 
 of ideas which we find in germ in " The Two Voices," 
 and so helps us to understand the way in which our 
 poet faced the doubts that haunted him. 
 
 We see at once that Arthur Hallam's death burst 
 upon him like an earthquake, and shook his life to
 
 54 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 its foundations. Hitherto his life, 011 the whole, 
 had been one of ideal peace. He had faced the 
 future in confidence and hope. He knew that an 
 exceptional gift had been bestowed upon him, and 
 that he was consecrated to a great mission. In 
 " The Two Voices " the bright visions of those early 
 days are referred to. 
 
 He expresses the ardent wish that he could recover 
 the hopes that warmed in the days when he longed 
 for the praise of men ; that he had still the courage 
 and joy of the years when, " wide in soul and bold 
 of tongue," he sung the clear pasan among the 
 tents, and waited for the hour when he would be 
 summoned to wage a noble strife with falsehood and 
 wrong. 
 
 Contrast that with the later cry which came from 
 his heart after he had been called to face the in- 
 soluble, hard problems of existence 
 
 "... But what am I ? 
 An infant crying in the night, 
 An infant crying for the light, 
 And with no language but a cry." 
 
 It is evident, I think, that up to the death of 
 Hallam he had not been severely smitten with the 
 "malady of doubt," although, as we learn from the 
 "Supposed Confessions," it had not been wholly 
 absent from his mind. He had just the nature, deep,
 
 DARKNESS AND SILENCE. 55 
 
 brooding, metaphysical, to feel the full pressure of 
 the intellectual unrest of the age. And, as we might 
 expect, the shock of profound grief brought him 
 face to face with "the eternal problems in all their 
 implacable solemnity." What took place during 
 those ten years we may perhaps never fully know ; 
 but when he does appear again and breaks the silence, 
 we know that he has suffered. He has been in the 
 wilderness of temptation. The scars are on him. 
 He comes forth like the silver shield borne by the 
 Red Cross Knight 
 
 " Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine, 
 The cruell marks of many a bloody fielde." 
 
 The only adequate reason for this long silence, 
 as it seems to me, is that there was spiritual trouble. 
 The suggestion that he was disappointed with the 
 reception of his work so far, and had resolved to 
 commit nothing more to the press until he had 
 remedied his defects of style, will not bear examina- 
 tion. No one was better able than himself to see 
 the weakness as well as the strength of the attack 
 made upon him. It is not credible that that could 
 have silenced him for ten years. It was the blow 
 that fell upon him in 1833 that caused the silence. 
 " Bound to Hallam by one of those rare friendships 
 passing the love of women, Tennyson felt his loss 
 in the inmost fibres of his being. The world was
 
 56 I ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 changed, darkened, filled with secret conflicts. The 
 importunate questions of human life and destiny 
 thronged upon his soul." l This private loss drew 
 to itself the age-long agony of the world ; it started 
 all the hard, stony, Sphinx-like problems that have 
 confronted men as they have faced the wrongs and 
 miseries of the world. But he met it all manfully. 
 As Professor Dowden says : " Tennyson did not, 
 like Newman, silence his doubts and still his 
 troubles as a weary child in the old blind nurse's 
 lap." He neither surrendered his spiritual freedom 
 and the mighty hopes that make us men ; nor did 
 he hide himself away, afraid to look at the cold, 
 ruthless assaults that were made upon them. 
 
 " He fought his doubts and gather'd strength, 
 He would not make Ins judgment blind ; 
 He faced the spectres of the mind 
 And laid them : thus he came at length 
 To find a stronger faith his own." 
 
 Only twice during those years did he break the 
 silence, and then under great pressure. In 1837 
 he contributed the exquisite poem " St. Agnes " to 
 The Keepsake, edited by Lady Wortley, and the 
 same year to The Tribute, edited by Lord North- 
 ampton, he sent the stanzas 
 
 1 "The Poetry of Tennyson," by H. Van Dyke, p. 75.
 
 DARKNESS AND SILENCE. 57 
 
 " O that 'twere possible, 
 After long grief and pain ; " 
 
 iii the following lines of which there may be an echo 
 of personal feeling : 
 
 " Ah Christ, that it were possible 
 
 For one short hour to see 
 The souls we loved, that they might tell us 
 What and where they be." 
 
 When we turn to " The Two Voices " and " In 
 Memoriam," we get clear indications of what the 
 "spectres of the mind" were that had to be laid 
 during those years. There is hardly any acute form 
 of modern doubt and scepticism not presented. They 
 pass before us the apparent insignificance of man's 
 life in the presence of the boundless wealth of the 
 universe ; the seeming lordship of death ; the un- 
 attainableness of truth; the hideous denials which 
 Nature and the outward senses appear to give to our 
 divinest beliefs and hopes there they are, presented 
 with all the vivid power of a magnificent mind which 
 has fought and conquered them one and all, but 
 which has felt the awful bitterness of the struggle." 
 '"The Two Voices,'" says Dr. Bayne, "is a poem 
 perhaps unique. It is in the highest sense philo- 
 sophic, nay, metaphysical, throughout; yet no lyri- 
 cal trill of undiluted melody, no lilt sung by village 
 maiden, was ever more purely and entirely poetical." l 
 1 " Essays," by Dr. Peter Bayne, p. 252.
 
 58 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 The poem is a dialogue, at first carried on between 
 a man who refuses to part with his faith and hope 
 although in deep misery, and an evil spirit of denial 
 and despair, a Mephistopheles, and afterwards be- 
 tween the same man and the good spirit that bears 
 witness to the hidden hope of the world. 
 
 " A still small voice spake unto me, 
 ' Thou art so full of misery, 
 Were it not better not to be ? ' " 
 
 The suggestion of Mephistopheles is that the soul in 
 sorrow should curse God and die. But the sufferer 
 refuses to do this, and expresses his belief in the 
 value of his life, and in the essential dignity and 
 greatness of man. But the Spirit of Despair bids 
 him look up through the night and consider whether 
 in the presence of those hundred million spheres 
 man's petty life can be of any worth. The man 
 expresses his desire for truth, but he is told that 
 it is unattainable. The riddle of the earth cannot 
 be solved ; men merely play with knowledge ; they 
 seek, but find not ; they are no nearer the light, for 
 the scale is infinite. It were better to die ; there is 
 repose in the grave. "Consider," says the Spirit 
 of Despair, "the face of one who has but lately 
 died. Is it not strangely calm and meek? There 
 are no signs of passion, or pain, or pride. His 
 hands are folded across his breast, and nothing is
 
 DARKNESS AND SILENCE. 59 
 
 suggested but that all disquiet is merged in ever- 
 lasting rest." 
 
 But the sufferer will not yield. These arguments 
 of scientific Materialism and Agnosticism ; these 
 proofs of the worthlessness of life, the relativity 
 of knowledge, the triumph of death, may be subtle, 
 they may confuse, bewilder ; the evidence of Nature 
 and the senses may be all on their side, but they 
 do not convince. There is that in man's nature that 
 protests against them all, and refuses to believe 
 them. Men will not believe that knowledge is all 
 a dream, that the dead are dead, that the soul is 
 only dust. 
 
 " Here sits he shaping wings to fly : 
 His heart forebodes a mystery : 
 He names the name Eternity. 
 
 He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend, 
 And through thick veils to apprehend 
 A labour working to an end. 
 
 Ah ! sure within him and without, 
 Could his dark wisdom find it out, 
 There must be answer to his doubt." 
 
 Now what is the significance of this poem thus 
 far? I think this: That when, in the agony of 
 suffering and loss, the poet was pressed by scientific 
 and philosophic unbelief to surrender his spiritual 
 faith and hopes, he, in the first instance, fell back 
 on the soul's deepest affections and experiences. In
 
 60 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 his own nature he discovered a witness for God, 
 Duty, Immortality. The principle hinted]at in " The 
 Two Voices," and more clearly expressed in the 
 " In Memoriam," is that man's moral and spiritual 
 nature bears a more direct and certain relation to 
 the ultimate realities of the universe than the logical 
 understanding and the witness of the senses; and 
 that, therefore, it is to its voice we should specially 
 give heed. 
 
 But this remarkable poem takes us a step further. 
 There is nothing more that the spirit of denial can 
 urge, and it takes its departure, saying 
 
 " In quiet scorn, 
 ' Behold, it is the Sabbath morn.' " 
 
 The sweet church-bells begin to peal, and the 
 people press to the house of God, passing the graves 
 where each must rest, without any terror. And 
 now another voice whispers silver clear, a murmur, 
 "Be of better cheer." 
 
 " ' What is't thou know'st, sweet voice ? ' I cried. 
 ' A hidden hope,' the voice replied ; 
 
 So heavenly-toned, that in that hour 
 From out my sullen heart a power 
 Broke like the rainbow from the shower. 
 
 To feel, altho' no tongue can prove, 
 That every cloud that spreads above, 
 And veileth love, itself is love."
 
 DARKNESS AND SILENCE. 61 
 
 In other words, as I understand the poem, it not 
 merely teaches that our deepest feelings and ex- 
 periences are true witnesses to our spiritual nature, 
 and immortal destiny, but that the witness of the 
 heart is confirmed by the Gospel, as symbolised in 
 the Sabbath-morn and the house of God ; and also- 
 by that good spirit which is not withheld from all 
 true seekers. And then further, that their united 
 witness, when rightly interpreted, is that the ultimate 
 reality of the universe is " Immortal Love." These 
 are the great underlying truths of "In Memoriam," 
 as I shall endeavour to show later on. 
 
 But the reader^will discover a depth and beauty 
 in "The Two 'Voices" that cannot be possibly 
 pointed out here. Every line in the poem is worthy 
 of careful thought ; and here, as in the case of " The 
 Palace of Art," it is an advantage to compare it with 
 a similar poem by another author. There is not 
 anything like the same depth of splendour in Whit- 
 tier's poem " The Voices " as in the one we have just 
 been considering, but yet it is a beautiful poem and 
 the two have much in common both in matter and 
 style. The poems throw light on one another. In 
 Whittier's " Voices," a soul weary of the good fight 
 of faith is urged by a spirit of evil to give over the 
 struggle 
 
 " Why urge the long, unequal fight, 
 Since Truth has fallen in the street."
 
 62 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 The light of sun and stars has left the sky, and the 
 soul in darkness is inclined to give heed to the 
 tempter. But then another voice is heard. It 
 acknowledges that the task may seem over-hard to 
 scatter the life-seed in so thankless a soil 
 
 " Yet do thy work ; it shall succeed 
 In thine or in another's day ; 
 And, if denied the victor's meed, 
 Thou shalt not lack the toiler's pay." 
 
 This poem also, like Tennyson's, ends with the sweet 
 Sabbath-morn breaking in sunlight and beauty over 
 the world after a week of storms. 
 
 And now we can understand how it is that for 
 the past fifty years Lord Tennyson has exercised 
 such a vast influence over the minds of educated 
 Englishmen. For this period has been one of 
 spiritual distress for very many. Menacing figures 
 have arisen on all sides to confront the beliefs and 
 hopes on which our higher life depends. The fun- 
 damental postulates of morality and religion have 
 been assailed with an earnestness and ability un- 
 known before. And, moreover, there are so often 
 times of darkness and sorrow, when they seem too 
 beautiful to be true. But through all this unrest, 
 here was one who had sympathy with all honest 
 doubt, who had himself felt the whole pressure 
 and agony of the present distress, and who had
 
 DARKNESS AND SILENCE. 63 
 
 courageously battled his way through the, "Ever- 
 lasting No" to the "Everlasting Yea." Whilst, 
 therefore, Lord Tennyson showed the utmost scorn 
 for the shallow scepticism that delights to parade 
 itself, and which deems it a fine thing to look down 
 on men of faith, he knew that doubt was sometimes 
 a duty, that it might be the dark and painful path 
 to a larger and clearer faith 
 
 " There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds." 
 
 And yet Tennyson did not rest satisfied with doubt. 
 He fought against it, and saw clearly that Faith was 
 man's birthright. He looked upon all these spiritual 
 struggles as the efforts of a living faith to clear 
 itself of all that would hinder its growth. Faith is 
 the keynote of much of his teaching faith which is 
 not the mere assent of the understanding to a series 
 of propositions in a book, but which is born of obe- 
 dience, reverence, patience, moral fidelity 
 
 " The faith that comes of self-control , 
 The truths that never can be proved."
 
 VI. 
 
 SUNSHINE AND SONG AGAIN. 
 
 " When comforts are declining, 
 
 He grants the soul again 
 A season of clear shining, 
 To cheer it after rain. " 
 
 COWPEK.
 
 : Through every fibre of my brain, 
 Through every nerve, through every vein, 
 I feel the electric thrill, the touch 
 Of life, that seems almost too much. 
 
 And over me unrolls on high 
 The splendid scenery of the sky, 
 Where through a sapphire sea the sun 
 Sails like a golden galleon. 
 
 Life and Love ! happy throng 
 Of thoughts, whose only speech is song ! 
 heart of man ! canst thou not be 
 Blithe as the air is, and as free ? " 
 
 LONGFELLOW.
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 SUNSHINE AND SONG AGAIN. 
 
 " The clouds will melt and vanish, 
 The golden light will stream, 
 And the freshen'd earth with fragrance 
 And melody will teem." THOS. LYNCH. 
 
 WE know little of the outward movements of Tenny- 
 son during the period covered by the last chapter ; 
 but we do get one or two glimpses of him, and, as 
 they help to confirm the view I have taken of his 
 inner life during those years of darkness and silence, 
 and lead up most naturally to the next stage, they 
 may be recorded here. 
 
 In 1835 the dear old home at Somersby Rectory, 
 so full of gracious memories, and where he sung his 
 matin song, was abandoned with many regrets. See 
 " In Memoriam," Cantos ci. and cii. 
 
 "We leave the well-beloved place 
 
 Where first we gazed upon the sky ; 
 The roofs that heard our earliest cry 
 Will shelter one of stranger race." 
 
 He moved about from place to place, living, how- 
 ever, for the most part in the neighbourhood of
 
 68 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 London. Friends were few, but they were choice. 
 Among them was Thomas Carlyle, who, says Mr. 
 Fronde, "admired and almost loved him." They 
 had many tastes in common, took long walks to- 
 gether, and often, like the divinities of the old 
 world, sat " among the clouds" of their own tobacco- 
 smoke. Carlyle, who was not usually lavish in 
 praise of his contemporaries, spoke in high terms of 
 Tennyson. Here is a striking word-picture of him. 
 It was written in 1844, but manifestly describes 
 Tennyson as he appeared all through those years. 
 It forms part of a letter to Emerson. "Alfred is 
 one of the few British and foreign figures (a not 
 increasing number, I think) who are and remain 
 beautiful to me a true human soul, or some authen- 
 tic approximation thereto, to whom your own soul 
 can say, Brother! ... A man solitary and sad, as 
 certain men are, dwelling in an element of gloom 
 carrying a bit of Chaos about him, in short, which 
 he is manufacturing into Cosmos. . . . Being master 
 of a small annuity on his father's decease, he pre- 
 ferred clubbing with his mother and some sisters, 
 to live unpromoted and write poems. In this way 
 he still lives, now here, now there, the family always 
 within reach of London, never in it; he himself 
 making rare and brief visits, lodging in some old 
 comrade's rooms. . . . One of the finest-looking men 
 in the world. A great shock of rough dusty-dark
 
 SUNSHINE AND SONG AGAIN. 69 
 
 hair ; bright, laughing, hazel eyes ; massive aquiline 
 face, most massive yet most delicate; of sallow- 
 brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes 
 cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes infinite to- 
 bacco. His voice is musical metallic fit for loud 
 laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie 
 between ; speech and speculation free and plenteous. 
 I do not meet in these late decades such company 
 over a pipe ! We shall see what he will grow to. 
 He is often unwell ; very chaotic his way is through 
 Chaos and the Bottomless and Pathless ; not handy 
 for making out many miles upon." Three years 
 later we get another sentence from the pen of 
 Carlyle, worth a whole volume from one of less 
 penetration : " Tennyson has been here for three 
 weeks ... a truly interesting son of earth and son 
 of heaven, who has almost lost his way amongst 
 will-o'-the-wisps, I doubt; and may flounder ever 
 deeper." 
 
 By these brief visits to London, of which Carlyle 
 speaks, he kept in touch with many of his old Cam- 
 bridge friends, and would, of course, always be a 
 welcome guest with the Hallams. But for the most 
 part he lived a lonely life. "Avoiding general 
 society," said another contemporary, " he would pre- 
 fer to sit up all night with a friend, or else sit and 
 think alone. Beyond a very small circle he is never 
 met." Thus alone and silent he fought his doubts.
 
 7 o ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 In one respect, however, Carlyle's picture, or rather 
 his fears, did not come true. Tennyson did not 
 "flounder ever deeper." As we saw in the last 
 chapter, the Chaos was becoming a Cosmos. Already 
 the sun had broken through the dense clouds that 
 had encompassed it, and was throwing broad beams 
 of light upon his path. 
 
 In this experience we see how truly Tennyson 
 represented his age. When in sad and sweet music 
 he told the story of his own spiritual unrest, the 
 thoughts of many hearts were revealed. The "In 
 Memoriam " and " The Two Voices " have been like 
 solemn chants interpreting the hidden secrets of a 
 o-reat multitude of souls. For the eternal problems 
 
 o 
 
 spring up in every life, and there is no noble escape 
 from them but through them. Bach one must bear 
 his own burden, and fight his own fight of faith, 
 and win his own way to victory. And, as with 
 Tennyson, so with us all, the victory must be won 
 before we can live our best life. I do not mean that 
 we must see our way to a complete system of 
 theology or theory of the universe ; but I do mean 
 that a man must know that he has got his feet upon 
 the rock of Eternal Truth if he is to enjoy spiritual 
 freedom and do noble work in the world. "It is 
 with man's soul," says Thomas Carlyle, "as it is 
 with Nature : the beginning of Creation is Light. 
 Till the eye have vision, the whole members are in
 
 SUNSHINE AND SONG AGAIN. 71 
 
 bonds. Divine moment when over the tempest-tost 
 soul, as once over the wild- weltering chaos, it is 
 spoken : Let there be Light ! " 
 
 And so for our poet there came the divine moment 
 when the clouds rolled away and the sun shone 
 again. The " Everlasting No " gave place to the 
 " Everlasting Yea." Even the grave was seen to 
 have its " sunny side." Kegret died, but love lived for 
 evermore. His soul was no longer anchored to gloomy 
 thoughts. The word was spoken Let there be light ! 
 
 But life needs a threefold benediction Light, 
 Labour, Love. 
 
 We have seen how Tennyson emerged into light ; 
 let us see how the other gifts came to him. 
 
 In 1842 the long silence was broken by the pub- 
 lication of his poems in two volumes. They con- 
 tained the earlier poems long out of print together 
 with most of those now grouped in his works under 
 the heading " English Idylls, and other Poems." 
 They were received at once with almost universal 
 applause and satisfaction, and soon ran through 
 several editions. Now, for the first time, there was 
 a distinct, popular, voluntary confirmation of the 
 choice of his youth. He was a poet by divine ordi- 
 nation, by self -consecration, by the deliberate verdict 
 of his contemporaries. The clouds of obscurity and 
 neglect rolled away, and life's great blessing of noble
 
 72 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 Labour came to him in the call to be the poet-prophet 
 of his age. 
 
 Everywhere men felt that a voice was speaking to 
 them to which it was well to give heed. There was 
 the same music in it as in the early poems, the same 
 delicacy of tone ; but it was richer, deeper, more 
 pathetic. It was the voice of one who had suffered ; 
 -who had been down into the Valley of the Shatlow 
 of Death and heard whispering Spirits of Evil, and 
 fought with Apollyon himself, but who had conquered, 
 and gained at last the fields of light beyond the 
 awful gorge. Life had become real and earnest. The 
 poet had found his true work. He was called to be 
 the Teacher, Prophet, Poet of his age; to speak a mes- 
 sage of hope to all in spiritual distress ; of sympathy 
 to all that was pure, sweet, lovely; of scorn for all 
 social lies and tyrannies that were destroying the 
 souls of men. The reader will see, on referring to his 
 works, that many of his best known and best loved 
 poems were contained in these volumes. The fore- 
 most men in literature were now enthusiastic in his 
 praise ; his popularity and influence increased daily. 
 The venerable Wordsworth, then Poet Laureate, had 
 an interview with him, and wrote, saying, "He is 
 decidedly the first of living poets, and I hope will 
 live and give the world still better things." Thack- 
 eray became his intimate friend. Charles Dickens 
 read his poems with admiration, and never faltered
 
 SUNSHINE AND SONG AGAIN. 73 
 
 in his allegiance. The volumes were cordially wel- 
 comed in America, and Lowell, Longfellow, Poe, 
 and others expressed their deep sense of the great- 
 ness of the author. 
 
 But although Tennyson had found his work, it 
 did not bring him in much pecuniary help for some 
 time. It brought him honour and gratitude, but 
 not the less was there much anxiety about the bread 
 that perisheth. But this led a number of his friends 
 to make an effort to secure a pension for him, so 
 that he might serve the nation by devoting himself 
 to his high mission with less worry about 
 
 " That eternal want of pence 
 Which vexes public men." 
 
 In this they were successful ; but not without pro- 
 voking a very ungenerous attack from Bulwer Lytton, 
 who styled him " Miss Alfred," the " puling muse " 
 who gave the world a " jingling medley of purloined 
 conceits." The attack was retaliated, but after- 
 wards the quarrel was healed. The poem called 
 " Literary Squabbles " refers to the incident. 
 
 In 1847 "The Princess" was published. It has 
 been called by a sympathetic critic a " splendid 
 failure." It contains much exquisite poetry, and 
 above all the immortal stanzas beginning 
 
 " Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
 Tears from the depth of some divine despair."
 
 74 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 All poets have sung of Love, but none in nobler 
 strains than Lord Tennyson. It occupies a cen- 
 tral position in his conception of a true life and 
 in his writings. " Locksley Hall," " The Miller's 
 Daughter," "The Gardener's Daughter," "Maud," 
 "The Princess," " Aylmer's Field," "Enoch Arden," 
 " The Lover's Tale," " Lady Clare," " The Lord of 
 Burleigh," are only a few of the poems in which 
 love and marriage form the theme. And from 
 whatever point of view he approaches these subjects, 
 whether he is tracing the fatal course of those un- 
 hallowed passions which wrought such havoc in King 
 Arthur's Court and blasted all his divine ideals, oi- 
 ls portraying the sinful pride and mammon-worship 
 that wrecked the hopes of the hero of Locksley 
 Hall and swept away the glory of Aylmer's field, 
 or is sketching the tender interviews of happy lovers 
 
 in the 
 
 " Woods where we hid from the wet, 
 Stiles where we stay'd to be kind," 
 
 or is withdrawing the veil from a picture of perfect 
 marriage bliss, his sympathies are ever the same. 
 His ideals are pure and chaste; his words stir up 
 no bad passions. In an age which has been flooded 
 with the loathsome confessions of the divorce court, 
 in which much of literature is but thinly-veiled vice, 
 in which many desire to reinstate the worship of the 
 flesh, and glorify lust rather than self-restraint, it
 
 SUNSHINE AND SONG AGAIN. 75 
 
 has been an unspeakable blessing that the poet, who 
 for more than fifty years has been our most distin- 
 guished man of literature, has spoken no single word 
 to excuse or encourage vice. All his teaching has 
 been pervaded by a noble and lofty chivalry, a pro- 
 found and delicate reverence for womanhood, and an 
 utter scorn and hatred of the evil passions that defile 
 the pure white garments of love. 
 
 In his poems true men are brave, chaste knights, 
 who hold all their passions under firm control ; who 
 are resolved 
 
 " To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, 
 To love one maiden only, cleave to her, 
 And worship her by years of noble deeds, 
 Until they won her." 
 
 And so with woman. He never departed from the 
 ideal of his youth expressed in " Isabel "- 
 
 " The stately flower of female fortitude, 
 Of perfect wifehood and pure lowlihead." 
 
 In the teaching of Tennyson love is the sweet 
 fountain from which flows all that is most beautiful 
 and worthy in the life of man and woman. It is the 
 divinely-implanted principle of redemption and heal- 
 ing in society, that keeps down the base, and stirs 
 man to all that is unselfish, heroic, resourceful in 
 his life. Notice how this idea is worked out in
 
 76 ALFRED) TENNYSON. 
 
 " Enoch Arden," and " The Miller's Daughter," and 
 " Locksley Hall." 
 
 And love, pure, chaste, noble, finds its consum- 
 mation in marriage. In union with woman, " woman 
 as God made her and meant her to be," woman as 
 she is in the true purity and unspoiled beauty of her 
 nature, man was to find a primary condition of an 
 efficient and noble life. 
 
 " But were I joined with her, 
 Then might we live together as one life, 
 And, reigning with one will in everything, 
 Have power on this dark land to lighten it, 
 And power on this dead world to make it live." 
 
 These are the ideas that find expression all through 
 his poetry. They form the fitting end of "The 
 Princess." For dealing with the vexed question of 
 what has been called " the emancipation of woman," 
 it ends in the recognition of the truth that woman 
 finds her true place when she comes to 
 
 " Set herself to man, 
 Like perfect music unto noble words ;' " 
 
 and finally ends in the Prince marrying the Princess. 
 This was Lord Tennyson's teaching, and he carried 
 it out in his own noble life. The remark was made 
 at the time of his death that "many poets have been 
 inferior men, but he was equal to his writing." 
 1 The Spectator, October 8, 1892.
 
 SUNSHINE AND SONG AGAIN. 77 
 
 Through a long life it was proved that a woman did 
 not necessarily make a mistake in " marrying a man 
 of genius." 
 
 There is no romantic story to tell regarding the 
 poet's courtship and marriage. The veil has very 
 rightly been closely drawn over his domestic life. 
 But what glimpses we have been permitted to get 
 of it confirm the statement that it was one of ideal 
 happiness, grace, beauty. It has been said that he 
 would have been married earlier but for pecuniary 
 reasons. Lady Tennyson was Emily Sellwood, eldest 
 daughter of Mr. Henry Sellwood of Horncastle, the 
 little county town not far from the old home of the 
 Tennysons. He came of a good family of Berkshire 
 and Somersetshire squires, but became a solicitor 
 and settled in Lincolnshire. He married a sister of 
 Sir John Franklin, the celebrated Arctic navigator, 
 and they had three daughters, the youngest being- 
 married to Charles Tennyson, whilst Emily, the eldest, 
 was married to our poet on June 13, 1820, in the fine 
 old church of Shiplake, near to Henley-on-Thames. 
 
 That the union was a beautiful realisation of his 
 own ideal of married bliss we know ; for he has told 
 us in the words 
 
 " Dear, near and true no truer Time himself 
 Can prove you, tho' he make you evermore 
 Dearer and nearer, as the rapid of life 
 Shoots to the fall."
 
 VII. 
 
 MERIDIAN SPLENDOUR. 
 
 " Summer suns are glowing 
 
 Over land and sea ; 
 
 Happy light is flowing, 
 
 Bountiful and free." 
 
 W. W. How.
 
 What are we set on earth for ? Say, to toil ; 
 Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines 
 For all the heat o' the day, till it declines, 
 And Death's mild curfew shall from work assoil. 
 God did anoint thee with His odorous oil, 
 To wrestle, not to reign." E. B. BROWNING.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 MERIDIAN SPLENDOUR. 
 
 " The sun is high in heaven, the skies are bright 
 And full of blessedness, 
 And every hour brings its own burden sweet." 
 
 LEWIS MORRIS. 
 
 TENNYSON'S genius now quickly mounted to .the 
 zenith of its power. The clouds dispersed. The 
 gloom that overshadowed his early manhood melted 
 away before the warmth of a deeper spiritual faith 
 and the profound peacefulness of marriage bliss. 
 For a long series of years his life became one of 
 great literary activity and brilliancy, and he enjoyed 
 an ever-widening recognition. The year of his 
 marriage witnessed the publication of the work 
 which very many consider his greatest achievement, 
 and certainly the one by which he has most deeply 
 influenced his age. In this year, also, the eyes of 
 men turned to him as the one poet most worthy to 
 wear the laurel that had just fallen from the ample 
 brows of Wordsworth. He was made Poet Laureate 
 on November 19, 1850.
 
 82 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 For the first few years their home was at Twicken- 
 ham, but they travelled a good deal. A few months 
 after their marriage Thomas Carlyle met them in 
 Cumberland, and from his pen we get a bright little 
 picture of the poet's "new wife." "Mrs. Tennyson 
 lights up bright glittering blue eyes when you speak 
 to her ; has wit, has sense, and were it not that she 
 seems so very delicate in health, I should augur really 
 well of Tennyson's adventure." The autumn of 1851 
 was spent in France and Italy. We turn, however, 
 as the poet would have wished us to do (see the 
 
 verses addressed " To after reading a Life and 
 
 Letters ") from these small details to the considera- 
 tion of one of the greatest productions of human 
 genius. 
 
 "!N MEMORIAM." 
 
 " In Memoriam " is something more than the 
 greatest religious poem of the nineteenth century ; 
 it is the one poem worthy of being placed by the 
 side of Dante's " Divina Commedia " and Milton's 
 " Paradise Lost." It has been beautifully described 
 as 
 
 " A light that gleams across the wave 
 Of darkness, down the rolling years, 
 Piercing the heavy mist of tears, 
 A rainbow shining o'er the grave." 
 
 Death had come between Arthur Hallam and
 
 MERIDIAN SPLENDOUR. 83 
 
 Alfred Tennyson, who, as we have seen, were bound 
 together by one of those noble friendships of which 
 the world affords but rare examples. But the poet 
 did not strike his harp in a wild outburst of passionate 
 grief. That might have awakened pity it would 
 not have elevated or healed. For seventeen years 
 he bore his sorrow in silence, and when he made it 
 known to the world, it still retained a look of earnest, 
 endless sadness;' but it was sadness transfigured 
 in angel-like beauty through the light of Christian 
 faith and hope. It was sorrow, calm, majestic, holy. 
 The shadow was glory-crowned. From the depths 
 of the agony there arose a note of jubilation. For 
 springing out of this personal bereavement "In 
 Memoriam " sweeps into the presence of the eternal 
 realities. It confronts the ghastliest fears that have 
 ever haunted sorrow-stricken men and women as 
 they have looked on the white faces of their dead. 
 And it is only after all the depths of doubt have 
 been sounded that it goes on to assert an unshaken 
 belief that love is Lord and King, and that beyond 
 the shadow there is an immortal life where the fair 
 friendships of earth will be renewed. 
 
 " In Memoriam," therefore, deals with themes of 
 solemn, universal interest. For the shadow falls 
 everywhere. The supreme mystery of death faces 
 us on all sides. The air is full of farewells to the 
 dying and mourning for the dead
 
 84 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 " There is no flock, however watched and tended, 
 
 But one dead lamb is there : 
 There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 
 But has one vacant chair ! " 
 
 Only one condition was required to make " In 
 Memoriam " of profound and pathetic interest to us 
 all ; it must deal with its great theme adequately, in 
 a way suited to the spiritual conditions of the age. 
 
 It is an exceedingly common thing to compare " In 
 Memoriam" with Milton's " Lycidas " and Shelley's 
 " Adonais;" but in truth they have hardly anything 
 in common beyond the fact that they are elegies. 
 Nothing, however, can more impress upon us the 
 greatness of " In Memoriam " than to read the other 
 two poems in connection with it. There is no very 
 profound grief in " Lycidas ; " for Edward King, 
 who was drowned, and of whom Milton sings, had 
 not been a very close friend. And beyond the 
 expression of the belief that although he had " sunk 
 so low," he had yet 
 
 " Mounted high 
 Through the dear might of Him that walk'd the waves," 
 
 there is very little in it of Christian hope. The 
 beautiful " Adonais," in which Shelley laments the 
 early death of Keats, has much passion and pathos 
 in it. It could not, of course, coming from Shelley, 
 have in it any glorious expressions of faith. But
 
 MERIDIAN SPLENDOUR. 85 
 
 there are passages of marvellous loveliness. How 
 perfectly, for example, the following lines suggest 
 the ruthlessness of death, and the fragile, unsub- 
 stantial beauty of life, compared with the change- 
 less perfection and permanence of eternity : 
 
 " Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity, 
 Until Death tramples it to fragments." 
 
 But, beautiful as this poem is, it is not to be com- 
 pared with "In Memoriam." Tennyson drew his 
 inspiration from the profound depths of Christian 
 faith and hope. 
 
 Not only does " In Memoriam " deal with a theme 
 of universal and deathless interest, but it deals with 
 it in a way thoroughly characteristic of the age. 
 This is best seen by comparing it with the other 
 great English poem dealing with the vital questions 
 of faith and reason. "Paradise Lost" was also 
 
 written to 
 
 " Assert eternal Providence, 
 And justify the ways of God to men ; " 
 
 but it was written in the seventeenth century, before 
 the Agnostic had come to question the adequacy of 
 reason to deal with these mighty themes, and before 
 man's holiest beliefs and hopes had been confronted 
 by the menacing figure of Science. But those days 
 have gone. We live in an age of intellectual unrest 
 and religious doubt. Our faith is no longer an nndis-
 
 86 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 puted possession. Science reveals to us the bound- 
 less wealth of the universe ; but, in so doing, she seems 
 to teach the utter insignificance of human life. She 
 points to the indifference of Nature (see Cantos Iv. 
 and Ivi.), and teaches that Nature cares neither for 
 the individual nor the race. 
 
 " She cries, A thousand types are gone ! 
 I care for nothing, all shall go." 
 
 Make your appeal to Nature, and her only reply 
 is that she brings to life and brings to death, that 
 the spirit is only the breath, and she knows no more. 
 It is these hideous denials that we have to face. 
 You believe that God is love, that " love is creation's 
 final law ; " but there confronts you the fierce and 
 awful struggle for existence through the world. 
 "There seems to me too much misery in the world," 
 cried Charles Darwin. " Destruction is the rule ; life 
 is the exception." " The waste is enormous ; the 
 suffering terrible." 
 
 " In Memoriam " was written in the full know- 
 ledge of all this. It was written by one who felt 
 the whole pressure and burden of these problems, as 
 much as any man has done. And yet Tennyson 
 faces them all with an unconquerable faith in Im- 
 mortal Love and in the spiritual nature and immortal 
 destiny of man. Confronted by these difficulties, he 
 did not try to explain anything away, but fell back
 
 MERIDIAN SPLENDOUR. 87 
 
 on the revelation of God found in man's nature and 
 confirmed by Christ. In the soul's deepest affections 
 and experiences, in the love that death could not 
 quench, in the inextinguishable spirit of reverence 
 and worship, in the conviction of the absolute claims 
 of righteousness, of the reality of a perfect truth, 
 goodness, beauty in these, corroborated and sanc- 
 tioned by Christ, he sought an answer to life's 
 deepest questions. In our own nature he discovered 
 a witness for God, Duty, Immortality, with which he 
 could confront the cold and paralysing negations of 
 the understanding. He tells us in Canto cxxiv. 
 how he found God. It was not by the study of 
 .the eagle's -wing or the insect's eye, but rather by 
 attending to the deepest beliefs and intuitions of 
 the heart. " I have' felt." 
 
 When Frederick Maurice dedicated his "Theo- 
 logical Essays" to Tennyson, he did so in the fol- 
 lowing words : "I have maintained in these Essays 
 that a theology which does not correspond to the 
 deepest thoughts and feelings of human beings 
 cannot be a true theology." And so we may say 
 with reference to every theory of life, every ex- 
 planation of the universe, that it cannot be true 
 if it does violence to the deepest intuitions of the 
 soul. For they are a more direct and sure witness 
 to the ultimate realities of the universe than the 
 logical understanding.
 
 88 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 But further, another fundamental thought of 
 "In Memoriam" is that this witness of our nature 
 has been confirmed by Christ. See Canto xxxvi. 
 
 " Tho' truths in manhood darkly join, 
 Deep seated in our mystic frame, 
 We yield all blessing to the name 
 Of Him that made them current coin." 
 
 What then is the fundamental truth to which our 
 nature and Christ bear witness ? That the eternal, 
 creative, Principle of the universe is Absolute Love. 
 That is the central thought of " In Memoriam." 
 It is true that "Nature, red in tooth and claw," 
 shrieks against the creed, but the poet maintains 
 it for all that. Love is manifestly the deepest 
 and holiest principle in man. Christ was Love, 
 and in Christ we have the deepest Principle of 
 the universe revealed. And we may be sure of 
 this, that to those who can really believe that Im- 
 mortal Love is the supreme and ultimate reality, 
 the sharpest agony of life is gone. The poet's 
 profoundest faith is expressed in Canto cxxvi., 
 " Love is and was my Lord and King," and in 
 the Introduction, "Strong Son of God, Immortal 
 Love." 
 
 And now, springing out of this belief in Immortal 
 Love rises the other belief that bears so immediately 
 on the subject of the whole poem, viz., belief in
 
 MERIDIAN SPLENDOUR. 89 
 
 Personal Immortality and in the Keunion of all 
 loving and faithful souls beyond death and the 
 grave. The movement of thought which I have 
 endeavoured to describe, but which, to be fully 
 understood, must be carefully studied in the pages 
 of "In Memoriam" itself, began in the shock of 
 personal loss. The whole sky was darkened, life lost 
 its meaning, but through doubt and anguish the 
 sufferer learns that Love is Lord indeed, and out 
 of it springs the certainty that the dead still live. 
 It is the pathetic tenderness with which the poem 
 deals with this theme that has made it a solace to 
 tens of thousands who have been called to part with 
 those who were dearer to them than life. Death is 
 such a stern and awful fact. The silence is almost 
 unbearable. The closer the bond of affection the 
 sharper the agony of separation. But here is one 
 who has sounded all the seas of doubt, who knows 
 all about the anguish, terror, misgivings of the 
 sorrow-stricken soul, and yet in calm, stately, im- 
 perishable verse expresses his faith that the dead 
 are alive, and that beyond the grave those now 
 separated will meet and know one another, and sit 
 at endless feast "enjoying each the other's good." 
 (See Cantos xlvii., xxxiv., xxxv.) Faith in God and 
 in Immortality stand or fall together. Life here 
 without a future would be an unfinished thing. 
 "Earth would be darkness at the core." Love
 
 90 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 would be robbed of all its nobility and strength, 
 "Half dead to know that it shall die." 
 
 In this way, with perfect poetic truth and beauty, 
 " In Memoriam " gives expression to the faith and 
 hope that make us men. No doubt there are many 
 who are disappointed because they do not find in it 
 a fuller statement of the whole system of Christian 
 truth. Bat the very strength of the poem lies in 
 its delicate reserve. In an age of spiritual perplexity 
 and scientific materialism it is a great thing to keep 
 near to what is fundamental and essential, and to 
 rest faith upon its widest grounds. A more dogmatic 
 element would have weakened its influence. 
 
 Although Tennyson spared no pains to perfect his 
 work, and often kept back his poems from publica- 
 tion for years, and even, after that, retouched them 
 again and again, he seems to have been strangely 
 forgetful and careless as to the preservation of his 
 manuscripts. We learn from his brother Frederick 
 that the earliest manuscript of the " Poems : Chiefly 
 Lyrical " was lost out of his greatcoat pocket, and 
 had to be reproduced from memory. 1 And it is 
 related that the entire and only manuscript of the 
 great poem we have been just considering was for- 
 gotten and left behind in the drawer of his lodging- 
 house dressing-table in London, and only rescued by 
 1 " The Poets and Poetry of the Century," p. 6.
 
 MERIDIAN SPLENDOUR. 91 
 
 Mr. Coventry Patmore with some difficulty after the 
 lodging had been vacated. 
 
 PATRIOTIC POEMS. 
 
 There was nothing cosmopolitan about Tennyson. 
 He was English to the heart's core. In " Hands all 
 Round " he declares that the best " Cosmopolite " is 
 the man who best loves his native country. He never 
 doubted that it was among our first duties to keep 
 our British Empire whole, and bid us pray God that 
 our greatness might not fail through craven fears of 
 being great. And yet his was not a false patriotism. 
 He loved England because he loved truth, freedom, 
 righteousness. He would not be bound in blind ser- 
 vility to any political party. He could not understand 
 a patriotism which looked lightly upon the mighty 
 deeds and heroisms of bygone ages. He gloried in 
 the sacrifices that had made England great, and he 
 called upon all her sons to love her, as he did in 
 every fibre of his being, with a " love far-brought 
 from out the storied past." 
 
 Circumstances occurred at this time which raised 
 these sentiments to a white heat of enthusiasm. In 
 December of 1851 a great act of treachery was per- 
 petrated in France. Louis Napoleon suddenly struck 
 down the liberties of that country. He was believed 
 to be a man of unscrupulous ambition, who would
 
 92 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 not hesitate to make an attack upon this kingdom 
 should he see any prospect of success. There was 
 animpression that England was not prepared for 
 war. An intense dread of danger spread through the 
 country. Tennyson shared these feelings. Like 
 Thomas Carlyle, he held the character of the French 
 Emperor in extreme moral loathing. The fire burst 
 forth in the song, " Britons, Guard your Own " 
 
 " Peace-lovers we, sweet peace we all desire ; 
 Peace-lovers we, but who can trust a liar ? 
 Peace-lovers, haters 
 Of shameless traitors ; 
 
 We hate not France, but this man's heart of stone : 
 Britons, guard your own." 
 
 Immediately after followed the two pieces, " The 
 Third of February 1852 "and "Hands all Round." 
 Before the year had passed Great Britain was called 
 to bury her great chief, the Duke of Wellington, 
 and on the day of the funeral Tennyson published 
 his noble -tribute, his " Ode on the Death of the 
 Duke." It was worthy of the occasion. It is, as 
 Sir Henry Taylor said at the time, an ode that will 
 move men "according to their capacity of feeling 
 what is great and true." I pity from my heart the 
 man who can read unmoved the magnificent lines 
 beginning 
 
 " Not once or twice in our rough island-story 
 The path of duty was the way to glory."
 
 MERIDIAN SPLENDOUR. 93 
 
 No better opportunity than the present is likely 
 to occur for drawing the reader's attention to two 
 or three more of the great patriotic poems. " The 
 Charge of the Light Brigade," written in 1854, is 
 too well known and popular to require any comment. 
 The Charge of the Heavy Brigade " commemorates 
 an equally noble exploit. "The Defence of Luck- 
 now" immortalises the most heroic event in con- 
 nection with the Indian Mutiny. But the most 
 soul-stirring of them all, to my mind, is the "Re- 
 venge." The Englishman who can read it without 
 a feeling of profound reverence for the men who 
 -joyfully gave their lives to save their country is 
 a man whom I would rather not know. 
 
 " ' I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant 
 
 man and true ; 
 I have only done my duty, as a man is bound 
 
 to do : 
 With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville 
 
 die!' 
 And he fell upon their decks, and he died." 
 
 FARRINGFORD. 
 
 In 1853 Tennyson went to reside at Farringford, 
 a charming house standing in its own grounds near 
 Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight. Thither some 
 of the greatest and best in the land have gone on 
 brief visits to the poet, and all have united in con-
 
 94 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 fessing that it is an ideal home. One has described 
 it as a "charmed palace with green walls without 
 and speaking walls within." For the outside is 
 covered from base to roof with luxuriant climbing 
 plants, so that the whole house stands robed in one 
 lovely garment of green. A delightful garden, laid 
 out by the poet himself and Lady Tennyson, filled 
 with choice shrubs and flowers, with secluded re- 
 treats among the limes, and elms, and other noble 
 trees, surrounds the house, and beyond the garden 
 are groves of pine that break the winter blast, a 
 noble down sweeping far away behind, while within 
 sight and hearing roll the waters of the hoary 
 Channel, tumbling its billows on the chalk and 
 sand of the shore. 
 
 To- this beautiful home the poet removed with 
 his young wife and child. He was forty-four years 
 of age, in the meridian splendour of his powers, 
 full of noble ideals and hopes, which, to a degree 
 not often permitted men in this world, he had the 
 happiness of seeing realised. Being naturally of 
 a shy and reserved disposition, he avoided general 
 society, had little intercourse with the people of 
 the neighbourhood beyond two or three families, 
 and was most happy among his books and in the 
 charmed circle of his own delightful home. As 
 he grew more and more famous, strangers would 
 thrust themselves on his privacy, they would dog
 
 MERIDIAN SPLENDOUR. 95 
 
 his steps, waylay him in his walks, come up to him 
 with pen and ink and beg his autograph, forpe 
 their way into his private grounds, and even, it is 
 said, flatten their vulgar faces against the window- 
 panes of the rooms where he was sitting with his 
 family. Thus he came to have a positive horror 
 of a strange face, regarding which some amusing 
 stories are told, but for which we have no room 
 here. 
 
 It is interesting, however, and legitimate to notice 
 a few of the more remarkable persons who were 
 invited by the poet to his home. And first of all 
 it throws a good deal of light on the character of 
 Tennyson that he prized the friendship of Frederick 
 Denison Maurice, so much so that he asked him to 
 become godfather to his son Hallam. For Maurice 
 was one of the purest, loftiest, and best abused men 
 that ever lived. He was a most gracious and beau- 
 tiful soul, with a deep metaphysical mind, and is 
 exercising a wider influence to-day than ever in his 
 life. But in those days he was under a cloud. He 
 had just been expelled from the two professorships 
 he held at King's College, London, because the 
 Council thought his teaching leaned too much in the 
 direction of that " Larger Hope " of which Tennyson 
 sings in the " In Memoriam." The invitation to 
 Farringford is contained in the poem " To the Rev. 
 F. D. Maurice."
 
 96 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 Longfellow passed two happy days with Tennyson 
 in 1868 at Farringford. He was delighted with his 
 visit, and said he found his host "very cordial and 
 very amiable; he gave up his whole time to us." 
 A year or two before this, Garibaldi went thither 
 and planted a tree in the garden, from which, how- 
 ever, a branch was broken off before it had been 
 planted twenty-four hours by some ardent Ee- 
 publican. And then again, much later, in 1886, 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes, a true poet himself, known 
 to all the world by the " Poet," " Professor," and 
 " Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table," so full of quiet 
 humour and suggestive thought most delightful of 
 books has given us in "Our Hundred Days in 
 Europe " a very pleasant picture of Farringford and 
 its master. " I saw the poet to the best advantage, 
 under his own trees, and walking over his own 
 domain. He took delight in pointing out to me the 
 finest and rarest of his trees, and there were many 
 beauties among them. ... In this garden of Eng- 
 land, the Isle of Wight, where everything grows 
 with such lavish extravagance of greenness that it 
 seems as if it must bankrupt the soil before autumn, 
 I felt as if weary eyes and overtasked brains might 
 reach their happiest haven of rest." 
 
 But I have mentioned these merely to give a 
 faint hint of the way in which the first minds in 
 the land were drawn towards our poet, and esteemed
 
 MERIDIAN SPLENDOUR. 97 
 
 it a privilege and honour to visit him. On the 
 whole, life moved on with quiet dignity from day 
 to day at Farringford. Most of the time was spent 
 by Tennyson in his study, from which there fre- 
 quently came forth some fresh work that delighted 
 and helped an ever-widening circle of readers. 
 
 In 1855 "Maud and Other Poems" was published. 
 It has been remarked that "Maud" shows "more 
 of the local colour of this house by the sea," where 
 it was composed, than any other of his poems. 
 Much of the hostility which first awakened against 
 it has melted away, as its dramatic character 
 has been realised. It must not be thought that 
 all that is said represents the poet's own opinions. 
 Mr. Hutton, whom I have previously quoted, says, 
 "Never was any cry more absurd than the cry 
 made against ' Maud ' for the sympathy it was 
 supposed to show with hysterical passion. What 
 it was meant to be, and was, though inadequately 
 the failure being due not to sympathy with hys- 
 terics, but to the zeal with which Mr. Tennyson 
 strove to caricature hysterics was an exposure of 
 hysterics." 1 
 
 " Enoch Arden and Other Poems " was a volume 
 published in 1864. In this volume "Lucretius," 
 although exceedingly painful, is probably the most 
 powerful of the poems. Of the touching pathos 
 
 1 MacmiUan's Magazine, 1872. 
 
 G
 
 98 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 and beauty of "Enoch Arden" nothing need be 
 said. Most of the "Idylls of the King" were 
 written during these years, but I shall reserve the 
 consideration of them for the next chapter. 
 
 But before closing this chapter there is one little 
 poem to which I should like to direct attention, 
 "The Sailor Boy," published in 1861. It is one 
 of the simplest of his poems; a child may read it 
 and be delighted with it. No moral is pointed out, 
 and yet there is a profound moral lesson in it for 
 every man, viz., that our greatest temptations do 
 not come when we are bravely doing our duty, even 
 although the duty may be full of danger. They 
 come when we? shrink from the storms of life, and 
 shelter ourselves in fancied safety from the power 
 of evil. It is the life of idle luxury and self-in- 
 dulgence that is most to be feared. 
 
 " God help me ! save I take my part 
 
 Of danger on the roaring sea, 
 A devil rises in my heart, 
 
 Far worse than anv death to me."
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE LONG AFTERNOON. 
 
 " It was a bright and cheerful afternoon."
 
 " Self-ease is pain ; thy only rest 
 Is labour for a worthy end. 
 
 A toil that gains with what it yields, 
 And scatters to its own increase, 
 
 And hears, while sowing outward fields, 
 The harvest song of inward peace." 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE LONG AFTERNOON. 
 
 " The day becomes more solemn and serene 
 When noon is past." SHELLEY. 
 
 AND so the years passed at Farringford. Every 
 returning spring sent a fresh burst of colour and 
 fragrance into the neighbouring woods, and touched 
 the trees and shrubs of the poet's garden into leaf 
 and flower, and filled the air with the happy songs of 
 birds. Through the long golden days of summer the 
 breezes of a softer clime murmured among the groves 
 of pine, and swept gently across the downs ; whilst far 
 away the white sails of the stately ships melted into 
 the liquid azure bloom of a crescent sea. Here 
 Tennyson lived a secluded, studious, dignified life. 
 " No one ever passed him and thought him ordinary ; 
 no one ever conversed with him and said, ' How 
 unexpectedly poor ! ' ' There is something great in 
 him,' said a poor man, 'which it is above me to 
 understand.' " 1 Far away from the transient pur- 
 suits and ambitions of the noisy world, he lived his 
 1 The Spectator, October 8, 1892.
 
 102 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 own life, thinking high thoughts, and clothing them 
 in words of exquisite grace and melody. He was 
 supremely happy in his home. The discordant notes 
 that have spoiled the music of life for only too many 
 men of genius were unheard at Farringford. An 
 air of gentle chivalry, refinement, and tenderness 
 breathed through the whole family life. Here his 
 second son, Lionel, was born, and honours were 
 showered upon him, and wealth came in fair mea- 
 sure. He grew in the reverence and esteem of the 
 country, and the Queen offered him a baronetcy, 
 which, however, was declined. An ideal home, an 
 ideal life in the garden of England ! Not that the 
 sky was always cloudless. He had his sorrows, as 
 all men have. However much a man's own life may 
 be free from distraction and pain, he has at least 
 the burden of the sorrows of others, if he be a true 
 man. The nobler the nature the wider and deeper 
 its sympathies. In 1865 his mother, most tenderly 
 loved, and thirty years a widow, died. Still, as all 
 have recognised, Tennyson's career was one of un- 
 usual prosperity and happiness. His fates were kind, 
 and spun for him a " thread out of their choicest and 
 whitest wool." His life was a living poem, with an 
 almost ideal beauty in it. 
 
 Somewhere about the time at which we have now 
 arrived in our story, the poet bought an estate near 
 Haslemere, in Surrey, and there built himself a
 
 THE LONG AFTERNOON. 103 
 
 beautiful house called Aldworth, which stands on 
 the southern slope of Black Down, overlooking one 
 of the finest views in England. There, for the last 
 twenty years of his life, he spent the summer months, 
 enjoying a more bracing air and greater seclusion 
 than could any longer be found at Farringford at 
 that season. The house is furnished with perfect 
 taste, and is surrounded with delightful grounds. 
 
 We must now turn to the consideration of some 
 of his works. 
 
 " IDYLLS OF THE KING." 
 
 These form the longest and greatest of Tennyson's 
 works. Apart from the magnificent conception of 
 human life that gives unity to them, and makes 
 them the greatest epic poem since John Milton pro- 
 duced the " Paradise Lost," there are single lines 
 and short passages which, for weight of thought 
 and splendour of diction, surpass anything else that 
 he wrote, and are worthy of a place beside the noblest 
 utterances of Shakespeare. Mr. Eichard Holt 
 Hutton, whom I have already quoted, from whom 
 I have learned very much, and regard as the most 
 thoughtful critic of English Literature, has said of 
 "The Passing of Arthur": "It seems to me to 
 contain the grandest lines he has ever written, lines 
 resonant with the highest chords of spiritual yearn-
 
 io 4 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 ing and bewildered trust, lines which echo and re- 
 echo in one's imagination like the dying tones of the 
 organ in a great cathedral's aisle." The limits of 
 this little book do not permit of quotation, but the 
 thoughtful reader will be able to mark hundreds of 
 felicitous epigrammatic sayings " Jewels five words 
 long, which on the outstretched forefinger of all 
 time sparkle for ever." 
 
 In the " In Memoriam " man confronts the problem 
 of his nature and destiny in the awful mystery of 
 death. "The Idylls of the King" deal with the 
 mystery of evil. Like "Paradise Lost," the "Pil- 
 grim's Progress," "Faust," &c., it possesses a deathless 
 interest ; for it is a picture of the everlasting conflict 
 of the human soul with the Adversary. It is a "tale 
 new-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul." 
 No one can be indifferent to that struggle ; all must 
 enter the fight. The elements of strife are within ; 
 the battle rages everywhere. Each one finds him- 
 self a being of 
 
 " Strange extremes, 
 From different natures marvellously mix'd." 
 
 And the problem of life is how the diviner part shall 
 achieve its conquest and reign as king. 
 
 To set forth the nature of this spiritual struggle 
 in forms of poetic beauty and truth that should for 
 ever hold the hearts of men, John Milton went back
 
 THE LONG AFTERNOON. 105 
 
 to the story of man's fall in Paradise, and John 
 Bunyan wrote his immortal allegory. Alfred 
 Tennyson in early life read and was charmed with 
 the Arthurian legends, and there is clear evidence 
 that the idea of a great epic founded on them soon 
 rose in his mind. He was manifestly enchained by 
 the complexity of the elements disclosed. He saw 
 in them a profound sense of the moral and spiritual 
 significance of life blended with the stately splendour 
 of chivalry; glorious ideals of a true kingdom of 
 God associated with deadly lusts and passions. The 
 richness of colour, the strange archaic aspect of the 
 picture, delighted his imagination; whilst he -saw 
 that the conflict between Sense and Soul waged 
 among those lordly knights and fair ladies in King 
 Arthur's Court was typical of the universal struggle. 
 Tennyson first touched the subject in 1832 in the 
 "Lady of Shalott," and completed it in 1885 by 
 the publication of " Balin and Balan." Thus those 
 old-world legends occupied his mind for fifty years. 
 In 1842 there were four poems dealing with the 
 Arthurian legends. The " Morte d' Arthur," which 
 afterwards formed part of "The Passing of Arthur," 
 was published then, and was introduced with a 
 statement from which we learn that the idea of an 
 " Epic of King Arthur " had been before the poet's 
 mind, but after a great deal of consideration had 
 been abandoned. Why it was laid aside, and why
 
 106 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 it came to be taken up again, we may never learn. 
 It is, however, sufficient to know that it was resumed, 
 and that " The Idylls of the King " are the realisa- 
 tion of the idea. It is important to bear in mind 
 that the " Idylls " were published in a most irregular 
 and piecemeal manner, and only completed a few 
 years ago. It is doubtless owing to this fact that 
 their real significance has not been very generally 
 grasped. 
 
 A word must be said about the Arthurian legends. 
 They existed all through the Middle Ages in England 
 and various parts of Europe, and in 1485 were col- 
 lected and published by Sir Thomas Malory, being 
 among the first books printed in England. As might 
 be expected, legends that had floated down through 
 those long dark ages would not have much spiritual 
 unity in them. On the one hand, the most general 
 representation of Arthur is that of a king of un- 
 earthly glory, nobleness, wisdom, purity. But, on 
 the other hand, there are stories quite inconsistent 
 with this. Thus, in " The Book of Merlin," Malory 
 tells a story of how Arthur loved and betrayed Belli- 
 cent in his youth, not knowing that she was his own 
 half-sister, and thus Modred was born. Farther on 
 he says that Arthur sent for all the children of lords 
 born on May-day, and destroyed them, because 
 Merlin had said, that he that should kill him would 
 be born on May-day. In this way the ruin and
 
 THE LONG AFTERNOON. 107 
 
 downfall of the kingdom were consequences of 
 Arthur's own early sin. Viewed in this light, the 
 story reads like a Greek tragedy; an inexorable 
 Nemesis pursues the transgressor. But these ele- 
 ments are quite inconsistent with the deeper tradition 
 of Arthur's spiritual glory, and Tennyson has, there- 
 fore, wholly eliminated them. In "Guinevere" 
 Arthur says, as he goes forth to the fatal battle 
 
 " / must strike against the man they call 
 My sister's son no kin of mine." 
 
 The downfall of the kingdom is traced to the sin, 
 which, beginning with Lancelot and Guinevere, in- 
 fected and demoralised the whole Court. 
 
 In seeking to grasp the spiritual significance of 
 these " Idylls," it is an error to look on them as mere 
 allegories, like the "Pilgrim's Progress "virtues 
 and vices dressed up in the clothes of men and 
 women. To do so is to take all reality from them. 
 If King Arthur is only a personification of Conscience, 
 and Guinevere of the Flesh, we know how the story 
 will go, and have no further interest in it. Take 
 the poems as they are written, stories of real men 
 and women, but also representative and typical men 
 and women, and then the more you realise the reality 
 of their sorrows and temptations, their loves and 
 hates, their noble ideals and deadly passions; the 
 more fully you enter into the movement of the poems
 
 io8 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 as records of actual life, the more intensely you will 
 feel that that life was a real struggle between Sense 
 and Soul, a picture of the mortal battle in which we 
 are all engaged. On the first reading you may be 
 merely interested in the story and think little of its 
 moral significance. There is something so romantic 
 and fascinating in this old world of splendid chivalry. 
 The colouring is so rich and picturesque, that it is 
 delightful to dream away back from this prosaic and 
 utilitarian age to a fairyland of hoary castles and 
 gay tournaments and white marble palaces, and gaze 
 on a brilliant procession of valiant knights and grace- 
 ful ladies, and catch snatches of their courtly talk as 
 they sweep by on their prancing steeds. For a time 
 that is enough. But it is not long before the poet 
 constrains you to feel that in the midst of all this 
 stately splendour and romance the men and women 
 are of like passions with ourselves, and that here, 
 as everywhere, the struggle between Light and 
 Darkness, Heaven and Hell, for the souls of men, is 
 being waged. 
 
 In the light of this explanation, let us look 
 at the " Idylls." King Arthur is a wise, noble- 
 minded knight, in whom the moral principle reigns 
 supreme. He establishes his new Order and makes 
 his knights swear to live lives of purest chastity, to 
 love one maiden only, to redress human wrongs, to 
 reverence their king as their conscience and their
 
 THE LONG AFTERNOON. 109 
 
 conscience as their king. His whole ambition is to 
 restore order in his realm ; in other words, to make 
 it a true Kingdom of God on earth. Here, then, 
 under the forms of that old chivalry is the work to 
 which every true king, prophet, reformer, statesman, 
 has set himself. He labours to make the world what 
 God meant it to be. And what hinders him ? The 
 answer of the " Idylls " is confirmed by the whole 
 history of mankind. It is nothing outward, visible, 
 tangible. It is the secret poison of lust, greed, 
 hate. It eats its way secretly even into the Court, 
 and brings to dust and shame those who had vowed 
 a deathless loyalty and love. Surely there you~have 
 Sense at war with Soul, as you will find it every- 
 where to-day, in the great city, in the little village, 
 wherever you endeavour to bring in the Kingdom 
 of God. There is nothing unreal or shadowy about 
 it, it is the hard, stern fact of sin. The world will 
 not reach its " Heavenly-best " because you have 
 driven out the heathen, and killed the wolf, and boar, 
 and bear. " A God must mingle with the game," 
 and man, who can " half control his doom," must 
 suffer the " Powers of Good " to obtain the mastery 
 within. 
 
 And so it would be possible to go through all the 
 "Idylls," and show that whilst each separate Idyll 
 has a relation to the whole, and forms a step in the 
 march of events that lead up to the final downfall of
 
 no ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 the kingdom, it has also a completeness in itself. 
 Look at "Gareth and Lynette." What is the moral 
 significance of the picture ? Gareth is a young 
 knight whose princely birth is hidden. In the eyes 
 of petulant Lynette he is only a kitchen-knave, and 
 therefore she despises him. She is a worshipper of 
 birth, rank, station ; and although he does knightly 
 deeds and reveals a noble mind, she scorns him. 
 She reverences the forms and symbols of greatness, 
 not the reality. But Gareth fights on,, and at last 
 wins the day. A noble ambition and love overcome 
 the " lust of the eyes and the pride of life." Gareth 
 and Lynette is just such a conflict between Sense 
 and Soul as we see every day : it is a struggle 
 between "a true ambition and a false pride." In 
 " Geraint and Enid " the conflict assumes the form 
 of a jealous suspicion that tends to overmaster the 
 mind and utterly wreck its happiness. The ordeal 
 is long and bitter, but again the victory falls to the 
 good power, through the invincible might of Enid's 
 love. Here again the conflict is a type of what we 
 see every day. When we turn to "Lancelot and 
 Elaine," we find the sky overcast. Evil has gathered 
 strength through the secret intrigue into which the 
 great and knightly Lancelot has drawn the Queen. 
 In the midst of this guilty attachment the beautiful 
 maid of Astolat, Elaine, appears. She is the fair 
 Lily of Womanhood and she loves Lancelot with a
 
 THE LONG AFTERNOON. m 
 
 deathless love, and will hear and believe no evil of 
 him. Here were sweet, stainless little hands held 
 out to him, which, if he would but clasp them, would 
 have power to draw him away from the evil. 
 
 " And peradventure had lie seen her first, 
 She might have made this and that other world, 
 Another for the sick man ; but now 
 The shackles of an old love straiten'd him, 
 His honour rooted in dishonour stood, 
 And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true." 
 
 The pure sweet Lily was despised, and faded away 
 and died ; whilst Guinevere was secretly loved until 
 the black storm burst that drove them for -ever 
 apart, and brought Arthur's fair work crashing to 
 the dust. The story has an eternal significance. 
 
 It is impossible to go through all the Idylls, and 
 it is not necessary. Their meaning is clear if we 
 will only throw ourselves into the story as the poet 
 tells it. The limits also of this little book do not 
 permit the discussion of many most interesting 
 questions connected with this great poem, or offer 
 scope for the consideration of what we might con- 
 sider its defects. The character of Arthur I think 
 the weakest thing in the Idylls. Is he a man that 
 has never experienced any moral struggle ? Has he 
 never been into any wilderness of temptation and 
 done battle with the adversary? Then he is no 
 man at all he is only a shadow. Tennyson cannot
 
 I1[ 2 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 have meant that. But if, like all other men, he has 
 had to hold his soul under the assault of evil, how is 
 it that he bears no scars ? Was he " made perfect " 
 without suffering? Impossible again. There is 
 where the portrait is weak. There is no sign that 
 he had ever known the agony of the moral conflict. 
 And with all his love for Guinevere there is too 
 much of a spirit of aloofness for him to be really 
 perfect. He left his young and beautiful wife too 
 much alone. He moved about absorbed in his great 
 schemes until she thought him cold. "My Lord 
 Arthur, the faultless king, cares not for me." 
 Things might not have gone as they did had the 
 king been more considerate of his wife. But pass- 
 ing by that, we may say with confidence that the 
 " Idylls of the King " will remain one of the few 
 great poems of the world, because, like the others 
 already mentioned, it expresses with a beauty and 
 splendour that must for ever charm the hearts 
 of men, those tremendous and solemn truths that 
 underlie the whole moral and spiritual experiences 
 of our race. 
 
 THE DRAMAS. 
 
 When Tennyson was verging towards seventy, 
 he took the country considerably by surprise by 
 publishing his drama of " Queen Mary." The public 
 mind was made up regarding the class of works to
 
 THE LONG AFTERNOON. 113 
 
 be expected from the poet. His place was fixed in 
 the imaginations of his readers, and they did not 
 readily accept the fact that they must reconsider 
 their judgment regarding him. And yet all who had 
 read his works with any care must have seen that 
 there was a dramatic element in them which the 
 poet might develop. On the whole, the opinion of 
 the critics upon " Queen Mary," which was published 
 in 1875, was not very favourable. Nevertheless, the 
 next year " Harold " followed, and then during the 
 subsequent years other dramatic works " The Cup " 
 in 1881, "The Promise of May" in 1882, "The 
 Falcon" in 1884, and also, during the same year, 
 " Becket." 
 
 Looking back on this dramatic period, it may be 
 said with confidence that it will be the three great 
 historical dramas that will give it significance. It 
 was specially with reference to them that George 
 Eliot, a competent judge, said, "Tennyson's plays 
 run Shakespeare's close." Mr. John Eichard Green, 
 the historian, said that all his researches into the 
 annals of the twelfth century had not given him so 
 vivid a conception of the character of Henry II. and 
 his court as was embodied in Tennyson's " Becket," 
 In all these dramas there are not only many splendid 
 passages of sustained power, but there are also studies 
 of character revealing penetrating insight. Owing to 
 the fact that Tennyson's dramas are not well fitted for 
 
 ii
 
 114 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 the stage, a circumstance which he himself fully re- 
 cognised in publishing " Becket," I do not think they 
 have received justice from the hands of many critics. 
 But time will correct this. "Queen Mary" is a 
 penetrating study of character, and it must be 
 acknowledged that the central figure of all, Mary 
 herself, is presented under much more favourable 
 aspects than the epithet " Bloody " usually attached 
 to her name would suggest. The Mary of this drama 
 is a woman who awakens profoundest pity. She had 
 grown up under the deep sense of wrong done to her 
 mother. She had a passionate love for Philip of 
 Spain a man of cold, gloomy, pitiless character, dis- 
 liked by the English people, younger than herself, and 
 who soon neglected her with cruel callousness. Her 
 faith was hostile to the national sentiment, but she was 
 sincere, and believed that to restore the old Church 
 was to bring back the living waters to a parched 
 land. Her life was sad from beginning to end. 
 At the opening of the play she cries 
 
 " I see but the black night, and hear the wolf." 
 
 And when she died, Elizabeth could only say 
 
 " Her life was winter, for her spring was nipt." 
 
 " Harold " is more full of incident and movement. 
 It was a great moment in English history, and 
 Tennyson makes you feel the stir and vastness of
 
 THE LONG AFTERNOON. 115 
 
 the issues at stake. The same may be said of 
 " Becket." 
 
 The same year that the last of these dramas was 
 published (1884) Tennyson was gazetted Baron of 
 Aldworth and Farringford. Two years later a heavy 
 sorrow fell upon him in the loss of his second son, 
 Lionel, who died on April 20, 1886, whilst returning 
 home from India. Lord Tennyson closes a poem to 
 the Marquis of Dufferin with the following touching 
 lines 
 
 " To question why 
 The sons before the fathers die, 
 Not mine ! and I may meet him soon." 
 
 In 1880 "Ballads and other Poems" was pub- 
 lished, a volume which contains several pieces 
 marked by all the old power. Among these specially 
 may be mentioned " In the Children's Hospital," 
 " Eizpah," " The Northern Cobbler," " The Kevenge : 
 A Ballad of the Fleet," and the " Defence of Luck- 
 now," to which I have already referred. " Tiresias. 
 and other Poems," was published in 1885, which 
 contains the powerful poem "Despair," and then 
 the year following came " Locksley Hall Sixty Years 
 After," and in 1889 " Demeter, and other Poems."
 
 IX. 
 
 SUNSET AND EVENING STAR. 
 
 " And after my long voyage I shall rest ! "
 
 Sunset and Evening Star, 
 
 And one clear call for me ! 
 And may there be no moaning of the bar 
 
 When I put out to sea."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SUNSET AND EVENING STAR. 
 
 " The chamber where the good man meets his fate 
 Is privileged beyond the common walk 
 Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heaven." 
 
 YOUNG. 
 
 OUR little task is now almost done. We have taken 
 a rapid glance at Lord Tennyson's life and work in 
 order to learn their great lessons for us. It only 
 remains to draw together the various threads of 
 thought that have been suggested before gazing 
 on that last scene of almost unearthly beauty and 
 solemnity " quite in the verge of heaven " where, 
 without a straggle or a pain, the great career came 
 to its close. 
 
 We have seen that Lord Tennyson was both the 
 interpreter and the prophet of his age. He was its 
 interpreter, for he not only entered into all its pro- 
 foundest thoughts, ideals, hopes, but he was able to 
 give them perfect embodiment and expression. In 
 his poems we find the convictions, enthusiasms, 
 aspirations, that have most deeply moved the men
 
 120 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 of this age, exalted and purified by genius, and 
 expressed with an adequacy and beauty found no- 
 where else. He was, said the Spectator, 1 " a poet who 
 to all the higher thoughts that rose amongst us could 
 give in words, whose melody was of itself a satisfy- 
 ing luxury, a full expression and embodiment." He 
 was also the prophet of his age, because he was ever 
 seeking to reveal the divine order of life, the eternal 
 foundations on which individual and national well- 
 being must depend, and was ever warning us of 
 those pitfalls and false lights that beset our path. 
 Hence his voice seemed ever the voice of our deeper 
 
 self a voice of warning, encouragement, revelation, 
 
 and one that we understood. We see this in all the 
 leading interests of life. 
 
 Whilst it is true that every age is a period of tran- 
 sition, it is all but universally acknowledged that the 
 term applies in a very special degree to the last fifty 
 years. It has been a time of spiritual trouble. From 
 various causes the deepest beliefs and hopes of good 
 men have been put on their trial. They have been 
 confronted by the menacing figures of Scientific 
 Materialism and Philosophic Agnosticism. And it 
 is evident that Lord Tennyson felt, especially at 
 certain periods of his life, the full pressure of this 
 unrest. A cry of bewildered faith, a confession that 
 he is but a little child groping its way in darkness, 
 1 October 8, 1892.
 
 SUNSET AND EVENING STAR. 121 
 
 is often heard. He tells us that he falters where he 
 once firmly trod, and can only stretch out lame 
 hands of faith, and faintly trust the larger hope. 
 He could not put aside the spiritual problem. All 
 his greater and more serious works, " The Two 
 Voices," "The Vision of Sin," "In Memoriam," 
 " The Idylls of the King," are occupied with the 
 supreme questions concerning God, the Soul, Duty, 
 Immortality. And the outcome of this period of 
 religious perplexity was for the poet a reaffirmation 
 of the "Everlasting Yea." He was in sympathy 
 with the scientific movement, and hailed the theory 
 of Evolution " Evolution ever climbing after-some 
 ideal good " with gratitude. But he never lost 
 himself in the intoxication of scientific discovery. 
 He saw that the methods and principles of science 
 were inapplicable in the spiritual region. To the 
 men who in their attempt to explain everything would 
 eocplain away God, the Soul, Freedom, Immortality, 
 he answered, " / have J f dt" That cannot, of course, 
 remain the filial answer of Christian philosophy. 
 Our deepest spiritual convictions must be capable 
 of rational justification. We can only rest satisfied 
 with a philosophy that will find a place for both 
 science and religion, reason and faith, nature and 
 the supernatural. But Tennyson showed his great- 
 ness and spiritual insight in falling back upon the 
 primary spiritual beliefs and hopes of man, and in
 
 122 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 declaring that they must bear a true witness to the 
 realities that underlie existence, and must be neither 
 ignored nor explained away. In this way, as we 
 have seen, he came to believe that the ultimate 
 reality of the universe is Almighty Love, and that 
 there is for man an Immortal Destiny truths which 
 he found confirmed and revealed by Christ. The 
 fundamental facts and truths of Christianity pene- 
 trate all his teaching. Again and again he expresses 
 his faith in prayer, above all, in the beautiful pas- 
 sage in the " Passing of Arthur " beginning with 
 " Pray for my soul." The introduction to " In 
 Memoriam " is a prayer addressed to Christ. The 
 reader should also notice how the Christian beliefs 
 and hopes underlie all his poems, and especially 
 such poems as "Enoch Arden " and the pathetic 
 story of the " Children's Hospital." And there can 
 be no question as to the reality of his hold on the 
 vital elements of the Christian faith after reading the 
 lines with which he closes " Locksley Hall Sixty 
 Years After " 
 
 " Follow you the star that lights a desert pathway, yours or 
 
 mine. 
 Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is Divine. 
 
 Follow light, and do the right for man can half-control 
 
 his doom 
 Till you find the deathless angel seated in the vacant 
 
 tomb,''
 
 SUNSET AND EVENING STAR. 123 
 
 But whilst holding to the essential elements of 
 faith, Tennyson rejected everything that was crude, 
 unreasonable, and immoral. Many doctrines that 
 have been closely identified with Christianity find 
 no place in his poetry, and it is not hard to see that 
 he looked on them with horror. If the reader will 
 turn to the poem called "Despair," he will see what 
 the poet considered to be the natural outcome of the 
 fatalistic and cramping creeds which too often have 
 been substituted for the Gospel of Christ. As 
 Tennyson passed through the fiery ordeal of doubt, 
 the earthly elements of his religious faith were 
 destroyed. His beliefs were deepened, widened, 
 spiritualised, touched with broader sympathies and 
 a larger charity and hopefulness. 
 
 Lord Tennyson, then, was a Prophet of Faith 
 faith in God, Duty, Immortality. Life must be sup- 
 ported by this faith or it will lose all strength, aim, 
 worth. But when its rests upon this foundation, it 
 will grow pure, efficient, noble. Only in the recog- 
 nition of this truth had he hope of progress. As he 
 advanced in life especially he came to value less and 
 less those things on which we are inclined to lay 
 great stress our mechanical advances, our control 
 of the forces of Nature, and our wider political 
 privileges. Is human life really nobler for all these 
 miracles of science ? What is the value of the free- 
 dom of speech and the extension of the suffrage if
 
 i2 4 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 those who speak and vote have not self-knowledge, 
 self-reverence, self-control ? We talk of our wealth, 
 science, progress, but what if crime and hunger 
 cast our maidens by thousands on the street, and 
 city children grow up amid foul disease and with 
 blackened souls ? These are the questions the poet 
 asks in " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After." He had 
 no faith in the world reaching its golden age through 
 revolution" the red fool-fury of the Seine "nor 
 by political changes, nor by any mere material pro- 
 gress. It could only come by the growth of the 
 people in knowledge, purity, righteousness, love. 
 He saw the tremendous power which woman exer- 
 cises over the destinies of the world, and very much 
 of his poetry is employed in setting forth her various 
 relations to man, and how she helps to make or mar 
 his life. A spirit of noble chivalry and reverence for 
 woman pervades all his works, and the ideal he ever 
 holds up before man is that of a chaste, pure, vir- 
 tuous life. He loved England with all his heart, 
 and went back to some of the grandest episodes in 
 her history in order to call forth a love for his 
 country in the hearts of the men of this age, a love 
 strong as his own, and based upon a deep conviction 
 of the greatness of the past and the noble possibili- 
 ties of the future. These are some of the great 
 interests he touched, but they are only hints. I shall 
 have best fulfilled my task if this little book should
 
 SUNSET AND EVENING STAR. 125 
 
 lead my readers to turn to the works of Tennyson 
 with new interest, and to study them carefully. I am 
 sure that such a study may become a source of life- 
 long enjoyment and profit. 
 
 And now we turn from the works of the great 
 teacher, prophet, poet, to the man himself. What 
 has struck all who have written about Lord Tenny- 
 son is the ideal nobleness and completeness of his 
 life and character. He lived on to an advanced age, 
 and yet to the last retained his clearness of vision 
 and strength of mind. Through all those long, 
 years he was seen 
 
 " Wearing the white flower of a blameless life 
 Before a thousand peejing littlenesses." 
 
 There was a remarkable aloofness in his relation 
 to the general public, which many mistook for 
 haughtiness, but which, in such a mob-worshipping 
 age as this, was pleasant to behold. "It is," says 
 Sir Edwin Arnold, " something to know that Tenny- 
 son's wedded life was one of no common brightness 
 and sunshine, and that, like not a few of our greatest 
 men, he was indebted to his. wife for those long 
 years of freedom from personal care and trouble 
 which he devoted to the service of mankind." 
 
 Lord Tennyson enjoyed good health. He had a 
 severe attack of Dlness a few years ago; but he 
 recovered from it, and, for a man of his years,
 
 126 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 showed remarkable energy and strength. Still, we 
 are informed that months before the end an alarm 
 was sounded, and his family were keenly alive to 
 the necessity for extra care. Towards the end of 
 September he was sufficiently ill to summon special 
 medical aid, and from that time he gradually sank. 
 The news that he was very unwell spread through 
 the nation, and the feeling was everywhere enter- 
 tained that the great poet was approaching the last 
 solemn event he had so often and earnestly contem- 
 plated. All the members of his family were around 
 him. The last day was one of almost unearthly 
 beauty. From the mullioned window of the room 
 where the poet lay he could gaze out on the wide 
 peaceful fields and the silent hills, over which a deep, 
 pure, blue sky stretched in all the softened glory of 
 an October sun. From time to time he wakened 
 out of the painless dreamy state into which he had 
 fallen, and looked out on the silence and sunlight. 
 As the sun went down, a white mist fell upon the 
 valley, and the deep blue of the sky grew pale with 
 reflected light, and shone like a glittering dome. 
 Slowly the stars came out, and grew bigger and 
 brighter, until at last a full moon sailed up the 
 cloudless sky, .and flooded the room in which the 
 poet lay, like a figure of breathing marble, with its 
 soft and silvery light. There were no other lights 
 in the room. All was silence. The last words of
 
 SUNSET AND EVENING STAR. 127 
 
 farewell had been spoken. And so the majestic 
 figure lay, " drawing thicker breath," without a pain, 
 without a struggle, reminding those who watched 
 of his own " Passing of King Arthur," until the end 
 came in that still silent and softened glory, and he , 
 who had so often turned wistfully but hopefully to 
 that silent mystery of Death, heard the clear call 
 to depart, and, " carried by the flood from out this 
 bourne of Time and Place," passed into the Eternal 
 Home. He died on October 6, 1892, and, amid all 
 the solemn rites by which a great nation pays its last 
 tribute of reverence to its mighty dead, was buried 
 in Westminster Abbey on October the 1 2th. 
 
 " Now the labourer's task is o'er ; 
 
 Now the battle day is past ; 
 Now upon the farther shore 
 
 Lands the voyager at last. 
 Father, in Thy gracious keeping 
 Leave we now Thy servant sleeping." 
 
 PRINTED BY BALLANTYNK, HANSON AND CO. 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON
 
 tbe same Hutbor. 
 
 A MODERN DISCIPLE : 
 
 His IDEALS, FUNDAMENTAL BELIEFS, POSSIBILITIES AND 
 DANGERS, AND His LIFE OF MINISTRY. 
 
 Price Ss. 
 
 " / have endeavoured to put myself in the position of a young man 
 enthusiastic in his desire to realise the highest ideal of life, but who 
 is thrown into society where the intellectual and moral battles are 
 most fierce, and the dangers and temptations most real." EXTRACT 
 FROM AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 "The writer deals with the intellectual and moral difficulties 
 which beset the young disciple, and will be found helpful, dealing as 
 he does courageously with them." Spectator. 
 
 "The product of a thoughtful and cultured mind: has character- 
 istics of its own, and meets a want in the class of literature to which 
 it belongs. " The Scotsman. 
 
 "The book, as a whole, may be described as interesting, full of 
 good counsel put in a clear and attractive way." North British Daily 
 Mail. 
 
 "The volume is full of fresh and vigorous thinking, thoroughly 
 up to date, while the ideas and lessons are expressed with very con- 
 siderable charm of style, and in a most telling and lucid way." 
 The Glasgow Herald. 
 
 "The work is not only well-intentioned, but well executed." 
 Eastern Daily Press. 
 
 "The author translates religious thinking into the language of 
 to-day, and endeavours to show the essential harmony between 
 Christianity, truly aud spiritually conceived, and the facts of life. 
 The parish of Innellan possesses in him a cultured and outspoken 
 spiritual teacher." The Christian World. 
 
 "If young men want to know how a cultured parish minister views 
 their problems and sympathises with their aspirations, they should 
 read " A Modern Disciple." The Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 I
 
 Opinions of the Press continued. 
 
 "We like the book. It is very sympathetic, reverent, and brave. 
 Mr. Jenkinson treats of his themes in a manner which reveals a 
 philosophical and entirely Christian spirit." The Literary World. 
 
 "The aim of the author is to show that Christianity should be 
 brought down from the stars into the streets, and that, rightly under- 
 stood, Christ's teachings give, not narrowness, but breadth and 
 height to daily life." The Star. 
 
 "Full of beautiful thoughts, edifying to the devout mind, and 
 expressed in a pure and lucid style." The Rock. 
 
 "The volume is one for young men and women. They will like 
 it, and it will do them good. The author is honest, downright honest, 
 all round, and fearless. He is buoyant and hopeful. Indeed, preachers 
 of his type are one of the signs of the times. They give us a new 
 reading of the New Testament, and a reading full of charm for 
 thousands." The Review of the Churches. 
 
 " It is such teaching as this that our age requires fresh, vigorous, 
 manly, charitable, and reverent through all." The Beacon. 
 
 "The piety of it is strong, simple, and manly, and such as young 
 men should distinguish from the effusive sanctimoniousness that 
 drives robust, healthy natures to the other extreme." The Newcastle 
 Weekly Chronicle. 
 
 "The key of the meaning of the book is that the author will not 
 let any man be drawn out of the gospel net, if he can help it, by 
 
 modern difficulties or modern surroundings Mr. Jenkinson's 
 
 manner of securing this desideratum for the awakened minds of 
 modern Scottish youth is most artistic and adroit." The Liverpool 
 Daily Post. 
 
 "This volume is intended to aid those who are called to fight life's 
 battle in reality. It cannot be read without profit. It has our 
 warmest commendation. We hope to meet the author again in some 
 other field of religious thought." The Christian News. 
 
 "A really beautiful book, suggestive, and full of thought. Alto- 
 gether it is one of the best we have read lately, and for freshness of 
 thought, breadth of view, purity of diction, and subtle inspiration, 
 may be well compared with the best of Dr. Munger's well-known 
 works." The Free Methodist. 
 
 "The book speaks simply and persuasively of the fundamentals 
 and the ideals of religion the meaning and uses of life. It is dedi- 
 cated to the memory of F. D. Maurice, and it breathes the spirit of 
 his teaching." The Critical Review. 
 
 LONDON: JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET, W.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL WORKS 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 JAMES NISBET & CO. 
 
 GENERAL GORDON : A Christian Hero. By Major SETON 
 CHURCHILL. Second Edition. With Portrait. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 LORD WOLSELEY says: "It gives by far the best account of the circum- 
 stances of bis noble death yet published." 
 
 SIR GERALD GRAHAM, V.C., G.C.M.G., writes :" Most interesting, and 
 written in a spirit that will be welcomed by all Gordon's friends." 
 
 LORD EBURY AS A CHURCH REFORMER. With Selec- 
 tions from his Speeches and Letters. By the Hon. and Rev. E. V. 
 BLIGH, M.A. Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. 
 
 "This volume, which deals with Lord Ebury's speeches and acts in connection 
 with Church Reform, will be deeply interesting to enthusiastic supporters of 
 Prayer-book Revision. It is not only a tribute of respect and affection to Lord 
 Ebury from a friend and coadjutor, but it is an exhaustive history of the origin, 
 work, and partial success of the Prayer-book Revision Society." Record. 
 
 THOMAS ELLWOOD, and other Worthies of the Olden Time. 
 By FRANCES ANNE BUDGE. Small crown 8vo, Is. 6d. 
 
 " A peculiar charm pervades these biographical sketches of Quaker witnesses 
 for God in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." Christian. 
 
 "Full of narrative and incident, this book cannot fail to interest and quicken." 
 Christian Treasury. 
 
 "The book is plainly and straightforwardly written, and is an excellent one 
 for home or Sabbath School Library." Christian Leader. 
 
 "This is a very readable book, and is well fitted to stimulate young and old 
 to unselfish devotion to the Saviour." Friend. 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 A MISSIONARY LIFE: STEPHEN GRELLET. Small 
 crown 8vo, Is. 
 
 THOMAS SHILLITOE, PREACHER AND SHOEMAKER. 
 Small crown 8vo, Is.
 
 Biographical Works. 
 
 AUSTIN PHELPS : A Memoir. By ELIZABETH STUART 
 PHELPS. With Portraits. Extra crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. 
 
 FOUND EEADY. Memorials of the Rev. GEORGE POOLE, B.A., 
 late Vicar of Burntwood, Lichfield. By his Niece, SAKAH MASON. 
 Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. cloth ; paper cover, Is. 6d. 
 
 ONCE HINDU, NOW CHRISTIAN. The Early Life of BABA 
 PADMANJI. Edited by J. MURRAY MITCHELL, M.A., LL.D. Crown 
 8vo, 2s. 
 
 LIVES THAT SPEAK. A NEW SERIES OP BIOGRAPHICAL 
 WORKS. By the Rev. JAMES J. ELLIS. With Portraits. Crown 
 8vo, 2s. 6d. each. 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 THE RIGHT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. 
 
 THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY. 
 
 ULRIC ZWINGLE. 
 
 Other Volumes are in preparation. 
 
 MEN WITH A MISSION. By the Rev. JAMES J. ELLIS. 
 Small crown 8vo, Is. each. 
 
 HENRY MORTON STANLEY. 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 HUGH LATIMER. 
 
 WILLIAM TYNDALE. 
 
 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 LORD LAWRENCE. 
 
 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 
 
 THOMAS CROMWELL. 
 
 LORD SHAFTESBURY. 
 
 GENERAL VISCOUNT WOLSELEY, G.C.B., ETC. 
 
 " This series is quite a marvel of cheapness ; the paper, the type, the binding, 
 and the matter are all first class. Mr. Ellis knows the value of anecdote, he has 
 an eye for the really vital parts of biography, and knows well how to gather 
 where another strawed." Methodist Times. 
 
 "Mr. Ellis does these lives well thoroughly well; and by such work he is 
 doing valuable service to his age. All our young readers should get these shilling 
 biographies as fast as they appear, and read them with great care." Mr. SPUKGBON 
 in The Sword and Trowel. 
 
 Other Volumes are in preparation. 
 
 LONDON : JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET, W.
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 1 9 2000 
 
 RETURNED 
 
 FEB 7 2001
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY I 
 
 A 000 824 90'
 
 Universi 
 South 
 Libr