Chapter XVII: Part 17

There is something to us very striking in the words "Revelation is a _voluntary_ approximation of the Infinite Being." This states the case with an accuracy and a distinctness not at all common among either the opponents or the apologists of _revealed religion_ in the ordinary sense of the expression. In one sense God is for ever revealing Himself. His heavens are for ever telling His glory, and the firmament showing His handiwork; day unto day is uttering speech, and night unto night is showing knowledge concerning Him. But in the word of the truth of the gospel, God draws near to His creatures; He bows His heavens, and comes down:

That glorious form, that light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,

he lays aside. The Word dwelt with men. "Come then, let _us_ reason together";--"Waiting to be gracious";--"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man open to Me, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me." It is the father seeing his son while yet a great way off, and having compassion, and running to him and falling on his neck and kissing him; for "it was meet for us to rejoice, for this my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found." Let no man confound the voice of God in His Works with the voice of God in His Word; they are utterances of the same infinite heart and will; they are in absolute harmony; together they make up "that undisturbèd song of pure concent"; one "perfect diapason"; but they are distinct; they are meant to be so. A poor traveller, "weary and waysore," is stumbling in unknown places through the darkness of a night of fear, with no light near him, the everlasting stars twinkling far off in their depths, and yet unrisen sun, or the waning moon, sending up their pale beams into the upper heavens, but all this is distant and bewildering for his feet, doubtless better much than outer darkness, beautiful and full of God, if he could have the heart to look up, and the eyes to make use of its vague light; but he is miserable, and afraid, his next step is what he is thinking of; a lamp secured against all winds of doctrine is put into his hands, it may in some respects widen the circle of darkness, but it will cheer his feet, it will tell them what to do next. What a silly fool he would be to throw away that lantern, or draw down the shutters, and make it dark to him, while it sits "i' the centre and enjoys bright day," and all upon the philosophical ground that its light was of the same kind as the stars', and that it was beneath the dignity of human nature to do anything but struggle on and be lost in the attempt to get through the wilderness and the night by the guidance of those "natural" lights, which, though they are from heaven, have so often led the wanderer astray. The dignity of human nature indeed! Let him keep his lantern till the glad sun is up, with healing under his wings. Let him take good heed to the "sure" [Greek: logon] while in this [Greek: auchmêrô topô]--this dark, damp, unwholesome place, "till the day dawn and [Greek: phôsphoros]--the day-star--arise." Nature and the Bible, the Works and the Word of God, are two distinct things. In the mind of their Supreme Author they dwell in perfect peace, in that unspeakable unity which is of His essence; and to us His children, every day their harmony, their mutual relations, are discovering themselves; but let us beware of saying all nature is a revelation as the Bible is, and all the Bible is natural as nature is: there is a perilous juggle here.

The following passage develops Arthur Hallam's views on religious feeling; this was the master idea of his mind, and it would not be easy to overrate its importance.

"My son, give me thine heart";--"Thou shalt _love_ the Lord thy
God";--"The fool hath said in his _heart_, There is no God."

He expresses the same general idea in these words, remarkable in themselves, still more so as being the thought of one so young.

The work of intellect is posterior to the work of feeling. _The latter
lies at the foundation of the man_; it is his proper self--the
peculiar thing that characterizes him as an individual. No two men are
alike in feeling; but conceptions of the understanding, when distinct
are precisely similar in all--the ascertained relations of truths are
the common property of the race.

Tennyson, we have no doubt, had this thought of his friend in his mind, in the following lines; it is an answer to the question, Can man by searching find out God?--

I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;
Nor thro' the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun:

If e'er when faith had fallen asleep,
I heard a voice "believe no more,"
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the godless deep;

_A warmth within the breast would melt_
The freezing reason's colder part,
_And like a man in wrath, the heart
Stood up and answered, "I have felt."_

No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamour made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near;

And what I seem beheld again
What is, and no man understands:
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro' nature, moulding men.

This is a subject of the deepest personal as well as speculative interest. In the works of Augustine, of Baxter, Howe, and Jonathan Edwards, and of Alexander Knox, our readers will find how large a place the religious affections held in their view of Divine truth as well as of human duty. The last-mentioned writer expresses himself thus:

Our sentimental faculties are far stronger than our cogitative; and
the best impressions on the latter will be but the moonshine of the
mind, if they are alone. Feeling will be best excited by sympathy;
rather, it cannot be excited in any other way. Heart must act upon
heart--the idea of a living person being essential to all intercourse
of heart. You cannot by any possibility _cordialize_ with a mere _ens
rationis_. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," otherwise we
could not have "beheld His glory," much less "received of His
fulness."[114]

Our young author thus goes on:

This opens upon us an ampler view in which the subject deserves to be
considered, and a relation still more direct and close between the
Christian religion and the passion of love. What is the distinguishing
character of Hebrew literature, which separates it by so broad a line
of demarcation from that of every ancient people? Undoubtedly the
sentiment of _erotic devotion_ which pervades it. Their poets never
represent the Deity as an impassive principle, a mere organizing
intellect, removed at infinite distance from human hopes and fears. He
is for them a being of like passions with themselves, _requiring heart
for heart, and capable of inspiring affection, because capable of
feeling and returning it_. Awful indeed are the thunders of His
utterance and the clouds that surround His dwelling-place; very
terrible is the vengeance He executes on the nations that forget Him:
but to His chosen people, and especially to the men "after His own
heart," whom He anoints from the midst of them, His "still, small
voice" speaks in sympathy and loving-kindness. Every Hebrew, while his
breast glowed with patriotic enthusiasm at those promises, which he
shared as one of the favoured race, had a yet deeper source of
emotion, from which gushed perpetually the aspirations of prayer and
thanksgiving. He might consider himself alone in the presence of his
God; the single being to whom a great revelation had been made, and
over whose head an "exceeding weight of glory" was suspended. For him
the rocks of Horeb had trembled, and the waters of the Red Sea were
parted in their course. The word given on Sinai with such solemn pomp
of ministration was given to his own individual soul, and brought him
into immediate communion with his Creator. That awful Being could
never be put away from him. He was about his path, and about his bed,
and knew all his thoughts long before. _Yet this tremendous, enclosing
presence was a presence of love. It was a manifold, everlasting
manifestation of one deep feeling--a desire for human affection._ Such
a belief, while it enlisted even pride and self-interest on the side
of piety, had a direct tendency to excite the best passions of our
nature. Love is not long asked in vain from generous dispositions. A
Being, never absent, but standing beside the life of each man with
ever-watchful tenderness, and recognized, though invisible, in every
blessing that befel them from youth to age, became naturally the
object of their warmest affections. Their belief in Him could not
exist without producing, as a necessary effect, that profound
impression _of passionate individual attachment_ which in the Hebrew
authors always mingles with and vivifies their faith in the Invisible.
All the books of the Old Testament are breathed upon by this breath of
life. Especially is it to be found in that beautiful collection,
entitled the Psalms of David, which remains, after some thousand
years, perhaps the most perfect form in which the religious sentiment
of man has been embodied.

But what is true of Judaism is yet more true of Christianity: "_matre
pulchrâ filia pulchrior_." In addition to all the characters of Hebrew
Monotheism, _there exists in the doctrine of the Cross a peculiar and
inexhaustible treasure for the affectionate feelings_. The idea of the
[Greek: Theanthrôpos], the God whose goings forth have been from
everlasting, yet visible to men for their redemption as an earthly,
temporal creature, living, acting, and suffering among themselves,
then (which is yet more important) transferring to the unseen place of
His spiritual agency the same humanity He wore on earth, so that the
lapse of generations can in no way affect the conception of His
identity; this is the most powerful thought that ever addressed
itself to a human imagination. It is the [Greek: pou stô], which alone
was wanted to move the world. Here was solved at once the great
problem which so long had distressed the teachers of mankind, how to
make _virtue the object of passion_, and to secure at once the warmest
enthusiasm in the heart with the clearest perception of right and
wrong in the understanding. The character of the blessed Founder of
our faith became an abstract of morality to determine the judgment,
_while at the same time it remained personal, and liable to love_. The
written word and established church prevented a degeneration into
ungoverned mysticism, but the predominant principle of vital religion
always remained that of self-sacrifice to the Saviour. Not only the
higher divisions of moral duties, but the simple, primary impulses of
benevolence, were subordinated to this new absorbing passion. The
world was loved "in Christ alone." The brethren were members of His
mystical body. All the other bonds that had fastened down the spirit
of the universe to our narrow round of earth were as nothing in
comparison to this golden chain of suffering and self-sacrifice, which
at once riveted the heart of man to one who, like himself, was
acquainted with grief. _Pain is the deepest thing we have_ in our
nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real and more
holy than any other.[115]

There is a sad pleasure--_non ingrata amaritudo_--and a sort of meditative tenderness in contemplating the little life of this "dear youth," and in letting the mind rest upon these his earnest thoughts; to watch his keen and fearless, but childlike spirit, moving itself aright--going straight onward along "the lines of limitless desires"--throwing himself into the very deepest of the ways of God, and striking out as a strong swimmer striketh out his hands to swim; to see him "mewing his mighty youth, and kindling his undazzled eye at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance":

Light intellectual, and full of love,
Love of true beauty, therefore full of joy,
Joy, every other sweetness far above.

It is good for every one to look upon such a sight, and as we look, to love. We should all be the better for it; and should desire to be thankful for, and to use aright a gift so good and perfect, coming down as it does from above, from the Father of lights, in whom alone there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

Thus it is, that to each one of us the death of Arthur Hallam--his thoughts and affections--his views of God, of our relations to Him, of duty, of the meaning and worth of this world and the next--where he now is--have an individual significance. He is bound up in our bundle of life; we must be the better or the worse of having known what manner of man he was; and in a sense less peculiar, but not less true, each of us may say:

----The tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

----O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

God gives us love! Something to love
He lends us; but when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone:

This is the curse of time. Alas!
In grief we are not all unlearned;
Once, through our own doors Death did pass;
One went who never hath returned.

This star
Rose with us, through a little arc
Of heaven, nor having wandered far,
Shot on the sudden into dark.

Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace;
Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,
While the stars burn, the moons increase,
And the great ages onward roll.

Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet,
Nothing comes to thee new or strange,
Sleep, full of rest from head to feet;
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.

_Vattene in pace, alma beata e bella._--Go in peace, soul beautiful
and blessed.

"O man greatly beloved, go thou thy way till the end, for thou shalt
rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days."--DANIEL.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

THE COMMENTS OF TENNYSON ON ONE OF HIS LATER ETHICAL POEMS[116]

By WILFRID WARD

He had often said he would go through the "De Profundis" with me line by line, and he did so late in January or early in February 1889, when I was staying at Farringford. He was still very ill, having had rheumatic fever in the previous year; and neither he nor his friends expected that he would recover after his many relapses. He could scarcely move his limbs, and his fingers were tied with bandages. We moved him from bed to sofa, but he could not sit up. His mind, however, was quite clear. He read through the "De Profundis," and gave the substance of the explanation I have written down. He began languidly, but soon got deeply interested. When he reached the prayer at the end, he said: "A B" (naming a well-known Positivist thinker) "exclaimed, when I read it to him, 'Do leave that prayer out; I like all the rest of it.'"

I proceed to set down the account of the poem written (in substance) immediately after his explanation of it. The mystery of life as a whole which so constantly exercised him is here most fully dealt with. He supposes a child just born, and considers the problems of human existence as presented by the thought of the child's birth, and the child's future life with all its possibilities. The poem takes the form of two greetings to the new-born child. In the first greeting life is viewed as we see it in the world, and as we know it by physical science, as a phenomenon; as the materialist might view it; not indeed coarsely, but as an outcome of all the physical forces of the universe, which have ever contained in themselves the potentiality of all that was to come--"all that was to be in all that was." These vast and wondrous forces have now issued in this newly given life--this child born into the world. There is the sense of mystery in our greeting to it; but it is of the mysteries of the physical Universe and nothing beyond; the sense of awe fitting to finite man at the thought of infinite Time, of the countless years before human life was at all, during which the fixed laws of Nature were ruling and framing the earth as we know it, of the countless years earlier still, during which, on the nebular hypothesis, Nature's laws were working before our planet was separated off from the mass of the sun's light, and before the similar differentiation took place in the rest of the "vast waste dawn of multitudinous eddying light." Again, there is awe in contemplating the vastness of space; in the thoughts which in ascending scale rise from the new-born infant to the great globe of which he is so small a part, from that to the whole solar system, from that again to the myriad similar systems "glimmering up the heights beyond" us which we partly see in the Milky Way; from that to those others which human sight can never descry. Forces in Time and Space as nearly infinite as our imagination can conceive, have been leading up to this one birth, with the short life of a single man before it. May that life be happy and noble! Viewing it still as the course determined by Nature's laws--a course unknown to us and yet unalterably fixed--we sigh forth the hope that our child may pass unscathed through youth, may have a full and prosperous time on earth, blessed by man for good done to man, and may pass peacefully at last to rest. Such is the first greeting--full of the poetry of life, of its wondrous causes, of the overwhelming greatness of the Universe of which this new-given baby is the child, cared for, preserved hitherto unscathed amid these awful powers, all in all to its parents, inspiring the hope which new-given joy makes sanguine, that fortune may be kind to it, that happiness may be as great, sorrow and pain as little, as the chances of the world allow.

After his explanation, he read the first greeting to the child:

Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Where all that was to be, in all that was,
Whirl'd for a million æons through the vast
Waste dawn of multitudinous eddying light--
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Thro' all this changing world of changeless law,
And every phase of ever-heightening life,
And nine long months of antenatal gloom,
With this last moon, this crescent--her dark orb
Touch'd with earth's light--thou comest, darling boy;
Our own; a babe in lineament and limb
Perfect, and prophet of the perfect man;
Whose face and form are hers and mine in one,
Indissolubly married like our love;
Live and be happy in thyself, and serve
This mortal race thy kin so well, that men
May bless thee as we bless thee, O young life,
Breaking with laughter from the dark; and may
The fated channel where thy motion lives
Be prosperously shaped, and sway thy course
Along the years of haste and random youth
Unshatter'd; then full-current thro' full man;
And last, in kindly curves, with gentlest fall,
By quiet fields, a slowly-dying power
To that last deep where we and thou art still.

And then comes the second greeting. A deeper chord is struck. The listener, who has, perhaps, felt as if the first greeting contained all--all the mystery of birth, of life, of death--hears a sound unknown, unimagined before. A new range of ideas is opened to us. The starry firmament disappears for the moment. The "deep" of infinite time and space is forgotten. A fresh sense is awakened, a deeper depth disclosed. We leave this wondrous world of appearances. We gaze into that other deep--the world of spirit, the world of realities; we see the new-born babe coming to us from that _true_ world, with all the "abysmal depths of personality," no longer a mere link in the chain of causes, with a fated course through the events of life, but a moral being, with the awful power of making or marring its own destiny and that of others. The proportions are abruptly reversed. The child is no longer the minute outcome of natural forces so much greater than itself. It is the "spirit," the moral being, a reality which impinges on the world of appearances. Never can I forget the change of voice, the change of manner, as Lord Tennyson passed from the first greeting, with its purely human thoughts, to the second, so full of awe at the conception of the world behind the veil and the moral nature of man; an awe which seemed to culminate when he paused before the word "Spirit" in the seventh line and then gave it in deeper and more piercing tones: "Out of the deep--_Spirit_,--out of the deep." This second greeting is in two parts:

I

Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
From that great deep, before our world begins,
Whereon the Spirit of God moves as He will--
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
From that true world within the world we see,
Whereof our world is but the bounding shore--
Out of the deep, Spirit, out of the deep,
With this ninth moon, that sends the hidden sun,
Down yon dark sea, thou comest, darling boy.

II

For in the world, which is not ours, they said,
"Let us make man," and that which should be man,
From that one light no man can look upon,
Drew to this shore, lit by the suns and moons
And all the shadows. O dear Spirit, half-lost
In thine own shadow and this fleshly sign
That thou art thou--who wailest being born
And banish'd into mystery, and the pain
Of this divisible-indivisible world
Among the numerable-innumerable
Sun, sun, and sun, thro' finite-infinite space,
In finite-infinite Time--our mortal veil
And shatter'd phantom of that infinite One,
Who made thee unconceivably Thyself
Out of His whole World-self, and all in all--
Live thou, and of the grain and husk, the grape
And ivyberry, choose; and still depart
From death to death thro' life and life, and find
Nearer and ever nearer Him, who wrought
Not matter, not the finite-infinite,
But this main-miracle, that thou art thou,
With power on thine own act and on the world.

Note that the second greeting considers the reality of the child's life and its meaning, the first only its appearance. The great deep of the spiritual world is "that true world within the world we see, Whereof our world is but the bounding shore." And this indication that the second greeting gives the deeper and truer view, is preserved in some of the side touches of description. In the first greeting, for example, the moon is spoken of as "touch'd with earth's light"; in the second the truer and less obvious fact is suggested. It "sends the hidden sun down yon dark sea." The material view again looks at bright and hopeful appearances in life, and it notes the new-born babe "breaking with laughter from the dark." The spiritual view foresees the woes which, if Byron is right in calling melancholy the "telescope of truth," are truer than the joys. It notes no longer the child's laughter, but rather its tears, "Thou wailest being born and banished into mystery." Life, in the spiritual view, is in part a veiling and obscuring of the true self as it is, in a world of appearances. The soul is "half lost" in the body which is part of the phenomenal world, "in thine own shadow and in this fleshly sign that thou art thou." The suns and moons, too, are but shadows, as the body of the child itself is but a shadow--shadows of the spirit-world and of God Himself. The physical life is before the child; but not as a fatally determined course. Choice of the good is to lead the spirit ever nearer God. The wonders of the material Universe are still recognized: "Sun, sun, and sun, thro' finite-infinite space, in finite-infinite Time"; but they vanish into insignificance when compared to the two great facts of the spirit-world which consciousness tells us unmistakably--the facts of personality and of a responsible will. The great mystery is "Not Matter, nor the finite-infinite," but "_this main-miracle, that thou art thou, with power on thine own act and on the world_."

"Out of the deep"--in this conception of the true "deep" of the world behind the veil we have the thought which recurs so often, as in the "Passing of Arthur" and in "Crossing the Bar"[117]--of birth and death as the coming from and returning to the spirit-world and God Himself. Birth[118] is the coming to land from that deep; "of which our world is but the bounding shore;" death the re-embarking on the same infinite sea, for the home of truth and light.

He seemed so much better when he had finished his explanation that I asked him to read the poem through again. This he did, more beautifully than I ever heard him read. I felt as though his long illness and his expectation of death gave more intensity and force to his rendering of this wonderful poem on the mystery of life. He began quietly, and read the concluding lines of the first "greeting," the brief description of a peaceful old age and death, from the human standpoint, with a very tender pathos:

And last, in kindly curves, with gentlest fall
By quiet fields, a slowly-dying power,
To that last deep where we and thou are still.

Then he gathered force, and his voice deepened as the greeting to the immortal soul of the man was read. He raised his eyes from the book at the seventh line and looked for a moment at his hearer with an indescribable expression of awe before he uttered the word "spirit"; "Out of the deep--Spirit,--out of the deep." When he had finished the second greeting he was trembling much. Then he read the prayer--a prayer he had told me of self-prostration before the Infinite. I think he intended it as a contrast to the analytical and reflective character of the rest. It is an outpouring of the simplest and most intense self-abandonment to the Creator, an acknowledgment, when all has been thought and said with such insight and beauty, that our best thoughts and words are as nothing in the Great Presence--in a sense parallel to the breaking off in the "Ode to the Duke of Wellington":

Speak no more of his renown,
Lay your earthly fancies down.

He began to chaunt in a loud clear voice:

Hallowed be Thy Name--Halleluiah.

His voice was growing tremulous as he reached the second part:

We feel we are nothing--for all is Thou and in Thee;
We feel we are something--_that_ also has come from Thee.

And he broke down as he finished the prayer:

We know we are nothing--but Thou wilt help us to be.
Hallowed be Thy Name--Halleluiah!

APPENDIX B

It will be seen below that the lines to which reference is made--

That man's the true cosmopolite
Who loves his native country best,

have been altered to suit my mother's setting, arranged by Sir Charles Stanford, to

He best will serve the race of men
Who loves his native country best.

HANDS ALL ROUND

A NATIONAL SONG

THE MELODY BY EMILY, LADY TENNYSON AND ARRANGED BY C. VILLIERS STANFORD

_With breadth and not too slow._

First pledge our Queen, my
friends, and then A health to Eng-land eve-ry guest; He
best will serve the race of men, Who loves his na-tive
coun-try best. May Free-dom's oak for ev-er last, With
lar-ger life, from day to day; He loves the pre-sent and the past, Who
lops the moulder'd branch a-way.

CHORUS (_ad lib._)

_Broadly._

Hands all round!
God the traitor's hope con-found! To the great cause of Free-dom
drink, my friends, And the great name of Eng-land
round and round.

To all the loyal hearts who long
To keep our English Empire whole!
To all our noble sons, the strong
New England of the Southern Pole!
To England under Indian skies,
To those dark millions of her realm!
To Canada whom we love and prize,
Whatever statesman hold the helm.
Hands all round! God the traitor's hope confound!
To the great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,
And the great name of England round and round.

To all our statesmen so they be
True leaders of the land's desire!
To both our Houses, may they see
Beyond the borough and the shire!
We sail'd wherever ship could sail,
We founded many a mighty state;
Pray God our greatness may not fail
Thro' craven fears of being great.
Hands all round! God the traitor's hope confound!
To the great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,
And the great name of England round and round.

APPENDIX C

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS FROM UNKNOWN FRIENDS

[During the last twenty-five years of his life my father was probably, throughout the whole English-speaking race, the Englishman who was most widely known. Hence the letters addressed to him by strangers competed in number with those which, it is well known, add a needless weariness to the heavy task of governing a civilized state. This became a correspondence mainly of request or of reverence, although the voice of disappointment or of envy of what is ranked above oneself which lurks in common human nature may have occasionally been audible. My father's experience here was that of Dr. Johnson and, doubtless, of many more men of commanding eminence; that of writers submitting their work for candid criticism, charging him with conceit if he suggested publication as unadvisable; if it were advised, and the book failed, with deception. Probably many of those who wrote thus soon repented of their eloquence; at any rate nothing of this nature will be here preserved. But of the ordinary type of strangers' letters some specimens may be of interest. And although these few have been chosen mainly from the letters addressed to my father during his last fifteen years yet they will give a general impression of the vast quantity received.

I place first letters upon poetry submitted (or proposed for submission) to my father's judgment.]

(1884)

I hope you will forgive the liberty I am taking in writing to you. I
have heard a great deal about you, and I read a part of one of your
poems, "The May Queen." I have not had an opportunity to read the
whole of it, but I like what I have seen very much.... I have tried
to write some poems myself. I have enclosed one for you to see, which
came into my mind while I was digging a ditch in my garden. I am only
nine years old, and if I keep on trying some day I shall write a grand
poem.

(1882)

HONOURED SIR--It has been said: where a great apology is most needed,
it is best to begin with the business at once.

I never had the pleasure of seeing you, but it is enough for me to
have had the pleasure of reading your heart in your works, "though
they be but a part of your inward soul." I am a lad scarcely seventeen
summers old. In some of my leisure hours, particularly morning and
evening ones, I penned a few thousand lines of small poems in fair
metre,--so my simple-minded friend or two pronounce them in their
partiality.... [He deprecates the suspicion that he is applying for
money.] Will you allow me to forward to you through the post a few of
my poems? And when your benevolent soul has given up time to read some
of my verses ("the primrose fancies of a boy"), and should my
productions be considered by you deserving of your good word, half the
difficulty of finding a willing publisher will, I know, be removed.

There is something truly felt and pathetic in the two following letters. The first is from a young poetess.

I hardly know how I have summoned up sufficient courage to address
you, although I have long wished to do so! Studying that most touching
of poems "Enoch Arden," I felt somehow convinced that the heart that
had inspired so much which is beautiful and touching, would also
prompt a kind answer to me. Ever since I was a child (not so very long
ago), writing was my only consolation and solace in moments of great
grief or joy; writing--I shall not say _poetry_ but rhyme.

(1881)

DEAR MR. TENNYSON--I have heard and believed that great men are always
the best hearted, and therefore hope you will kindly look at the
enclosed and tell me if there is any hope that I may ever write
anything worthy the name of poetry, and if those lines are anything
but doggerel, I hope you will not think me as presumptuous as I do;
something tells me you will be kind.

Now follow good average specimens.

(1890)

DEAR AND MUCH-ADMIRED LORD TENNYSON--The writer of this, an humble
admirer of your Poetry,--an uneducated girl from the bogs of Ireland,
has the audacity to send you her first effort in verse: whether it is
poetry or not I leave you to decide, as I am entirely incapable of
judging myself, as I am wholly ignorant of the art of versification,
and indeed would never dream of attempting to write verse, only I was
very anxious to succeed in prose writing....

(1882)

Will you kindly pardon my venturing to ask you to read some of my
verses, and to tell me whether you consider me capable of ever writing
poetry fit to be read? I have never had any desire to become a poet,
but lately ideas have come into my head, once I seemed to see a line
or two before my eyes, and in order to free myself from these fancies
I wrote.

(1884)

DEAR SIR--I remember your figure and attire at Shiplake Vicarage in
Mrs. Franklyn Rawnsley's house, 1852, thirty-two years ago. Does your
memory travel back to a fine December morning when, the house full of
guests for the christening of the latest blossom of the Rawnsley
house, there drove up through the flooded meadows surrounding the low
old vicarage, a cab with a young foreigner, a child of sixteen
summers, all tremulous how she should be received, not speaking a word
of English but her native German tongue, besides French, introduced by
Miss Amélie Bodte, the authoress in Dresden, to teach music to Mrs.
Rawnsley's children? What a woeful feeling for the well-known
counsellor's daughter to be treated in a cool way as the engaged
teacher of little children. However, there was an oasis in the desert.
On the following morning Mrs. Rawnsley proposed to the assembled
guests to take a walk in a neighbouring Squire's park while she looked
after some home duties, and a tall young gentleman with an enormous
Tyrolese hat offered to walk with a solitary stranger. He spoke a
little German and tried to divert the gloom of the young girl by
crossing the lawn and breaking a belated rose she admired coming from
snow-bound Saxony. They stopped at a turtle-dove house where he made
the prettiest little German pun she never forgot hereafter, "Ich bin
eine kleine Taube" (I am a little dove (deaf)?). And it began to rain,
and he--it was you--took off the Spanish cloak gathered with narrow
stitches on the throat, a black velvet collar falling over it, and
wrapped it round the girl's shoulders. The ladies of the company
frowned, returning home, all told as with one voice to Mrs. Rawnsley
what had happened during the walk, and she laughed and said to me in
French, "My dear, you had all the honours as a German because you did
not try for them, this is the Poet Laureate, and it displeases him
that the ladies torment him for attentions." And now do you remember,
of course you know this girl was I. And the next day you read the "Ode
to the Queen," of which I did not understand a word, and you went away
to the sea to meet your wife and baby son, and I never saw you again.
Now after thirty-two years undergoing purification in the crucible of
humble life, I come to ask you to accept kindly the dedication of one
of my compositions--a song. Your name is as illustrious here as in
England, and my poor song will find more eager listeners with your
name attached as a patron than otherwise.... "A turtle dove" could but
bring an olive branch to a lone woman and gladden the heart of your
Lordship's most respectful admirer,

MARIA * * *

(1890)

Now a Transatlantic poetess:

(After excuse asked for "presumption" she says:)

I have to thank you for some of the best thoughts and the purest
pleasure I have ever derived from anything.

I am an American girl nineteen years of age, and was named from the
hero of "Aylmer's Field."

I enclose some verses I have written. I would like exceedingly to hear
your opinion of them and to know if they contain anything of promise.

LEOLINE * * *

(1877)

From America also we have one who modestly describes himself as "a mere Collegian, a youth to fortune and to fame unknown...."

I have during the past summer been engaged, to my great entertainment
and instruction, in the perusal of your poetical works, reading many
for the first time though of course familiar with a large number;
having finished them, I could not refrain from expressing my
admiration of your great genius in a few lines which I send herewith.

O Tennyson, how great a soul is thine!
Thy range of thought how varied
and how vast...

(1862)

Will you accept the enclosed lines as a slight testimonial of the high
admiration entertained for your exquisite genius, by a rhyming
daughter of Columbia; whose poetic wings just fledging from a first
unpublished vol. (commended by Wm. Cullen Bryant and Geo. Bancroft,
Esqrs.) permit only a feeble fluttering around the base of that
"Parnassus," whose summit you have so brilliantly, and justly
attained. * * *

(187-)

Then an "Agent for Stars" offers my father £20,000 if said Agent is permitted to arrange a tour for him in the United States.

(1884)

The following is another--we will not say, a less acceptable offering:

I send you by my good friend ---- a dozen small parcels of smoking
tobacco....

We think it the best smoking tobacco in the world and I trust that you
may find reason to agree with us. If it shall give you one moment's
pleasure in return for the countless hours of delight that you have
given me, I shall count myself a happy mortal.

(1890)

A gift certainly not less acceptable comes from a little girl:

MY LORD--_Please_ let these flowers be in your room, and _do_ wear the
little bunch.--I remain, your true admirer, * * *

Now follows the _Grande Armée_ of natural, amiable, but remorseless autograph hunters. A miscellaneous group comes first.

(1890)

HONOURED LORD--May I (an Australian maiden born 1870) hope to be
pardoned for taking the liberty of writing to you--so distinguished a
gentleman--to express my great admiration for your poems? It is my
admiration that has emboldened me to venture so far ... etc. etc.

Let me conclude with one request: namely to ask you to do me the very
great honour to acknowledge this letter; so that I may be able to
boast of, and dearly treasure, even a line from the Great Poet.

(1890)

An obvious fisher for good things follows:

SIR--I hope that you will kindly excuse the liberty I take in
requesting you to be so good as to inform me how the word "humble"
should be pronounced: _i.e._ whether or not it is proper to aspirate
the "h"?

A reply at your kind convenience will inexpressibly oblige....

(1890)

Another ingenuously finds it needful to ask whether the word be pronounced _I_dylls or _E_dylls.

(1891)

DEAR SIR--A simple child (who writes from Holland), would feel
extremely happy, would be in the seventh heaven, when she would be
favoured with a mere line of the greatest poet of renown, Alfred
Tennyson. Allow her, to offer you before, her sincere thanks for your
autograph, with which she would feel the happiest child in the world.

With kind regards, most honourable lord, yours respectfully.

(1882)

A (German) collector of autographs, who has an autograph of Mr. Kinkel
and Victor Hugo, the greatest living poets of Germany and France, only
misses in his collection the autograph of the greatest living English
poet. Therefore he requests you to give him an autograph of yours. May
it only be your signature, it will find in my album a place of honour.

(1882)

_To the prince of poets._

MONSIEUR--Forgive me, I beseech you, the liberty I take in daring to
write to you; but I wish to beg the greatest of favours.

This favour, Monsieur, it is your signature.

I am only a young Belgian girl, and I have no reason to proffer why
you should thus distinguish me; but I feel you must love all girls, or
you could not have written "Isabel" or "Lilian"; and you must be kind
and good, or you would not have given them to the world.

So, Monsieur, I humbly beg you send me the name we all venerate,
traced by the hand that has guided the world with so much beauty, and
make one more heart supremely happy.--One who loves you, * * *

Three petitions, which touched my father, may here have place.

The first (1884) consists of some twenty letters, in very creditable English and excellent hand-writing, each saying some handsome thing about the "May Queen," which they had learned, and now criticized with amusing _naïveté_, and asking for a line from Tennyson--signed with the children's names, and dated from a German High School for girls: "who," says their Mistress, "in the joy of their hearts tried to express their feeling of admiration in their imperfect knowledge of the English language."

* * * * *

In the next a young girl from India, training in England with comrades apparently for Zenana work, thanks "Our dear aziz Sahib" for a copy of the Poems, and then proceeds, in neat round hand:

Oh how we wish we could see you even for one minute The Great and good
Poet Laureate, whom everybody loves so much and we love you too dear
sweet Sahib, we are going to learn that pretty Poetry "The May Queen"
and several others out of that lovely Book. Will you please, dear
Sahib, write out "The May Queen" and "The Dedication of the Idyols of
the King," with your own hand, we will keep it till the last day of
our lives.

They then explain why the "Dedication" is asked for; "because we know how dearly Prince Albert loved you, and, also our beloved Queen Empress, and how you love them": also how they long to go back "to our dear India," and sing hymns, and nurse and dose "our own countrywomen in the Zenanas."

Now good-bye our aziz (beloved) Sahib I am sending you some wild
daisies and moss as you are so fond of flowers and everything
beautiful in God's world. May God give you a sweet smile every day,
prays your little loving, Indian Friend, * * *

This last explains itself:

DEAR MR. TENNYSON--I am one of a large struggling family of girls and
boys who have never yet been able to afford to give 9s. for that
much-coveted green volume Tennyson's "Poems," so at last, the boys
having failed to obtain it as a prize, and the girls as a birthday
present, I, the boldest of the party, venture to ask if you would
kindly bestow a copy on a nest full of young admirers. * * *

He wrote his little Indian maid a pretty letter, and sent his poems to the "best girl." And in many an instance, (requests for aid included) the correspondence bears witness to my father's open-hearted kindliness and liberality. His _beggars_, at any rate, were often _choosers_.

The wish for an autograph, we may again reasonably suppose, was not absent from the minds of the following (and other analogous) writers. The first dates from Scotland:

(1878)

I take the great liberty in writing to you, in order to settle a
dispute that has arisen amongst several parties, regarding the song
written by Sir Walter Scott, _Jock O' Hazeldean_. The words are as
follows,

And ye shall be his bride Lady;
So comely to be seen.

Does comely apply to the bride, or the bridegroom? As your opinion
will be considered satisfactory to all, your reply will be considered
a lasting favour. * * *

(1883)

I am an enthusiastic reader and admirer of your works, and have read
those which I like especially, over and over again, in particular
"Maud," which I consider to be surpassingly fresh and beautiful--there
is a sort of fascination about the poem to me ... but I really cannot
understand the meaning of the end of it.

I should very much like to know whether it is intended to mean that
Maud's brother, "that curl'd Assyrian bull," is slain by her lover:
whether Maud is supposed to die of a broken heart, or does her lover
come back, long after, presumably from the Russian war and marry her?

The remaining examples, in which respect is curiously blended with familiarity, are dated from the United States.

A lively boy of thirteen (1884) who loves "Nature and Poetry" shall here have precedence:

In the first place I wish to ask your pardon for bothering you with
this letter, but I want to make a collection, or I mean get the
autographs of 5 or 6 distinguished poets; and so I thought I would
write and get yours if possible and then the minor ones may follow.

I have read most of your poems, and like them _very much_ indeed, etc.
etc.

(A biographical sketch follows, including a visit to England.) When we
drove back from Stoke Pogis to Windsor we saw the deer in the Queen's
hunting grounds, and the tall, mighty oaks on each side of the road
seemed to say, "This is an Earthly Paradise."...

If you would write a verse or two from some one of your poems and
write your name under it, I should be _very much_ obliged to you
indeed.

(1885)

Forgive the intrusion of a stranger (says a lady). Long have I desired
to have some one of the noble thoughts, I have so learned to love, in
your own handwriting. I have felt a delicacy in asking this, but the
wish is so earnest with me that I will venture this first and last
request.... I crave some tangible proof that my "hero-worship" has
some sympathetic, human foundation. Could I choose a couplet?... They
spring to my memory in legions. The wild melody of "Blow, bugle,
blow," etc. etc. ... They have helped to make my life beautiful,
earnest and true, and I am grateful for it all. If I might be once
more your debtor it would be a real joy to me, but if it _feels_ like
a burden, do not give it another thought.

* * * * *

(1891)

... In behalf of _Charity Circle_, a non-sectarian organization of the
order of King's Daughters, we are making a collection of autographs of
prominent men and women to be used in a souvenir banner: which when
finished will be sold and the proceeds devoted to charity work. We
feel as if the banner will not be complete without Lord Tennyson's
autograph.

(1891)

BELOVED SIR--I feel awkward and abashed, as I thus come before you,
who are so great, so honored, so crowned with earthly fame and glory;
and, so worthy to be thus crowned, and known to fame: but, I know,
that in the midst of all these honors, which might spoil one, of the
common sort of souls; you are a poet, _born_, _not_ made; and
therefore, you have the essential gift of the poet [sympathy] and can
feel for the imprisoned soul, beating against the stifling walls of
silence: and longing, fainting, to come forth into the glad sunshine,
the sweet, fresh air of _utterance_, so strangely withheld from it....
From [youth] till now, Beloved Sir, you have been my friend, my
soother; the dear angel, whose kindly office it has been, ever and
anon, to speak _for_ me ... and thus to give me the _sweet sense_ of
having been led forth from prison for a while into the blessed light
and freedom of utterance.

I will never forget the relief afforded by those lines:

My very heart faints and my soul grieves
Etc. etc.

* * * * *

(1891)

A lady writes to the honored Poet-Laureate of England, and the beloved world-renowned verse-maker.

Knowing the value of even one verse and your autograph I write to you
and make my request, which if granted will be beyond my anticipations.
I want a dedicatory poem so much, but if I get only a line from you I
should be happy. I always loved your poetry. Now please, do send me
the coveted verse. I, a beggar-maid at the throne of poetry, kneel and
beg of the monarch a crumb. Have you any grandchildren? I wish I
could get one of their photos for my book. Hoping you will act like
the good king in the fairy kingdom and grant the request--I remain
etc. etc.

(1885)

DEAR LADY TENNYSON--It is one of the glorious privileges of our
government that the "first ladies of the land" may be courteously
addressed without the formalities of an introduction, and why not the
same rule in your country? Therefore, without the semblance of an
apology, I request you will do me the honor to grant a small favor. I
am engaged in collecting souvenirs from celebrated writers, and you
being the wife of England's Poet Laureate, I would prize beyond
measure a contribution from you: a _scrap_ of silk or velvet from one
of _your dresses_, and also a scrap of one of your husband's
_neckties_.... There is no one who loves his works as myself ... he
reaches further down into the human heart and touches its tender cords
(sic) as no man has since the days of Shakespeare.... My husband, who
has won an enviable reputation as a writer hopes soon to produce his
work on _The Lives of English and American Poets_. Hoping you will not
refuse me, etc. etc.

A few miscellaneous oddities follow.

(1883)

DEAR SIR--May I ask you as a favour where I could find a "wold," to
illustrate the following verse:

Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
And on these dews that drench the furze,
And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold:
("In Memoriam," XI.)

which is the subject given this year for a painting (for the Gold
Medal), to the Students of the Royal Academy of Arts?

(1840)

A young girl, writing from America, asks a natural question.

We have your book of poems, and I have read "Enoch Arden." So I
thought I would write and see if it is true. Was there a girl whose
name was Anna Lee, and two boys named Enoch Arden and Philip Ray?

I felt very sorry for Philip at first and afterward for Enoch, when
he came home and found his wife had married Philip and he saw her
children grown up, but could not go to see them....

I have a pet rooster, and it is very cunning. I hold it and pet it and
I love it _lots_.

Well, I must close, hoping to hear from you soon, for I want to know
if the story of Enoch is true.

(1891)

U.S.A. again supplies the following _naïveté_:

DEAR SIR--I intrude a line on your notice, to ask a little favor.

I am in my fourteenth year; am considered fairly advanced for my age,
by older heads. I _wish your opinion_ of the _best line of books_ for
me to read at leisure hours, aside from novels or fiction. I attend
the high school, and on Saturdays, clerk in the store, of which my
father is senior partner.

_P.S._--You will find five cents for return postage.

_2nd P.S._--My mother says you are not living, but I say to her, I
believe she is mistaken; in other words, I am glad one time to differ
with her.

(1888)

MY DEAR LORD TENNYSON--I once met you....

You will think it strange indeed, my Lord, when I assure you that I am
often supposed to be your noble self, once in Scarborough, often in
Town at the great exhibitions and elsewhere. I wear a large Tyrolese
felt hat.