Table Of ContentENGLISH <<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
