Part 7 (1/2)
”Descend, and touch, and enter; hear The wish too strong for words to name; That in this blindness of the frame My Ghost may feel that thine is near”
The third poes as are not given to man to utter:-
And all at once it see soul was flash'd on mine,
And hts of thought, And caht The deep pulsations of the world,
AEonianout The steps of Tith ue words! but ah, how hard to frame In matter-moulded forms of speech, Or ev'n for intellect to reach Thro' memory that which I became”
Experiences like this, subjective, and not ument, were familiar to Tennyson Jowett said, ”He was one of those who, though not an upholder of ht that the wonders of Heaven and Earth were never far absent from us” In The Mystic, Tennyson, when alical and psychical conditions Poems of much later life also deal with these, and, ed, and his confidence that we arecasts in clay” was increased, by phenomena of experience, which can only be evidence for the mystic himself, if even for him But this dim aspect of his philosophy, of course, is ”to the Greeks foolishness”
His was a philosophy of his own; not a philosophy for disciples, and ”those that eddy round and round” It was the sum of his reflection on the mass of his impressions I have shown, by the aid of dates, that it was not borrowed froyll But, no doubt, many of the ideas were ”in the air,”
and ious tendency, and attracted by the evolutionary theories which had always existed as floating speculations, till they were enius and patient study of Darwin That Tennyson's opinions between 1830 and 1840 were influenced by those of F D Maurice is reckoned probable by Canon Ainger, author of the notice of the poet in The Dictionary of National Biography In the Life of Maurice, Tennyson does not appear till 1850, and the two ether But Maurice's ideas, as they then existed, h Hallam and other members of the Trinity set, who knew personally the author of Letters to a Quaker
However, this is no question of scientific priority: to myself it seems that Tennyson ”beat his music out” for himself, as perhaps most people do Like his own Sir Percivale, ”I know not all hethe opinions as to In Memoriam current at the time of its publication Lord Tennyson notices those of Maurice and Robertson
They ”thought that the poet had hest religion and philosophy with the progressive science of the day” Neither science nor religion stands still; neither stands nohere it then did Conceivably they are travelling on paths which will ultimately coincide; but this opinion, of course, must seem foolishness to most professors of science
Bishop Westcott was at Cae when the book appeared: he is one of Mr Harrison's possible sources of Tennyson's ideas He recognised the poet's ”splendid faith (in the face of every difficulty) in the growing purpose of the sum of life, and in the noble destiny of the individual wick, a mind sufficiently sceptical, found in some lines of In Memoriam ”the indestructible and inalienable ive up because it is necessary for life; and which I know that I, at least so far as the ive up” But we know that many persons not only do not find an irreducible nant and conteical possibility of any faith at all
The mass of mankind will probably never be convinced unbelievers-- nay, probably the backward or forward swing of the pendulum will touch more convinced belief But there always have been, since the Rishi+s of India sang, superior persons who believe in nothing not material--whatever the material may be Tennyson was, it is said, ”impatient” of these esprits forts, and they are impatient of him
It is an error to be ios ht not to be irritated with others because it leads the path It is unfortunate that a work of art, like In Meical passions The poet only shows us the paths by which his ht paths, nor is it easy to trace the Castle Others h in the residence We are all determined by our bias: Tennyson's is unconcealed His poem is not a tract: it does not aim at the conversion of people with the contrary bias, it is irksoed to discuss a philosophy which, certainly, is not stated in theforces in a single mind
The most famous review of In Me lines evidently come from the full heart of theof a military man” This is only equalled, if equalled, by a recent critique which treated a fresh edition of Jane Eyre as a new novel, ”not without power, in parts, and showing soe of Yorkshi+re local colour”
CHAPTER VI--AFTER IN MEMORIAM
On June 13 Tennyson -tried, and constant affection The ht years of then uncontested supreolden harvest Mr Moxon appears to have supplied 300 pounds ”in advance of royalties” The sum, so contemptible in the eyes of first-rate modern novelists, was a competence to Tennyson, added to his little pension and the epaves of his patrimony ”The peace of God came into my life when Icopy of verses to his friend, the Rev Mr Rawnsley, who tied the knot, as he and his bride drove to the beautiful village of Pangbourne Thence they went to the stately Clevedon Court, the seat of Sir Abraham Elton, hard by the church where Arthur Hallam sleeps The place is very ancient and beautiful, and was a favourite haunt of Thackeray They passed on to Lynton, and to Glasobry, where a collateral ancestor of Mrs Tennyson's is buried beside King Arthur's grave, in that green valley of Avilion, ae on Coniston Water, in a land of hospitable Marshalls
After their return to London, on the night of November 18, Tennyson dreamed that Prince Albert came and kissed him, and that he himself said, ”Very kind, but very German,” which was very like him Next day he received from Windsor the offer of the Laureateshi+p He doubted, and hesitated, but accepted Since Wordsworth's death there had, as usual, been a good deal of banter about the probable new Laureate: examples of competitive odes exist in Bon Gaultier That by Tennyson is Anacreontic, but he was not really set on kissing the Maids of Honour, as he is ers had declined, on the plea of extreood Queen not to overlook the Nestor of English poets For the rest, the Queen looked for ”a na such distinction in the literary world as to do credit to the appointreat poets had rarely been Laureates But since Sir Walter Scott declined the bays in favour of Southey, for whohtened, and when Wordsworth succeeded Southey, the office becaave it an increase of renohile, though in itself of merely nominal value, it served his poems, to speak profanely, as an advertisement New editions of his books were at once in de, already his friend, and already author of Men and Woht the poet acquainted with the Queen, as to be his debtor in later days for encourage other good things, the stately and ton, a splendid heroic piece, unappreciated at the moment But Tennyson was, of course, no Birthday poet Since the exile of the House of Stuart our kings in England have not maintained the old familiarity with many classes of their subjects Literature has not been fashi+onable at Court, and Tennyson could in no age have been a courtier We hear the complaint, every now and then, that official honours are not conferred (except the Laureateshi+p) on men of letters But uished not to be decorated, or to carry titles borne bypersons unvisited by the Muses Even the appointreat deal of jealous and spiteful feeling, which would only bemen of the pen Perhaps Tennyson's laurels were not for nothing in the chorus of dispraise which greeted the Ode on the Duke of Wellington, and Maud
The year 1851 was chiefly notable for a tour to Italy, made immortal in the beautiful poem of The Daisy, in aon the Coup d'etat and the rise of the new French euard their ohich to a great extent for from Britons The Tennysons had lost their first child at his birth: perhaps he is reht for his life” In August 1852 the present Lord Tennyson was born, and Mr Maurice was asked to be Godfather The Wellington Ode was of November, and was met by ”the almost universal depreciation of the press,”--why, except because, as I have just suggested, Tennyson was Laureate, it is iine The verses orthy of the occasion: more they could not be
In the autumn of 1853 the poet visited Ardtornish on the Sound of Mull, a beautiful place endeared to him who norites by the earliest associations It chanced to hirave had left--”Mr Tinsmith and Mr Pancake,” as Robert the boat then nine years of age, I heard of a poet's visit, and asked, ”A real poet, like Sir Walter Scott?” hoone away” ”Oh, not like Sir Walter Scott, of course,” my mother told me, with loyalty unashamed One can think of the poet as Mrs Sellar, his hostess, describes him, beneath the limes of the avenue at Acharn, planted, Mrs Sellar says, by a cousin of Flora Macdonald I have been told that the lady who planted the lilies, if not the limes, was the famed Jacobite, Miss Jennie Ca of 1746 shows the Prince between these two beauties, Flora and Jennie