Part 14 (1/2)
Guinevere is one of the greatest of the Idylls Malory ht, unarhts, is one of his most spirited scenes Tennyson omits this, and omits all the unpardonable behaviour of Arthur as narrated in Malory Critics have usually conde of Guinevere and Arthur, because the King doth preach too much to an unhappy woman who has no reply The position of Arthur is not easily redeemable: it is difficult to conceive that a noble nature could be, or should be, blind so long
He does rehabilitate his Queen in her own self-respect, perhaps, by assuring her that he loves her still:-
”Let no man dream but that I love thee still”
Had he said that one line and no ht have loved hi of Lancelot and Guinevere, one of the scenes in which the wandering composite ro of Arthur, except for a new introductory passage of great beauty and appropriateness, is the Morte d'Arthur, first published in 1842:-
”So all day long the noise of battle roll'd A the mountains by the winter sea”
The year has run its course, spring, suloomy autumn, and dies in the mist of Arthur's last wintry battle in the west -
”And the new sun rose, bringing the new year”
The splendid and so us to muse as to how far the poet has fulfilled his own ideal There could be no new epic: he gave a chain of heroic Idylls An epic there could not be, for the Iliad and Odyssey have each a unity of theme, a narrative compressed into a few days in the foredy of Arthur's reign could not so be condensed; and Tennyson chose the only feasible plan He has left a work, not absolutely perfect, indeed, but such as he conceived, after many tentative essays, and such as he desired to achieve His fame may not rest chiefly on the Idylls, but they form one of the fairest jewels in the crown that shi+nes with unnulory
CHAPTER VIII--ENOCH ARDEN THE DRAMAS
The success of the first volus and arrows that gave Maud a hostile welcome His next publication was the beautiful tithonus, a fit pendant to the Ulysses, and composed about the sao,” Tennyson dates it, writing in 1860 to the Duke of Argyll He had found it when ”ferreting a for Thackeray, as establishi+ng the Cornhill Magazine Whattithonus in his portfolio, did not take the trouble to insert it in the volumes of 1842! nobody knocootten At this ti's Men and Women to the Duke, who, like many Tennysonians, does not seereat conteed the Laureate to attempt the topic of the Holy Grail, but he was not in the mood Indeed the vision of the Grail in the early Sir Galahad is doubtless happier than the allegorical handling of a theme so obscure, remote, and difficult, in the Idylls He wrote his Boadicea, a pieceto the metrical experiment
In the auturave, Mr Val Prinsep, and Mr Holel and the Scilly Isles, and were feted by an enthusiastic captain of a little river steamer, as more interested in ”Mr Tinman and Mr Pancake” than the Celtic boatford, and the Northern Farmer ritten there, a Lincolnshi+re reminiscence, in the February of 1861 In autumn the Pyrenees were visited by Tennyson in coe At Cauteretz in August, and a memories of the old tour with Arthur Halla the Valley The ways, however, in Auvergne were ”foul,” and the diet ”unhappy” The dedication of the Idylls ritten on the death of the Prince Consort in Dece of an exhibition The poet was busy with his ”Fisherman,” Enoch Arden The volume was published in 1864, and Lord Tennyson says it has been, next to In Memoriam, the most popular of his father's works One would have expected the one volu the poems up to 1842 to hold that place The new book, however, lish, contemporary, and domestic themes--”the poetry of the affections” An old woarded Enoch Arden as ”more beautiful” than the other tracts which were read to her It is indeed a tender and touching tale, based on a folk-story which Tennyson found current in Brittany as well as in England Nor is the unseen and unknown landscape of the tropic isle less happily created by the poet's ilish cliffs and hazel copses:-
”The h up like ways to Heaven, The slender coco's drooping crown of plu flash of insect and of bird, The lustre of the long convolvuluses That coil'd around the stately stelories of the broad belt of the world, All these he saw; but what he fain had seen He could not see, the kindly human face, Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard Theroller thundering on the reef, The e trees that branch'd And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, As down the shore he ranged, or all day long Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, A shi+pwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail: No sail from day to day, but every day The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts A the palms and ferns and precipices; The blaze upon the waters to the east; The blaze upon his island overhead; The blaze upon the waters to the west; Then the great stars that globed theain The scarlet shafts of sunrise--but no sail”
Aylmer's Field somewhat recalls the burden of Maud, the curse of purse-proud wealth, but is too gloomy to be a fair specimen of Tennyson's art In Sea Drea faiths is somewhat out of harht, A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapour, lay, And ever in it a low e Of breaker issued fro note, and when the note Had reach'd a thunderous fulness, on those cliffs Broke,within the belt) whereby she saw That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no e, Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see, One after one: and then the great ridge drew, Lessening to the lessening ain Slowly toor saint or founder fell; Then froaps and chasms of ruin left Ca, 'Set them up! they shall not fall!'
And others, 'Let them lie, for they have fall'n'
And still they strove and wrangled: and she grieved In her strange dreas never out of tune With that sweet note; and ever as their shrieks Ran highest up the ga, while none ht, and show'd their eyes Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away The men of flesh and blood, and ether
'Then I fixt My wistful eyes on two fair i the stars, - The Virgin Mother standing with her child High up on one of those darkto the aret's, and I woke, And my dreae is rather fitted for a despairing mood of Arthur, in the Idylls, than for the wife of the city clerk ruined by a pious rogue
The Lucretius, later published, is beyond praise as a reat Roman sceptic, whose heart is at eternal odds with his Epicurean creed Nascentlove philtre, is not ly treated in the mad scenes of Maud No prose co and learned, conveys so clearly as this concise study in verse the sense of led ruin in the mind and poem of the Roested by Mr Matthew Arnold's Lectures on the Translating of Holish hexaative criticis and instructive: he had an easy game to play with the Yankee-doodle metre of F W