Chapter II: The Writer (1)

I have said that to Goethe, above all writers, belongs the distinction of having excelled, not experimented merely,--that, others have also done,--but excelled in many distinct kinds. To the lyrist he added the dramatist, to the dramatist the novelist, to the novelist the mystic seer, and to all these the naturalist and scientific discoverer. The history of literature exhibits no other instance in which a great poet has supplemented his proper orbit with so wide an epicyle.

In poetry, as in science, the ground of his activity was a passionate love of Nature, which dates from his boyhood. At the age of fifteen, recovering from a sickness caused by disappointment in a boyish affair of the heart, he betook himself with his sketch-book to the woods. "In the farthest depth of the forest," he says, "I sought out a solemn spot, where ancient oaks and beeches formed a shady retreat. A slight declivity of the soil made the merit of the ancient boles more conspicuous. This space was inclosed by a thicket of bushes, between which peeped moss-covered rocks, mighty and venerable, affording a rapid fall to an affluent brook."

The sketches made of these objects at that early age could have had no artistic value, although the methodical father was careful to mount and preserve them. But what the pencil, had it been the pencil of the greatest master, could never glean from scenes like these, what art could never grasp, what words can never formulate, the heart of the boy then imbibed, assimilated, resolved in his innermost being. There awoke in him then those mysterious feelings, those unutterable yearnings, that pensive joy in the contemplation of Nature, which leavened all his subsequent life, and the influence of which is so perceptible in his poetry, especially in his lyrics....

The first literary venture by which Goethe became widely known was "Götz von Berlichingen," a dramatic picture of the sixteenth century, in which the principal figure is a predatory noble of that name. A dramatic picture, but not in any true sense a play, it owed its popularity at the time partly to the truth of its portraitures, partly to its choice of a native subject and the truly German feeling which pervades it. It was a new departure in German literature, and perplexed the critics as much as it delighted the general public. It anticipated by a quarter of a century what is technically called the Romantic School.

"Götz von Berlichingen" was soon followed by the "Sorrows of Werther,"--one of those books which, on their first appearance have taken the world by storm, and of which Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is the latest example. It is a curious circumstance that a great poet should have won his first laurels by prose composition. Sir Walter Scott eclipsed the splendor of his poems by the popularity of the Waverley novels. Goethe eclipsed the world-wide popularity of his "Werther" by the splendor of his poems.

Of one who was great in so many kinds, it may seem difficult to decide in what department he most excelled. Without undertaking to measure and compare what is incommensurable, I hold that Goethe's genius is essentially lyrical. Whatever else may be claimed for him, he is, first of all, and chiefly, a singer. Deepest in his nature, the most innate of all his faculties, was the faculty of song, of rhythmical utterance. The first to manifest itself in childhood, it was still active at the age of fourscore. The lyrical portions of the second part of "Faust," some of which were written a short time before his death, are as spirited, the versification as easy, the rhythm as perfect, as the songs of his youth.

As a lyrist he is unsurpassed, I venture to say unequalled, if we take into view the whole wide range of his performance in this kind,--from the ballads, the best-known of his smaller poems, and those light fugitive pieces, those bursts of song which came to him without effort, and with such a rush that in order to arrest and preserve them he seized, as he tells us, the first scrap of paper that came to hand and wrote upon it diagonally, if it happened so to lie on his table, lest, through the delay of selecting and placing, the inspiration should be checked and the poem evaporate,--from these to such stately compositions as the "Zueignung," or dedication of his poems, the "Weltseele" and the "Orphic Sayings,"--in short, from poetry that writes itself, that springs spontaneously in the mind, to poetry that is written with elaborate art. There is this distinction, and it is one of the most marked in lyric verse. Compare in English poetry, by way of illustration, the snatches of song in Shakspeare's plays with Shakspeare's sonnets; compare Burns with Gray; compare Jean Ingelow with Browning.

Goethe's ballads have an undying popularity; they have been translated, and most of them are familiar to English readers....

In the Elegies written after his return from Italy, the author figures as a classic poet inspired by the Latin Muse. The choicest of these elegies--the "Alexis and Dora"--is not so much an imitation of the ancients as it is the manifestation of a side of the poet's nature which he had in common with the ancients. He wrote as a Greek or Roman might write, because he felt his subject as a Greek or Roman might feel it.

"Hermann und Dorothea," which Schiller pronounced the acme not only of Goethean but of all modern art, was written professedly as an attempt in the Homeric[7] style, motived by Wolf's "Prolegomena" and Voss's "Luise." It is Homeric only in its circumstantiality, in the repetition of the same epithets applied to the same persons, and in the Greek realism of Goethe's nature. The theme is very un-Homeric; it is thoroughly modern and German,-- "Germans themselves I present, to the humbler dwelling I lead you, Where with Nature as guide man is natural still." [8]

[Footnote 7: "Doch Homeride zu sein, auch noch als letzter, ist schön."]

[Footnote 8: From the Elegy entitled "Hermann und Dorothea."]

This exquisite poem has been translated into English hexameters with great fidelity by Miss Ellen Frothingham.

"Iphigenie auf Tauris" handles a Greek theme, exhibits Greek characters, and was hailed on its first appearance as a genuine echo of the Greek drama. Mr. Lewes denies it that character; and certainly it is not Greek, but Christian, in sentiment. It differs from the extant drama of Euripides, who treats the same subject, in the Christian feeling which determines its _dénouement_....

A large portion of Goethe's productions have taken the dramatic form; yet he cannot be said, theatrically speaking, to have been, like Schiller, a successful dramatist. His plays, with the exception of "Egmont" and the First Part of "Faust," have not commanded the stage; they form no part, I believe, of the stock of any German theatre. The characterizations are striking, but the positions are not dramatic. Single scenes in some of them are exceptions,--like that in "Egmont," where Clara endeavors to rouse her fellow-citizens to the rescue of the Count, while Brackenburg seeks to restrain her, and several of the scenes in the First Part of "Faust." But, on the whole, the interest of Goethe's dramas is psychological rather than scenic. Especially is this the case with "Tasso," one of the author's noblest works, where the characters are not so much actors as metaphysical portraitures. Schiller, in his plays, had always the stage in view. Goethe, on the contrary, wrote for readers, or cultivated, reflective hearers, not spectators.....

When I say, then, that Goethe, compared with Schiller, failed of dramatic success, I mean that his talent did not lie in the line of plays adapted to the stage as it is; or if the talent was not wanting, his taste did not incline to such performance. He was no playwright.

But there is another and higher sense of the word _dramatic_, where Goethe is supreme,--the sense in which Dante's great poem is called _Commedia_, a play. There is a drama whose scope is beyond the compass of any earthly stage,--a drama not for theatre-goers, to be seen on the boards, but for intellectual contemplation of men and angels. Such a drama is "Faust," of which I shall speak hereafter.

Of Goethe's prose works,--I mean works of prose fiction,--the most considerable are two philosophical novels, "Wilhelm Meister" and the "Elective Affinities."

In the first of these the various and complex motives which have shaped the composition may be comprehended in the one word _education_,--the education of life for the business of life. The main thread of the narrative traces through a labyrinth of loosely connected scenes and events the growth of the hero's character,--a progressive training by various influences, passional, intellectual, social, moral, and religious. These are represented by the _personnel_ of the story. In accordance with this design, the hero himself, if so he may be called, has no pronounced traits, is more negative than positive, but is brought into contact with many very positive characters. His life is the stage on which these characters perform. A ground is thus provided for the numerous portraits of which the author's large experience furnished the originals, and for lessons of practical wisdom derived from his close observation of men and things and his lifelong reflection thereon.

"Wilhelm Meister," if not the most artistic, is the most instructive, and in that view, next to "Faust," the most important, of Goethe's works. In it he has embodied his philosophy of life,--a philosophy far enough removed from the epicurean views which ignorance has ascribed to him,--a philosophy which is best described by the term _ascetic_. Its keynote is Renunciation. "With renunciation begins the true life," was the author's favorite maxim; and the second part of "Wilhelm Meister"--the _Wanderjahre_--bears the collateral title _Die Entsagenden_; that is, the "Renouncing" or the "Self-denying." The characters that figure in this second part--most of whom have had their training in the first--form a society whose principle of union is self-renunciation and a life of beneficent activity....

The most fascinating character in "Wilhelm Meister"--the wonder and delight of the reader--is Mignon, the child-woman,--a pure creation of Goethe's genius, without a prototype in literature. Readers of Scott will remember Fenella, the elfish maiden in "Peveril of the Peak." Scott says in his Preface to that novel: "The character of Fenella, which from its peculiarity made a favorable impression on the public, was far from being original. The fine sketch of Mignon in Wilhelm Meister's _Lehrjahre_--a celebrated work from the pen of Goethe--gave the idea of such a being. But the copy will be found to be greatly different from my great prototype; nor can I be accused of borrowing anything save the general idea."

As I remember Fenella, the resemblance to Mignon is merely superficial. A certain weirdness is all they have in common. The intensity of the inner life, the unspeakable longing, the cry of the unsatisfied heart, the devout aspiration, the presentiment of the heavenly life which characterize Mignon are peculiar to her; they constitute her individuality. Wilhelm has found her a kidnapped child attached to a strolling circus company, and has rescued her from the cruel hands of the manager. Thenceforth she clings to him with a passionate devotion, in which gratitude for her deliverance, filial affection, and the love of a maiden for her hero are strangely blended. Afflicted with a disease of the heart, she is subject to terrible convulsions, which increase the tenderness of her protector for the doomed child. After one of these attacks, in which she had been suffering frightful pain, we read:--

"He held her fast. She wept; and no tongue can express the force of those tears. Her long hair had become unfastened and hung loose over her shoulders. Her whole being seemed to be melting away.... At last she raised herself up. A mild cheerfulness gleamed from her face. 'My father!' she cried, 'you will not leave me! You will be my father! I will be your child.' Softly, before the door, a harp began to sound. The old Harper was bringing his heartiest songs as an evening sacrifice to his friend."

Then bursts on the reader that world-famed song, in which the soul of Mignon, with its unconquerable yearnings, is forever embalmed,--"Kennst du das Land":--

"Know'st thou the land that bears the citron's bloom?
The golden orange glows 'mid verdant gloom,
A gentle wind from heaven's deep azure blows,
The myrtle low, and high the laurel grows,--
Know'st thou the land?[9]
Oh, there! oh, there!
Would I with thee, my best beloved, repair." ...

[Footnote 9: Literally, "Know'st thou it well?" But the word "well," in this case, does not answer to the German _wohl_.]

The "Elective Affinities" has been strangely misinterpreted as having an immoral tendency, as encouraging conjugal infidelity, and approving "free love." That any one who has read the work with attention to the end could so misjudge it seems incredible. Precisely the reverse of this, its aim is to enforce the sanctity of the nuptial bond by showing the tragic consequences resulting from its violation, though only in thought and feeling....

Here, a word concerning one merit of Goethe which seems to me not to have been sufficiently appreciated by even his admirers,--his loving skill in the delineation of female character; the commanding place he assigns to woman in his writings; his full recognition of the importance of feminine influence in human destiny. The prophetic utterance, which forms the conclusion of "Faust,"--"The ever womanly draws us on,"--is the summing up of Goethe's own experience of life. Few men had ever such wide opportunities of acquaintance with women. If, on the one hand, his loves had revealed to him the passional side of feminine nature, he had enjoyed, on the other, the friendship of some of the purest and noblest of womankind. Conspicuous among these are Fräulein von Klettenberg and the Duchess Luise, whom no one, says Lewes, ever speaks of but in terms of veneration. No poet but Shakspeare, and scarcely Shakspeare, has set before the world so rich a gallery of female portraits. They range from the lowest to the highest,--from the wanton to the saint; they are drawn in firm lines, and limned in imperishable colors, ... each bearing the stamp of her own individuality, and each confessing a master's hand. These may be considered as representing different phases of the poet's experience,--different _stadia_ in his view of life. "The ever womanly draws us on." So Goethe, of all men most susceptible of feminine influence, was led by it from weakness to strength, from dissipation to concentration, from doubt to clearness, from tumult to repose, from the earthly to the heavenly.

"FAUST."

Goethe appears to have derived his knowledge of the Faust legend partly from the work of Widmann, published in 1599,[10] partly from another more modern in its form, which appeared in 1728, and partly from the puppet plays exhibited in Frankfort and other cities of Germany, of which that legend was then a favorite theme. He was not the only writer of that day who made use of it. Some thirty of his contemporaries had produced their "Fausts" during the interval which elapsed between the inception and publication of his great work. Oblivion overtook them all, with the exception of Lessing's, of which a few fragments are left; the manuscript of the complete work was unaccountably lost on its way to the publisher, between Dresden and Leipsic.

[Footnote 10: The earlier work of Spiess (1588) was translated into English and furnished Marlowe with the subject-matter of his "Dr. Faustus."]

The composition of "Faust," as we learn from Goethe's biography, proceeded spasmodically, with many and long interruptions between the inception and conclusion. Projected in 1769 at the age of twenty, it was not completed till the year 1831, at the age of eighty-two....

But the effect of the long arrest, which after Goethe's removal to Weimar delayed the completion of the "Faust," is most apparent in the wide gulf which separates, as to character and style, the Second Part from the First. So great, indeed, is the distance between the two that, without external historical proofs of identity, it would seem from internal evidence altogether improbable, in spite of the slender thread of the fable which connects them, that both poems were the work of one and the same author. And really the author was not the same. The change which had come over Goethe on his return from Italy had gone down to the very springs of his intellectual life. The fervor and the rush, the sparkle and foam of his early productions, had been replaced by the stately calm and the luminous breadth of view that is born of experience. The torrent of the mountains had become the river of the plain; romantic impetuosity had changed to classic repose. He could still, by occasional efforts of the will, cast himself back into the old moods, resume the old thread, and so complete the first "Faust." But we may confidently assert that he could not, after the age of forty, have originated the poem, any more than before his Italian tour he could have written the second "Faust," purporting to be a continuation of the first. The difference in spirit and style is enormous.

As to the question which of the two is the greater production, it is like asking which is the greater, Dante's "Commedia" or Shakspeare's "Macbeth"? They are incommensurable. As to which is the more generally interesting, no question can arise. There are thousands who enjoy and admire the First Part to one who even reads the Second. The interest of the former is poetic and thoroughly human; the interest of the other is partly poetic, but mostly philosophic and scientific....

The symbolical character of "Faust" is assumed by all the critics, and in part confessed by the author himself. Besides the general symbolism pervading and motiving the whole,--a symbolism of human destiny,--and here and there a shadowing forth of the poet's private experience, there are special allusions--local, personal, enigmatic conceits--which have furnished topics of learned discussion and taxed the ingenuity of numerous commentators. We need not trouble ourselves with these subtleties. But little exegesis is needed for a right comprehension of the true and substantial import of the work.

The key to the plot is given in the Prologue in Heaven. The devil, in the character of Mephistopheles, asks permission to tempt Faust; he boasts his ability to get entire possession of his soul and drag him down to hell. The Lord grants the permission, and prophesies the failure of the attempt:--

"Be it allowed! Draw this spirit from its Source if you can lay hold of him; bear him with you on your downward path, and stand ashamed when you are forced to confess that a good man in his dark strivings has a consciousness of the right way."

Here we have a hint of the author's design. He does not intend that the devil shall succeed; he does not mean to adopt the conclusion of the legend and send Faust to hell. He had the penetration to see, and he meant to show, that the notion implied in the old popular superstition of selling one's soul to the devil--the notion that evil can obtain the entire and final possession of the soul--is a fallacy; that the soul is not man's to dispose of, and cannot be so traded away. We are the soul's, not the soul ours. Evil is self-limited; the good in man must finally prevail. So long as he strives he is not lost; Heaven will come to the aid of his better nature. This is the doctrine, the philosophy, of "Faust." In the First Part, stung by disappointment in his search of knowledge, by failure to lay hold of the superhuman, and urged on by his baser propensities personified in Mephistopheles, Faust abandons himself to sensual pleasure,--seduces innocence, burdens his soul with heavy guilt, and seems to be entirely given over to evil. This Part ends with Mephistopheles' imperious call,--"Her zu mir,"--as if secure of his victim. Before the appearance of the Second Part, the reader was at liberty to accept that conclusion. But in the Second Part Faust gradually wakes from the intoxication of passion, outgrows the dominion of appetite, plans great and useful works, whereby Mephistopheles loses more and more his hold of him; and after his death is baffled in his attempt to appropriate Faust's immortal part, to which the heavenly Powers assert their right....

The character of Margaret is unique; its duplicate is not to be found in all the picture galleries of fiction. Shakspeare, in the wide range of his feminine _personnel_, has no portrait like this. A girl of low birth and vulgar circumstance, imbued with the ideas and habits of her class, speaking the language of that class from which she never for a moment deviates into finer phrase, takes on, through the magic handling of the poet, an ideal beauty. Externally common and prosaic in all her ways, she is yet thoroughly poetic, transfigured in our conception by her perfect love. To that love, unreasoning, unsuspecting,--to the excess of that which in itself is no fault, but beautiful and good,--her fall and ruin are due. Her story is the tragedy of her sex in all time. As Schlegel said of the "Prometheus Bound,"--"It is not a single tragedy, but tragedy itself." ...

[The First Part ends with the prison scene, where poor Margaret, escaping by death, ascends to heaven, while Mephistopheles, shouting an imperious "Hither to me!" disappears with Faust.] The reader is allowed to suppose--and most readers did suppose--that the author meant it should be inferred that the devil had secured his victim, and that Faust, according to the legend, had paid the forfeit of his soul to the powers of hell.

But Faust reappears in a new poem,--the Second Part. He is there introduced sleeping, as if burying in torpor the lusts and crimes and sorrows of his past career. Pitying spirits are about him, to heal his woes and promote his return to a better life....

[At the end of his hundred years of earthly life,] Mephistopheles ... fails to secure the immortal part of Faust, which the angels appropriate and bear aloft:

"This member of the upper spheres
We rescue from the devil;
For whoso strives and perseveres
May be redeemed from evil."

The last two lines may be supposed to contain the author's justification of Mephistopheles' defeat and Faust's salvation. Though a man surrender himself to evil, if there is that in him which evil cannot satisfy, an impulse by which he outgrows the gratifications of vice, extends his horizon and lifts his desires, pursues an onward course until he learns to place his aims outside of himself, and to seek satisfaction in works of public utility,--he is beyond the power of Satan: he may be redeemed from evil.

One could wish, indeed, that more decisive marks of moral development had been exhibited in the latter stages of Faust's career. But here comes in the Christian doctrine of Grace, which Goethe applies to the problem of man's destiny. Faust is represented as saved by no merit of his own, but by the interest which Heaven has in every soul in which there is the possibility of a heavenly life.

And so the new-born ascending spirit is committed by the Mater gloriosa to the tutelage of Gretchen [Margaret],--_una poenitentium,_--now purified from all the stains of her earthly life, to whom is given the injunction:--

"Lift thyself up to higher spheres!
When he divines, he'll follow thee."

And the Mystic Choir chants the epilogue which embodies the moral of the play:--

"All that is perishing
Types the ideal;
Dream of our cherishing
Thus becomes real.
Superhumanly
Here it is done;
The ever womanly
Draweth us on."

ALFRED (LORD) TENNYSON.

1809-1892.

THE SPIRIT OF MODERN POETRY.

BY G. MERCER ADAM.

Of Tennyson what can one write freshly to-day that will not seem but an echo of what has been said or written of England's noble singer who, on the death of Wordsworth, now over half a century ago, assumed the official bays of the English laureateship? Personal homage, of course, one can pay to the illustrious name, so dear to the heart of the English-speaking race; but how freshly or vitally can any writer now speak of that magnificent body of his verse which is the glory of his age, of the nobility and knightly virtues of its author's character, of the splendor of his genius, or of the breadth of intellectual and spiritual interests which was so signally manifested in all that Tennyson thought and wrote? Among the "Beacon Lights" in the present series of volumes the Laureate of the age has not hitherto been included, and to fill the gap the writer of this sketch has ventured, not, of course, to say all that might be said of the great poet, but modestly to deal with the man and his art, so that neither his era nor his work shall go unchronicled or fail of some recognition, however inadequate, in these pages.

Tennyson's supreme excellence, it is admitted, lies not so much in his themes as in his transcendent art. It is this that has given him his hold upon a cultured age and won for him immortality. His work is the perfection of literary form, and, in his lyrical pieces especially, his melody is exquisite. Not less masterly is his power of construction, while his sensibility to beauty is phenomenal. His secluded life brought him close to nature's heart and made him familiar with her every voice and mood. In interpreting these, much of the charm lies in the fidelity of his descriptions and in the surpassing beauty of the word-painting. In the Shakespearian sense he lacked the dramatic faculty, and he had but slender gifts of invention and creation. But broad, if not always strong, was his intelligence, and keen his interest in the problems of the time. Though living apart from the world, he was yet of it; and in many of his poems may be traced not only the doings, but the thought and tendencies, of his age. His Christianity, though undogmatic, was real and pervasive, and his love for nature was a devotion. In national affairs, as befitted the official singer of his country (witness his fine 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington'), he showed himself the historic as well as the modern Englishman, and great was his reverence for law and freedom. Attractive also, if at times somewhat commonplace, is the quiet domestic sphere which Tennyson has hallowed in the many modern idylls which depict the joys and sorrows of humble life. No trait in the poet's many-sided character is more beautiful than the sympathy he has manifested in these poems with the world's toilers; while nothing could well be more touching than the pathos with which he invests their simple annals.

Typical of the Victorian age in which he lived, Tennyson is also representative of its highest thought and culture. This is seen not only in the thought of his verse, but in its splendid forms, and especially in the technical equipment of the poet. In his dialogues there is much movement and action, and he had consummate skill in the handling of metres. Few poets have approached him in the successful writing of blank verse, which has a delightful cadence as well as calm strength. Above all his gifts, he was an artist in words, his ear being most sensitively attuned and his taste pure and refined for the delicate artistry of the poet's work. In this respect he is a matchless literary workman. Besides the music of his verse, his thought is ever high, and in his serious moods consecrated to noble and reverent purposes. In the midst of the negations and convulsive movements of his day his spirit is always serene, and his thought, while at times dreamily melancholy, is conserving and full of faith's highest assurance. His sympathy with his fellow-man was keen and wide-souled; and though he stood aloof from the conflict and struggle of his day, he was far from indifferent to its movements, and with high purpose strove if not to direct at least to reflect them. This was specially characteristic of the man, and in the conflict with doubt no poet has more keenly interpreted the mental struggles of the thoughtful soul and the deep underlying spirit of his time, or more beneficently given the age an assured ground of faith while conserving its highest and dearest hopes. Happily, too, unlike many poets, his own character was lofty and blameless, and hence his message comes with more consistency, as well as with a higher inspiration and power. Nor is the message the less impressive for the note of honest doubt which finds utterance in many a poem, or for the intimation of a creed that is at once liberal and conservative. With the evidences before the reader that the poet himself had had his own soul-wrestlings and periods of mental conflict, his counsellings of courage and faith are all the more effective, as they are in unison with his belief in the upward progress of the race, and his unshaken trust in a higher Power.

Lacking in intensity of passion and dramatic force, Tennyson here again is but typical of his era, to him one of reposeful content and calm, reasoning progress. Of permanent, lasting value much of his verse undoubtedly is, but not all of it will escape the indifference of posterity or the measuring-rod and censure, it may be, of the future critic. He had not the stirring strains or the careless rapture of other and earlier poets of the motherland,--his characteristic is more contemplative and brooding,--yet his range is unusually comprehensive and his power varied and sustained, as well as marked by the highest qualities of rhythmic beauty. In the idyll, where he specially shines, we have much that is lovely and limpid, with abounding instances of that felicitous word-painting for which he was noted. This is especially seen in the simple pastoral idylls, such as 'Dora,' 'The May Queen,' and 'The Miller's Daughter,' or in those tender lyrics such as 'Mariana,' 'Sir Galahad,' 'The Dying Swan,' and 'The Talking Oak.' In the ballads and songs, how felicitous again is the poet's work, and how rich yet mellifluous is the strain! Had Tennyson written nothing else but these, with the verse included in the volumes issued by him in 1832 and 1842, how high would he have been placed in the choir of song, and how supreme should we have deemed his art! In "The Princess" alone there are songs that would have made any poet's reputation, while for music and color, and especially for perfection of poetic workmanship, they are almost matchless in their beauty.

Fortunately, however, the poet was to give us much even beyond these surpassingly beautiful things, and make a more unique and distinctive contribution to the verse of his era. In the years that followed the production of his early writings the poet matures in thought as his art ripens and reaches still higher qualities of craftsmanship. Recluse as he was, he moreover had his experiences of life and drank deeply of sorrow's cup, as we see in "In Memoriam,"--that noble tribute to his youthful friend, Arthur Hallam, with its grand hymnal qualities and powerful and reverent lessons for an age shifting in its beliefs and unconfirmed in its faith. In later work from his pen we also see the Laureate--for he has now received official recognition from his nation--in his relations to the culture as well as to the thought of his time, keeping pace with the age in all its complex engrossments and problems. This is shown in much and varied work turned out with its author's loving interest in the poetic art, and with characteristic delicacy and finish. The most important labor of this later time includes "The Princess," "Maud and Other Poems," "Enoch Arden," the dramas "Becket," "Queen Mary," and "Harold," "Tiresias," "Demeter," "The Foresters," but above all, and most notably, that grand epic of King Arthur's time,--"The Idylls of the King." In the latter, the most characteristic, and perhaps the most permanent, of Tennyson's work, the poet manifests his historic sense and love for England's legendary past, and achieves his design not only to glorify it, but to imbue it with a deep ethical motive and underlying purpose, the expression of his own chivalrous, knightly soul and strenuous, thoughtful, and blameless life. In these splendid tales of knight-errantry we have the full flower of the poet's genius, narrated in the true romantic spirit, but with an ideality and imagination quite Tennysonian, and with a spiritualistic touch in harmony with "the voice of the age" that reminds us that,--

"Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they."

It is with such themes and speculations that Tennyson has powerfully and impressively influenced his age. Beyond and above the mere artistry of the poet, we recognize his interest in man's higher, spiritual being, his love for nature, and awe in contemplating the heights and depths of infinite time and space, ever looking upward and inward at the mysteries of the world behind the phenomena of sense. It is difficult, in set theological terms, to define the poet's creed, though we know that he was won by the Broad Church teaching of his friends, Frederick Robertson and Denison Maurice, and had himself many a battle to fight with honest doubts until--as his 'Crossing the Bar' shows us--he finally conquered and laid them. But while there is an absence of definite doctrine in his work there is no question about his religious convictions or of his belief in the eternal verities, the immanence of God in man and the universe. Throughout his poems he assumes the existence of a great Spirit and recognizes that our souls are a part of Him, however Faith at times seems to veil her face from the poet, and all appears a mystery, though a mystery presided over by infinite Power and Love. The great problems of metaphysics and of man's origin and destiny, we are told, occupied much of his thought, and he dwelt upon them with eager, intense interest, and touched upon them with great candor, earnestness, and truthfulness. No sophistry could shake his belief in man's immortality, for without belief in this doctrine the human race, he was convinced, had not incentive enough to virtue, while all man's inspirations were otherwise meaningless. For the doctrine of Evolution, in its materialistic aspect, he had nothing but scorn, though he accepted it in the more spiritual guise with which Russel Wallace propounded it. If we come from the brutes we are nevertheless linked with the Divine, he believed, and it was the Divine in man that was to conquer the brute within him, and, in the upward struggle, work out salvation. So, in the realm of physical science, on the principles of which, as Huxley tells us, he had a great grasp, the poet, while appalled by the mystery, accepts and indeed rejoices in its truths, though he cannot acquiesce in a godless world or in the denial of a life to come, in which the race, through infinite love, shall be brought into union with God.

But leaving here Tennyson's speculations and beliefs,--a most interesting part of the poet's analytical and reflective character,--let us look for a little at the man personally, and record briefly the chief incidents in his quiet though ideal home-life. To those who know the Memoir by his son, Hallam Tennyson,--a memoir that while paying honor to filial reverence and devotion is at the same time and in all respects most worthy of its high theme,--the events in the poet's life will hardly need dwelling upon, though they throw much light on, and impart the distinction of a high dignity to, the Laureate's work. The life Hallam Tennyson describes was, we know, not lived in the public eye, and was wholly without sensational elements or any of the vapid interests which usually attach to a man whose name is, in a special sense, public property, and about whom the world was eagerly, and often officiously, curious. The life the poet lived, in a popular sense, lacked all that usually attracts the masses, for he was personally little known to his generation, rarely seen among large gatherings of the people, and, great Englishman as he was, was almost a stranger, in his later years at least, in the English metropolis, or, if we except the seats of the universities, in any of the chief towns of the kingdom. And yet, in another and a higher sense, the century has hardly known among its many intellectual forces one that has been more influential in its effect upon literary art, or in certain directions has more potently influenced the ideals and more profoundly given expression to the ethical and philosophic thought of the time. Secluded as his life was, it was one not of obscurity or of mere asceticism; on the contrary, it was rich in all the elements that make for a great reputation, and ever devoted to strenuous, elevating purpose, and to an ideal poetic career.

So far as his tastes and opportunity offered, Tennyson's life, moreover, was enriched by many wise and noble friendships, and by intimacy with not a few of the best and most thoughtful minds of his age. It was spent, we rejoice to think also, in unceasing toil in and for his high art, with a resulting productiveness which proved the extent and varied range of his labors as well as the mastery of his craft.

Until the appearance of the biography referred to, we had known the Laureate almost wholly through his books. Now, thanks to the authoritative record of his accomplished surviving son, we know the poet as he lived, and feel that behind his writings there is a personality of the most interesting and impressive kind. It is a personality such as consorts with the opinions which most thoughtful readers of Tennyson's writings must have had of one of the greatest and serenest minds of the age,--a poet who, aside from the splendor of his workmanship and the beauty and melody of his verse, has greatly enriched the poetic literature of the century, and has, we feel, given profound thought to the intellectual problems and spiritual aspirations of his era. Nor does the Memoir, as a revelation of the poet's intellectual and personal life, fall away, on any page of it, from the high plane on which it has been prepared and written. There is no undue invasion, which a son's pride might be apt to make, of domestic privacy, and no dealing with irrelevant topics or elaboration of those set forth with becoming modesty and restraint; far less is there the discussion of any subject, for a trivial or vain purpose. Throughout the work we meet with no unnecessary lifting of veils or treatment of themes merely to satisfy morbid curiosity. Everywhere there is the evidence of sound judgment, unimpeachable taste, and a wholesome sanity. This is especially the case in the frank revelation of the poet's views on religion and his attitude towards scientific and theological thought, to which we have ourselves referred. In this respect, a large debt is due to the biographer for setting before the reader, not only the high ethical purpose which Tennyson had in view in selecting the themes of his poems and in the mode of handling them, but, as we have said, in showing us what beyond peradventure were his religious opinions, and, despite a certain curtaining of gloom, how profoundly he was influenced by faith in the Divine life. Nor is the least interest in the Memoir to be found in the light the biographer throws on the poet's writings as a whole--how they were conceived and elaborated, and on the often hidden meaning that underlies some of the most thoughtful verse. This, to students of the Laureate's writings, is of high value, in addition to the service rendered by the biographer in tracing in his father's poetic work the influences which fashioned it and the pains he took to give it its marvellous beauty and artistic finish of expression.

It is this instructive as well as skilled and dignified treatment, with the vast literary and deep personal interest in the life, that will commend the Memoir to all who are proud of the Laureate's fame, and wished to have nothing written that was unworthy of either the poet or the man, or that would in the least detract from his laurels. Nor does the restraint which the biographer imposes upon himself conceal from us the man in his human aspects, or lead him to set before the reader an imaginary, rather than a veritable and real, portraiture. We have a picture, it is true, of an almost ideal domestic life, and of a man of rare gifts and fine culture, whose work and career have been and are the pride and glory of the English-speaking race. But we have also the story of an author not free from human weaknesses, and though endowed with manifold and great gifts, yet who had to labor long and earnestly to perfect himself in his art, and in his early years had much discouragement and not a little adversity to contend with. With all the toil and stress his early years had known, when success came to the poet no one was less unspoiled by it; and when sunshine fell upon and gilded his life, maturing years brought him serenity, happiness, and, at length, peace.

Alfred Tennyson was born at his father's rectory, Somersby, Lincolnshire, August 6,1809. He was the fourth of twelve children, seven of whom were sons, two of them, Frederick and Charles, being endowed, like Alfred, with poetic gifts. The poet's mother, a woman of sweet and tender disposition, had much to do in moulding the future Laureate's character; while from his father, a man of fine culture, he received not only much of his education, but his bent towards a recluse, bookish career. Alfred was from his earliest days a retired, shy child, fond of reading and given to rhyming, and with a characteristic love of nature and of quiet rural life. Later on he had a passion for the sea-coast, and for those scenes of storm and stress about the seagirt shores of old England which he was so feelingly and with such poetic beauty to depict in "Sea Dreams," and in those incomparable songs, embodiments at once of sorrow and of faith, 'Break, break, break,' and 'Crossing the Bar.' Besides the education he received from his scholarly father, and at a school at Louth for four years, young Tennyson spent some years at Trinity College, Cambridge, where, though he did not take a degree, he won in 1829 the Chancellor's medal for the best English poem of the year, the subject of which was 'Timbuctoo.' At college he had the good fortune to number among his friends several men who later in life were, like himself, to rise to eminence,--such as Henry Alford (afterwards Dean of Canterbury), R.C. Trench (later Archbishop of Dublin), C. Merivale (historian and Dean of Ely), Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), James Spedding (editor of Lord Bacon's Works), Macaulay, Thackeray, and, most endeared of all, Arthur Henry Hallam, son of the historian, whose memory Tennyson has immortalized in "In Memoriam." With him at college was also his brother Charles, one year his senior, with whom he collaborated in the collection of verse, issued in 1827, under the title of "Poems by Two Brothers." In 1830, Tennyson made a journey to the Pyrenees with Arthur Hallam, who was engaged to the poet's sister Emilia, and in the same year he published an independent volume, entitled "Poems chiefly Lyrical." In this, his first venture alone in poetry, and in another issued in 1832, Tennyson was to manifest to the world his poetic powers and art, for they contained, besides much rhythmical and contemplative verse, such poems as 'Mariana,' 'Claribel; 'Lilian,' 'Lady Clare,' 'The Lotus Eaters,' 'A Dream of Pair Women,' 'The May Queen,' and 'The Miller's Daughter,' In spite of the great promise bodied forth in these works, the volumes were subject to not a little unfavorable criticism, which stayed his further publishing for a period of ten years, though not the furtherance of his creative work, nor his enthusiastic efforts towards increasing the perfection of his art.

It was not until 1842 that the poet again appeared in print, this time with a volume to which he appended his name, "Poems by Alfred Tennyson," and which gave him high rank among the acknowledged singers of his day,--Wordsworth, Southey, Landor, Campbell, Rogers, and Leigh Hunt, in England; and in the New World, Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Whittier, and Emerson. The poet-contemporaries of his youth--Byron, Scott, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats--had by this time all died, and in 1843 Southey died, when Wordsworth, whom Tennyson reverenced, became Poet Laureate. The gap occasioned by the death of these early English poets of the century was now to be filled in large measure by Tennyson, though among the writers of song to arise were the Brownings, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, and Swinburne. Critical appreciation of the volume of 1842 was happily encouraging to the poet; indeed, it was most gratifying, for its many remarkable beauties were now justly and adequately appraised, particularly such fine new themes as the volume contained--'Ulysses,' 'Godiva,' 'The Two Voices,' 'The Talking Oak,' 'Oenone,' 'Locksley Hall,' 'The Vision of Sin,' and 'Morte D'Arthur,' the germ of the future "Idylls of the King." Nor on this side the Atlantic did the new volume lack substantial recognition, and from such competent critics as Emerson and Hawthorne; while among his English contemporaries Tennyson became, if we except for the time Wordsworth, the acknowledged head of English song. At this period the poet resided in London or its neighborhood, his family home in Lincolnshire having been broken up in 1837, six years after the death of his father. Here, in spite of the secluded life he led, he became a notable figure in literary circles, and greatly increased the range of his friends, correspondents, and admirers. Among the latter were the Carlyles, Thomas and his clever wife Jane being especially drawn to the poet, and to them we owe interesting sketches of the personal appearance of Tennyson at this time. Mrs. Carlyle, in one of her delightful letters gossiping about Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton, and Tennyson, esteems the latter "the greatest genius of the three," adding that "besides, he is a very handsome man, and a noble-hearted one, with something of the gypsy in his appearance, which for me is perfectly charming." This is the historian, her husband's, piece of portraiture: "A fine, large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-colored, shaggy-headed man, dusty, smoky, free-and-easy; who swims, outwardly and inwardly, with great composure in an articulate element as of tranquil chaos and tobacco smoke; great now and then when he does emerge; a most restful, brotherly, solid-hearted man." Another portrait we have from the Chelsea philosopher and scorner of shams which describes the poet very humanly as "one of the finest-looking men in the world, with a great shock of rough, dusky, dark hair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; massive, aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous. I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will grow to." Besides the Carlyles and other notable contemporaries, Tennyson numbered at this time among his intimates John Sterling, whose life was written by the author of "Sartor Resartus," James Spedding, Bacon's editor, who wrote a fine critique of the 1842 volume of poems for the Edinburgh Review, Aubrey De Vere, Edmund Lushington, A.P. Stanley (afterwards Dean of Westminster), and Edward Fitzgerald, the future translator of the "Rubaiyat," or Quatrains of the Persian Poet, Omar Khayyam. These were all enthusiastic admirers of Tennyson's work and art, and his close personal friends, who have left on record many interesting sketches of the poet in their published writings, or in letters to him, and especially in reminiscences furnished for the Memoir by the poet's son.

Nine years before the appearance of the 1842 volume of Tennyson's verse the poet's bosom friend, Arthur Hallam, died at an immature age at Vienna, and his death was the subject of much brooding in noble, elegiac verse, written, as was Milton's 'Lycidas,' to commemorate the loss of one very dear to the poet. In "In Memoriam," as all know, Tennyson sought to assuage his grief and give fine, artistic expression to his profound sorrow at the loss of his companion and friend; but the work is more than a labored monument of woe, since it enshrines reflections of the most exalted and inspiring character on the eternally momentous themes of life, death, and immortality. The work was published in 1850, and it at once challenged the admiration of the world for the perfection of its art, no less than for its high contemplative beauty. This was the year when Wordsworth passed to the grave, and Tennyson, in his room, was given the English laureateship. In this year, also, we find him happily married to Emily S. Sellwood, a lady of Berks, to whom the poet had been engaged since 1837. With his bride he took up house at Twickenham, near London, where his son, Hallam Tennyson, was born in 1852. In the following year he removed to Farringford, on the Isle of Wight, which was to be his home for forty years, and where, as his son tells us, some of his best-known works were written. Here, in 1854, his second son, Lionel, was born, whose young life of promise was terminated by jungle fever thirty-two years later on a return voyage from India,--all that was mortal of him finding repose in the depths of the Red Sea. To complete the chief incidents in the poet's personal career, we may here record that while Tennyson acquired another home at Aldworth, Surrey,--where he died Oct. 6, 1892, followed some four years later by his wife,--his happiest days were spent at Farringford, the pilgrimage place of many eminent worshippers of the poet's muse, where was dispensed an unostentatious but open-handed and genial British hospitality. It should be added that, besides the perquisites which attach to the office of the Poet Laureate, Tennyson was given from 1845 a pension of £200 ($1000) and that, while in 1865 he refused a baronetcy, in 1884 he accepted a peerage, and had the honor of burial (Oct. 12, 1892) in Westminster Abbey.