Part 19 (1/2)

And more,in myself The word that is the symbol of myself, The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, And past into the Nameless, as a cloud Melts into heaven I touch'd e, not mine--and yet no shade of doubt, But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self The gain of such large life as match'd with ours Were Sun to spark--unshadowable in words, Themselves but shadows of a shadoorld

Any words about Tennyson as a politician are apt to excite the sleepless prejudice which haunts the political field He probably, if forced to ”put a name to it,” would have called hiitator He never set a rick on fire ”He held aloof, in a sos of his age” (Mr Frederic Harrison) But in youth he helped to extinguish so ricks He spoke of the ” public) in terher esteem for mobs than Shakespeare or John Knox professed, while his theory of tyrants (in the case of Napoleon III about 1852) was that of Liberals like Mr Swinburne and Victor Hugo Though to reat a Tory as Dr Johnson, yet he had spoken his word in 1852 for the freedoainst the supposed designs of a usurper (now fallen) He really believed, obsolete as the faithour own, both on land and sea Perhaps no Continental or American critic has ever yet dispraised a poetical fellow-country the duties of national union and national defence

A critic, however, writes thus of Tennyson: ”When our poet descends into the arena of party poles as Riflemen, Form!

Hands all Round,The Fleet, and other topical pieces dear to the Jingo soul, it is not poetry but journalism” I doubt whether the desirableness of the existence of a volunteer force and of a fleet really is within the arena of PARTY poleht to have no volunteers, and that it is our duty to starve the fleet, what is that party's name? Who cries, ”Doith the Fleet! Doith National Defence! Hooray for the Disintegration of the Empire!”?

Tennyson was not a party man, but he certainly would have opposed any such party If to defend our hooiso But, alas! I do not know the name of the party which opposes Tennyson, and which wishes the invader to traland--any invader will do for so philanthropic a purpose Except when resisting this unnamed party, the poet seldom or never entered ”the arena of party polemics”

Tennyson could not have exclailand! Twenty thousand honest Frenchmen have landed in Kent!”

He undeniably did write verses (whether poetry or journalis to make readers take an unfavourable view of honest invaders If to do that is to be a ”Jingo,” and if such conduct hurts the feelings of any great English party, then Tennyson was a Jingo and a partisan, and was, so far, a rhy Indeed we know that Tennyson applauded Mr Kipling's The English Flag So the worst is out, as we in England count the worst In America and on the continent of Europe, however, a poetrebuke from his countrymen Tennyson did not reckon himself a party man; he believed more in political evolution than in political revolution, with cataclysms He was neither an Anarchist nor a Holand to be laid defenceless at the feet of her foes

If these sentiments deserve censure, in Tennyson, at least, they claih to be truly Liberal Old prejudices about ”this England,” old words fro John, haunted his mes We draw in prejudice with our nostic or a Colander Thus he inherited a certain bias in favour of faith and fatherland, a bias from which he could never emancipate himself But tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner Had Tennyson's birth been later, we ht find in hiht have detected less to blay we must leave the fame of Tennyson as a politician to the clehtened posterity I do not defend his narrow insularities, his Jingois analysis ret or condeht not to let them obscure our view of the Poet He was led away by bad exaoes Shakespeare is the most unashamed, and next to him are Drayton, Scott, and Wordsworth, with his

”Oh, for one hour of that Dundee!”

In the years which followed the untoward affair of Waterloo young Tennyson fell much under the influence of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and the other offenders, and these are extenuating circumstances By a curious practical paradox, where the realms of poetry and politics meet, the Tory critics seem milder of mood and more Liberal than the Liberal critics Thus Mr William Morris was certainly a very advanced political theorist; and in theology Mr Swinburne has written things not easily reconcilable with orthodoxy Yet we find Divine- Right Tories, who in literature are fervent admirers of these two poets, and leave their heterodoxies out of account But ive Tennyson because he did not wish to starve the fleet, and because he held certain very ancient, if obsolete, beliefs Perhaps a general aht to be passed, as far as poets are concerned, and their politics and creeds should be left to silence, where ”beyond these voices there is peace”

One rereatest of the Gordons was a soldier, and lived in religion But the point at which Tennyson's memory is blended with that of Gordon is the point of sylected poor It is to his wise advice, and to affection for Gordon, that e the Gordon training school for poor boys,--a good school, and good boys come out of that acadelorious roll of the Poets of England can never be determined by us, if in any case or at any time such determinations can be il or Lucretius, whether AEschylus or Sophocles, is the greater poet The consent of h above all For the rest no prize-list can be settled If influence a our poets, the next rank after Shakespeare But probably there is no possible test In certain respects Shelley, in e, in so, are greater poets than Tennyson But for exquisite variety and varied exquisiteness Tennyson is not readily to be surpassed At one moment he pleases the uncritical mass of readers, in another mood he wins the verdict of the raffine It is a success which scarce any English poet but Shakespeare has excelled His faults have rarely, if ever, been those of flat-footed, ”thick-ankled” dulness; of rhetoric, of common- place; rather have his defects been the excess of his qualities A kind of John Bullishness atory references to France, which, true or untrue, are out of taste and keeping But these errors could be removed by the excision of half- a-dozen lines His later work (as the Voyage of Maeldune) shows a just appreciation of ancient Celtic literature A great critic, F

T Palgrave, has expressed perhaps the soundest appreciation of Tennyson:-

It is for ”the days that rereat hierarchy, ast whom Dante boldly yet justly ranked himself But if we look at Tennyson's work in a twofold aspect,-- HERE, on the exquisite art in which, throughout, his verse is clothed, the lucid beauty of the form, the melody almost audible as music, the mysterious skill by which the words used constantly strike as the INEVITABLE words (and hence, unforgettable), the subtle allusive touches, by which a secondary iht, as the harive richness to the note struck upon the string; THERE, e think of the vast fertility in subject and treate of character, the dramatic force of impersonation, the pathos in every variety, the ic alike, above all, perhaps, those phrases of luinative observation of Hu from the heart to the heart,--his ill probably be found to lie so its portion, if I may venture on the phrase, in the inspiration of both

A professed enthusiast for Tennyson can add nothing to, and take nothing froh his friend, was too truly a critic to entertain the adoes beyond idolatry

Footnotes:

{1} Macmillan & Co

{2} To the present writer, as to others, The Lover's Tale appeared to be imitative of Shelley, but if Tennyson had never read Shelley, cadit quaestio