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ENGLISH <<MEN OF TENNTSON MACMILLAN AND CO LIMITED , LONDON BOMBU CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY mum BOSTON CHICAGO ATLWn SW FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO, OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO ENGLISH MEN OF TENNYSON BY SIR ALFRED MACMILLAN AND LIMITED CO., ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1907 First Edition, October 1902 Reprmtefi November 1902, 1905, 190? Copyright intJit United States ofAmerica, 1902 CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I ... ... BOYHOODAT CAMBRIDGE 1 CHAPTER II .... POEMS, 1830-1842 , , . 13 CHAPTER III ... THEPRINCESS IKMEMOBIAM 52 ; CHAPTER IV MAUD; IDYLLSOFTHEKINS; ENOCHARDEN . . 83 CHAPTER V PASTORALS TENNYSON'SPHILOSOPHY 118 ; , . CHAPTER VI THRPLAYS 154 . CHAPTER VII THELAST YEARSAND LATESTPOETRY: CojronraroN . 171 TENNYSON CHAPTER I BOYHOOD AT \MBRIDflE fj THAT the imaginative literature of a period preserves andrepresents the ideas, fBelings, and manners of the generation to which it belongs, is sufficiently manifest. And Taine, in his exposition of the theory upon which he wrote his History of English Literature, affirms that any considerable literaryworkwill exhibit, undercare- ful analysis, not only the writer's state of mind, his experiencesandwayof life, butalsothelong-descended influences of race and tradition, thetemperof his time, and tho general intellectual condition of his nation. The choice of words (he says), the stylo, tho metaphors used, the accent and rhythm of verses, the logical order of his reasoning, aro all outward forms and signs of these complex impressions, and so of the environ- ment that has moulded them. Literature, in short, may be employed by the critic and the historian as a delicate instrument for analysis, for investigating the psychologyof the man and of his period,forlaying bare the springs of thought and action which underlie and explain history. Andpoetry is the most intense expression of the dominant emotions and the higher ideals ofthe age. Whether Taine did not press his theory too far A 2 TENNYSON" [CHAP. is a question that has been often debated; and at any rate the proper nse of it demands a master-hand. Certain it is that each age has its peculiar spirit, ito own outlook on the world., and that a great poet, or group of poets, absorb the new ideas growing up around them, and have the gift of inventing their appropriate fashion or sotting They are usually fol- lowedby a host of imitatorsj but when the work has been once well done, the highest imitative skill will not make it really worth doing again in the same manner, we must wait until the changing worldcloses one period and opens ti fresh one. This point of view may perhaps beacceptedin studyingthelifeandworks of one who has been the chief poet of our own time. It is true that the increasing variety and diffusion of literature during the nineteenth century interfere with the method of taking one writer, however eminent, as the intellectual representative of his society, and also that wo do not yet stand at a sufficient distance from a contemporary poetto be able to measure accurately his position. Nevertheless, Tennyson's popularity grew so steadily and spread so widely for nearly sixty years, and his influence over his generation has been so remarkable, that his finest poetry may undoubtedly be treated as an illustrative recordof theprevailingspirit,of thetemperament,and to some degree of the national character of his period. It is in Tennyson's poetry, moreover, that we must lookfor the chronicle ofInslife. That no biographer could so truly give him as ho gives himself in his own works, are almost the firstwords of the preface to the admirable Memoirwritten of his father by the present Lord Tennyson. So thoroughly, indeed, and so BOYHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE 3 I.] recently, has this biography Lecu wntten, ^ith such complete and exclusive command of all available materialsj that in regard to the course and incidents of the poet's hfo it leaves almost nothing to be discovered or addeda and every subsequent narrative must draw upon this source of information. Nearly alltheprivate or personalfacts andincidentsconnected .with Tennyson orwith his familyhave,therefore, been necessarily taken directly from the Memoir,'1 Alfred Tennyson descended from a family thathad been settled for some centuries in the north-east of England, at first in ITolderncss, beyond the Humber, and latterly in Lincolnshire. His father, Dr. George Clayton Tennyson, was doctor of Somcrsby near Horncastle, and of other small parishes Mr. Howitt, writing in 1847, says of theRector that ho was a man of veiy various talents, something of apoet, a painter, an architect, and a musician. The poet's mother was Elizabeth, daughter of the Reverend Stephen Fytche. At Somersby he was born on the Gth August 1809; and when he was sevenyears old ho was sent toschool at the neighbouring town of Louth. In those days, and long afterward, boys made their first, oftentheir hardest, experience of a rou^h world at a very tender age, for in these country schools the discipline was harsh and the manners rude so that a child lived ; between fear of the master's rod and the bullying of his bag schoolmates, and probably learnt little more than the habit of endurance. Professor Hales has lefta record2 of his experiences at this school, which 1 Thewriterof thisvolumehaamade someoccasionaluseof an article that he contributed on TennysontotheEdinburgh Review. a Appendixtovol. i. oftheMemoir* 4 TENNYSON [CHAP, > shows that the masters had a way of hittirg the boys wantonly, an unconscious propensity to find amuse- ment in givingpain that often becomes habitual But Tennyson's school experiences, though early, wero fortunately short, for after two years he was removed from Louth, andit appears that for the next ten years he was taught at home byhis father, whosescholarship was considerable No better iuck can befall a boy who can avail himself of it than to be left to himself among good books while his mind is quite fresh; and Tennyson made full use of the Lector's ample library. His earliest verses, at fourteen orfifteen years of ags, show uncommon promise; and in 1826, when he was seventeen, were published the Poems ly Two Brother (Alfred and Charles) upon a variety of subjects, grave and gay, evidently drawn from wide miscellaneous reading: the metrical composition is promising, while there are occasional signs of that descriptive faculty which matured so rapidly in Tennyson's later works. In 1828 he went, with his brother Charles, to Cam- bridge, and matriculated at Trinity College, where atfirst Alfred, being accustomed to home life, andnot having passed through the preparatory ordeal of a public school, found himself solitary and ill at ease. "I knownothowitis, but Ifeelisolatedherein themidst ofsociety. The country is tio disgustingly level, the revelry of the place so monotonous, the studies of the University so uninteresting, somuchmatteroffact. Nonebut dry-headed, angular, calculating littlegentlemen cantakemuch delightin them."1 But his face and figure were both very remarkable, andhis rare intellectualqualities could notlongremain 1Memoir, vol. i. p. 34, I.J BOYHOOD AT CAMBRIDGE 5 undiscovered, The list given in the Memoir of the friends with whom ho consorted shows that he soon became intimate with the best men at Cambridge, whose admiration and attachment he rapidly won, It is evident that he had alreadya notable gift of terse andforcible expression, and theturnfor apt metaphors which comas from a lively imagination. He lived among men who made the right use of a University, who delightedin theinterchange of ideasandopinions, in the pursuit of knowledge, in the discussion of politics, in hteiature, speculation, and scientific dis- coveries ; who were keenly interested in the world aroundthorn, andinthe conditionoftheirown country. In short, he was one of the few great English poets who have fallen in readily with the ways and manners of a cultured class and their social surroundings, who did not in their youth either hold themselves apart from the ordinary life of school or college, or live recklessly, or rebel against social conventions As the poets of the foregoing generation had been profoundly stirred in their first manhood by the revolutionary tumult in France, so Tennyson felt and sympathised, though more moderately, with the English agitation for reform. But in 1830 the period of wild enthusiasm for freedom, for the rights of man and for abstract political theories, had passed away, the vague hatred of priests and despots had become toned down into demands for reasonableimprovements of Church and State. It was an age of practical Liberalism, of strong intellectual fermentation stimu- lated by the growing power of the Press of ener- ; getic agitation forpolitical, economical, and legislative reforms on one side, resisted on the other side by
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