Part 3 (1/2)

”A Mr Wilkinson, a clergyman”

The Lotos-Eaters, of course, is at the opposite pole of the poet's genius A few plain verses of the Odyssey, almost bald in their reticence, are the point de repere of the ical vision expressed in the uid charm of Spenser, enriched with eously yet delicately painted After the excision of some verses, rather fantastical, in 1842, the poem became a flawless

On the other hand, the opening of The Drearotesque introductory verses about ”aas Tennyson was, these freakish passages are a psychologicalsense of hu and ”pinion that the Theban eagle bear,” cannot conceivably be likened to an aeronaut waving flags out of a balloon--except in a spirit of self-mockery which was not Tennyson's His re the fantastic and superfluous, and reducing his work to its classical perfection of thought and fornificent vision It is probably by ht that, in the verses To J S (Ja), Tennyson reproduces the noble speech on the warrior's death which Sir Walter Scott places in the lips of the great Dundee: ”It is thetrain of light that follows the sunken sun, THAT is all that is worth caring for,” the light which lingers eternally on the hills of Atholl

Tennyson's lines are a close parallel:-

”His ht That broods above the fallen sun, And dwells in heaven half the night”

Though Tennyson disliked the exhibition of ”the chips of the workshop,” we have cos of the early voluarded more properly as the sketches of a e the idle curiosity of the fanatics of first editions They prove that the poet was studious of perfection, and wisely studious, for his alterations, unlike those of some authors, were almost invariably for the better, the saner, the s are also worth notice, because they partially explain, by their occasionally fantastic and hunition of the poet's genius The native prejudice of mankind is not in favour of a new poet Of new poets there are always so many, most of them bad, that nature has protected mankind by an armour of suspiciousness The world, and Lockhart, easily found good reasons for distrusting this new claimant of the ivy and the bays: ainst new poetry The , and too ainst all forun Near the very date of Tennyson's first volume Bulwer Lytton, as , had frankly explained that he wrote novels because nobody would look at anything else Tennyson had to overcome this universal, or all but universal, indifference to new poetry, and, after being silent for ten years, overcome it he did--a ree Times were even worse for poets than to-day Three hundred copies of the new volume were sold!

But Tennyson's friends were not puffers in league with pushi+ng publishers

Meanwhile the poet in 1833 went on quietly and undefeated with his work He cohter, and was at work on the Morte d'Arthur, suppressed till the ninth year, on the Horatian plan

Many poems were produced (and even written out, which a number of his pieces never were), and were left in raphy Most of these are so little worthy of the author that the marvel is how he came to write them--in what uninspired hours

Unlike Wordsworth, he could weed the tares from his wheat His studies were in Greek, German, Italian, history (a little), and cherained Muses,” these last

It was on Septen or symptom of disease as it was, the news fell like a thunderbolt from a serene sky Tennyson's and Halla the love of women” A blow like this drives a man on the rocks of the ultimate, the insoluble problems of destiny ”Is this the end?” Nourished as on thedoctrines of popular science, trained fro lectures, the young critics of our generation find Tennyson a weakling because he had hopes and fears concerning the ultimate renewal of as more than half his life-- his friendshi+p

”That faith I fain would keep, That hope I'll not forego: Eternal be the sleep - Unless to waken so,”

wrote Lockhart, and the verses echoed ceaselessly in the ed heart of Carlyle These men, it is part of the duty of critics later born to reh they dreaht to e not yet fully enlightened by popular science, and still undivorced from spiritual ideas that are as old as the human race, and perhaps not likely to perish while that race exists Now and then even scientific men have been mistaken, especially when they have declined to examine evidence, as in this problem of the transcendental nature of the human spirit they usually do At all events Tennyson was unconvinced that death is the end, and shortly after the fatal tidings arrived fro to the poereat hts of a Suicide The poem see commented on it, and on the beautiful Sir Galahad, ”intended for sones” The Morte d'Arthur Tennyson then thought ”the best thing I have ed lately” Very early in 1835 many stanzas of In Meed forward in any shape before the reading public at present,” wrote the poet, when he heard that Mill desired to write on hiht to its new perfection, and did not desire comments on work now several years old He also wrote his Ulysses and his tithonus

If ever the term ”morbid” could have been applied to Tennyson, it would have been in the years i the death of Arthur Hallam But the application would have been unjust True, the poet was living out of the world; he was unhappy, and he was, as people say, ”doing nothing” He was so poor that he sold his Chancellor's prize gold medal, and he did not

”Scan his whole horizon In quest of what he could clap eyes on,”

in the way of , which another poet describes as the normal attitude of all men as well as of pirates A careless observer would have thought that the poet was dawdling But he dwelt in no Castle of Indolence; he studied, he composed, he corrected his verses: like Sir Walter in Liddesdale, ”he was lect the reat world in that dawn of discontent with the philosophy of coe into the fray, and on to platforland, for a man deliberately to choose poetry as the duty of his life, and to remain loyal, as a consequence, to the bride of St Francis--Poverty This loyalty Tennyson nised ways presented by his new-born love for his future wife, Miss Eirl of seventeen, see here” But admiration became the affection of a lifetime when Tennyson met Miss Sellwood as bridesmaid to her sister, the bride of his brother Charles, in 1836 The poet could not afford to marry, and, like the hero of Locksley Hall, he may have asked himself, ”What is that which I should do?” By 1840 he had done nothing tangible and lucrative, and correspondence between the lovers was forbidden That neither drea poetry for a reat benefit to the world The course is one which could only be justified by the absolute certainty of possessing genius

CHAPTER III--1837-1842

In 1837 the Tennysons left the old rectory; till 1840 they lived at High Beech in Epping Forest, and after a brief stay at Tunbridge Wells went to Boxley, near Maidstone