Chapter VII: Part 7

But to proceed. Apropos of Voltaire saying that to listen to English people talking was to overhear the hissing of serpents, he commented, "and to listen to German was to overhear _k's_ like the scrunching of egg-shells." He had two or three pithy sayings, which came straight home to me and became part of my mental furniture, so much so that I have at times given myself the credit of innovating them. One of these was that the defect of most people--not critics only, but others, _la foule_ in general--is "to impute themselves." I felt this to be at the root of the matter, a profound if humorous extension of the wise man's saw, [Greek: pantôn metron anthrôpos]. He said it often and most seriously. The other I might call the "_elogium vatis_" _par excellence_. It took the form of a caution against "mixing up things that differ," and to this also among his _sententiae_ I assented _quod latius patet_. I think I once used it incidentally to him, and he at once pulled me up. "That's mine." He certainly did so when I asked him his own riddle: "My first's a kind of butter, my second's a kind of liquor, and my whole's a kind of charger." Answer: "Ramrod." And he exclaimed, "That's my riddle."[52] Then there is the old story how the Englishman, wishing to direct the _garçon_ not to let the fire go out, gently growled, "Ne permettez pas sortir le fou," whereupon the _garçon_ locks up the other Englishman. I think it was brought up by Frank Lushington as now told against the Poet, and Tennyson gave us the correct version; originally he had invented it himself of Edmund Lushington when they were in Paris, chaffing his friend's French. But it was a case of biter bit. In the vulgar version I find the Poet with his long hair is made to play the part of the _fou_. Thus far these trifles. I come to _memorabilia_ more precious to me and of larger import. I will head the section

_Tennyson and the Classics, English and Other_,

and it is what you asked for. And let me make two preliminary remarks. In reference to the defect of self-imputation above mentioned, I wish to point out to any, consciously or unconsciously, critically minded person, that the striking thing to me was the wide sympathy, the catholicity of the Poet's mind, his width of view. Thus he--I will not use the word "displayed," as if it were an external habit of any sort--but simply and naturally he had ingrained in him the greatest generosity in his feeling for, in his criticism of, contemporary authors. And this applies to his appreciation of the great classical authors of the past. I do not say, of course, that he had not his favourites, as we all have, especially, perhaps, the smaller we are. For instance--and here other of his contemporaries, Clough, Jowett, etc., would have borne him out--his appreciation of [Greek: D]'s favourite poet Shelley was not so spontaneous nor, I venture to think, so profound as, let us say, his appreciation of Wordsworth (whom he also "criticized"[53]) or Victor Hugo, or, to take an opposite instance, his ready appreciation of Walt Whitman, or of Browning, or possibly of Clough. But all this is admirably discussed in your _Memoir_.[54] I only wish to add my testimony, and I take as my text a saying of his about Goethe, which I seem to recollect if I recollect rightly: "In his smaller poems, _e.g._ those in _Wilhelm Meister_, Goethe shows himself to be one of the great artists of the world. He is also a great critic, yet he always said the best he could of an author. Good critics are rarer than good authors" (cp. his own "And the critic's rarer still").[55]

And I must further premise that the samples given of quotations from the Classics are from the particular ones he chanced upon--the artist in him, perhaps, instinctively selecting--for the particular youth, and what he needed, or because they fitted on to things on which his mind was working at that date. Here, at all events, they are, or some of them. I omit continual references to Shakespeare, to Dante, to Virgil, to Homer. He was perpetually quoting Homer and Virgil, and to my mind there was nothing for grandeur of sound like his pronunciation of Latin and Greek as he recited whole passages or single lines in illustration of some point, of metre, perhaps, or thought, or feeling; for instance, the line from Homer:

[Greek: bê d' akeôn para thina polyphloisboio thalassês],

commenting on the possibility of pronouncing [Greek: oi] not in our English fashion like _oy_ in _boy_, but like the German _ö_--_o_ of "wood"--_phlösböo_--imitating the lisping whisper of the tideless Mediterranean on a soft summer day. Then how he rolled out his Virgil, giving first the thunder, then the wash of the sea in these lines:

Fluctus ut in medio coepit quum albescere ponto
Longius, ex altoque sinum trahit; utque volutus
Ad terras immane sonat per saxa, neque ipso
Monte minor procumbit; at ima exaestuat unda
Verticibus, nigramque alte subiectat arenam.

He used to say, "The Horatian alcaic is, perhaps, the stateliest metre except the Virgilian hexameter at its best."

I take my samples in chance order. I suppose I knew my Catullus fairly well before, but I am sure that, in a deeper sense, I learnt to know "the tenderest of Roman poets" for the first time that day when he read to me in that voice of his, with half-sad _Heiterkeit_, and with that refinement of pronunciation which seemed--I am sure was--the right thing absolutely, those well-known poems about his lady-love's pet sparrow (translated roughly here in case a reader should chance not to know Latin):

Passer, deliciae meae puellae,
Quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere,
Cui primum digitum dare appetenti
Et acris solet incitare morsus,
Cum desiderio meo nitenti
Carum nescio quid libet iocari.
Credo ut, cum gravis acquiescet ardor,
Tecum ludere sicut ipsa possem
Et tristis animi levare curas!

Sparrow, pet of my lady-love, with you she will play; she will hold
you in her bosom and give you her finger-tips to peck at, and tease to
quicken your sharp bite, when my shining heart's desire is in the
humour for some darling jest. Doubtless, when the fever of passion
dies away she seeks to find some little solace[56] for her pain. Oh,
if I could only play with you as she does, and so relieve the gloomy
sorrow of my soul!

And then the tear-moving sequel in the minor:

Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque,
Et quantum est hominum venustiorum.
Passer mortuus est meae puellae,
Passer, deliciae meae puellae,
Quem plus illa oculis suis amabat;
Nam mellitus erat suamque norat
Ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem,
Nec sese a gremio illius movebat,
Sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc
Ad solam dominam usque pipillabat.
Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
Illuc, unde negant redire quemquam.
At vobis male sit, malae tenebrae
Orci, quae omnia bella devoratis:
Tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis.
Vae factum male! Vae miselle passer!
Tua nunc opera meae puellae
Flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.

Mourn, all ye Goddesses of Love, and all ye Cupids mourn: mourn, all
ye sons of men that know what love is. My lady's sparrow is dead,
dead; her sparrow, my lady's pet, whom she loved more than her own
eyes, for he was honey-sweet, and knew his own mistress as well as any
girl her mother; nor would he stir from his lady's bosom, but hopping
about, now here, now there, he piped his little treble to her and her
alone. But now he goes along the darksome road, to that place whence
they say no one returns. Ah, my curse upon you! Cursed shades of
Orcus, that devour all things beautiful! So beautiful a sparrow have
ye taken from me! Alas for the ill deed done! Alas, poor little[57]
sparrow! Now, because of you my lady's dear eyes are swollen, they are
red with weeping.

The tenderness of his voice when he came to the eleventh and twelfth lines, and the measured outburst of passionate imprecation, come back almost audibly. I wish I could reproduce the pathos. But in the poem he next read to me, the tenderness of Catullus and his perfection of form reach, I think, a climax. So I think he felt, he who so revived his manner in "Frater Ave atque Vale," and his reading gave me that impression. I refer to the passionate poem:

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
Rumoresque senium severiorum
Omnes unius aestimemus assis.
Soles occidere et redire possunt:
Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda.[58]
Da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
Dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
Deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
Dein, quum millia multa fecerimus,
Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
Aut nequis malus invidere possit,
Cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Let us live, my Lesbia, live and love; and, as for the slanderous
tongues of greybeards, value them all at a farthing's worth. Suns may
set and suns may rise again, but for us, when our short day has ended,
one long night comes, a night of sleep that knows no ending. Give me a
thousand kisses, then a hundred, and then another thousand and a
second hundred, and then once more a thousand and again a hundred, on
and on. And then, when we have made up many thousands, we will
overturn the reckoning that we may not know the number, nor any
villain cast an evil eye on us, though he discover all that huge
amount of kisses.

Can't you overhear his voice? _Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus_, deep-toned and fast, like a pent-up stream in spate, bursting its barriers, till the tale is told.

Two other poems of Catullus I must mention. The first of these he had much on his mind, for he was just then in the mood for experiments on metre, and the famous poem "Boädicea" was, I think, the first of these,[59] echoing the galliambics of Catullus in the "Attis":

Super alta vectus Attis celeri rate maria.

How far his own metre corresponds to Catullus' is a question for experts like Bridges, Mayor, R. C. Trevelyan, etc., to determine, but I heard him more than once read first the Attis poem and then his "Boädicea," and I thought at the time there was an extraordinary resemblance in rhythm. He wished that the "Boädicea" were musically annotated, so that it might be read with proper quantity and pace.

The last of the Catullus poems I want to refer to he never read to me as a whole. It is the lovely Epithalamium in honour of Junia and Manlius, calling on Hymenaeus to attend and bless the marriage:

Collis o Heliconii
Cultor, Uraniae genus,
Qui rapis teneram ad virum
Virginem, o Hymenaee Hymen,
O Hymen Hymenaee!

Dweller on the mount of Helicon,
Seed of the Heavenly One,
Thou that bearest off the tender maiden to her bridegroom,
O Hymenaean Hymen,
O Hymen Hymenaean!

I do not know if he ever read it as a whole to any one. It would have been splendid to hear, but towards the end of the long poem, where the poet, like Spenser, prays, "Send us the timely fruit of this same marriage night," comes a verse he was very fond of quoting, and in particular the third line:

Torquatus volo parvulus
Matris a gremio suae
Porrigens teneras manus
Dulce rideat ad patrem
Semhiante labello.

I want a baby-boy Torquatus to stretch out his little hands from his
mother's lap, and sweetly to smile upon his father with half-opened
lips.

These, I think, were the most remarkable of the Catullus poems he showed me, though of course there were others. I come now to the kindred Greek genius, who had a special fascination for him, the poetess Sappho. He loved her Sapphics, and greatly disliked the Sapphics of Horace, "with their little tightly curled pigtails." I believe I owe it to him that I am a worshipper of that most marvellous muse of Sappho....

[EDITORIAL NOTE.--Unhappily Mr. Dakyns never completed his paper. For,
while still engaged on it, he died suddenly, June 21, 1911. A friend,
Miss F. M. Stawell, has added the following notes from recollections
of what Mr. Dakyns said or wrote to her on the subject.]

Mr. Dakyns's manuscript breaks off abruptly, but he left some headings for what he intended to write: Sappho, Goethe, Béranger, Walt Whitman, Victor Hugo, Life at Farringford, The French Tour and Clough, Clough and the Pyrenees. I think he would have quoted first from Sappho the lines beginning:

[Greek: hoion to glykymalon ereuthetai akrô ep' ysdô]

Like the sweet apple that reddens upon the topmost bough,

for he loved the passage, and the book was left open at this page.

No doubt he would have gone on to quote others that were favourites both with the Poet and with himself. Such as the heart-sick cry of love:

[Greek: dedyke men ha selanna
kai Plêiades, mesai de
nyktes, para d' erchet' hôra,
egô de mona katheudô.]

The moon has set, the Pleiades have gone;
Midnight! The hour has past, and I
Sleep here alone.

Or again:

[Greek: glukeia mater, outoi dunamai krekên ton histon,
pothô dameisa paidos bradinan di' Aphroditan.]

Dear mother mine, I cannot weave my web--
My heart is sick with longing for my dear,
Through Aphrodite fair.

And he would probably have included that longer poem of passion which has been the wonder of the world, that invocation to

Starry-throned, immortal Aphrodite.

[Greek: poikilothron, athanat Aphrodita.]

Mr. Dakyns did not tell me himself what he had learnt of Simonides from Tennyson, but Tennyson quoted the following poems to his eldest son, Hallam. The sad, comforting, beautiful chant of Danaë to her baby, afloat on the waters, was quoted in one of Mr. Dakyns's last letters to me, when his mind was full of his unfinished article. He wrote: "Isn't that lovely and tear-drawing? true and tender and sempiternal?" And then he copied out the whole song, in case I should chance not to have the text at hand, with J. A. Symonds's translation beside it:

[Greek: hote larnaki en daidalea
anemos te min pneôn kinêtheisa te limna
deimati êripen, out' adiantoisi pareiais,
amphi te Persei balle philên cheira,
eipe t'; ô tekos, oion echô ponon.
su d' aôteis, galathênô t' êtori knôsseis en aterpei
dourati chalkeogomphô,
nukti alampei kuaneô te dnophô staleis;
halman d' huperthe tean koman batheian
pariontos kumatos ouk alegeis,
oud' anemou phthongon,
porphurea keimenos en chlanidi, kalon prosôpon.

ei de toi deinon to ge deinon ên,
kai ken emôn rhêmatôn lepton hupeiches ouas.
kelomai d', heude brephos, heudetô de pontos,
heudetô d' ametron kakon;
metaibolia de tis phaneiê, Zeu pater, ek seo;
hoti de tharsaleon epos
euchomai nosphin dikas, syngnôthi moi.]

When in the carven chest
The winds that blew and waves in wild unrest
Smote her with fear, she not with cheeks unwet
Her arms of love round Perseus set,
And said: "O child, what grief is mine!
But thou dost slumber, and thy baby breast
Is sunk in rest.
Here in the cheerless, brass-bound bark,
Tossed amid starless night and pitchy dark,
Nor dost thou heed the scudding brine
Of waves that wash above thy curls so deep,
Nor the shrill winds that sweep--
Lapped in thy purple robe's embrace
Fair little face!

But if this dread were dreadful, too, to thee,
Then would'st thou lend thy listening ear to me;
Therefore I cry, Sleep, babe, and sea be still,
And slumber our unmeasured ill!
Oh, may some change of fate, sire Zeus, from Thee
Descend our woes to end!
But if this prayer, too overbold, offends
Thy justice,--yet be merciful to me.

It was natural also that the heroic poems of Simonides should have appealed to both men, and of special interest to know the delight that Tennyson took in one of these, and perhaps because of the similarity shown by his own splendid lines in the "Duke of Wellington" Ode:

He, that ever following her commands,
On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward, and prevail'd,
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is moon and sun.

[Greek: esti tis logos
tan aretan naiein dysambatois epi petrais;
hagnan de min thean chôron hagnon amphepein.
oude pantôn blepharois thnatôn esoptos,
ô mê dakethymos hidrôs
endothen molê, hikê t' es akron
andreias.]

There is a tale
That Valour dwells above the craggy peaks
Hard, hard to scale,
A goddess pure in a pure land, and none
May see her face,
Save those who by keen Toil and sweat have won
That highest place,
That goal of manhood.

And with these heroic lines go the others on the men who fell at Thermopylae:

[Greek: tôn en Thermopylais thanontôn
eukleês men ha tycha, kalos d' ho potmos,
bômos d' ho taphos, pro goôn de mnastis, ho d' oiktos epainos:
entaphion de toiouton out' eurôs
outh' ho pandamatôr amaurôsei chronos.
andrôn agathôn hode sakos oiketan eudoxian
Hellados heileto: martyrei de Leônidas,
ho Spartas basileus, aretas megan leloipôs
kosmon aenaon te kleos.]

Of those who fell at far Thermopylae,
Fair is the fate and high the destiny:
Their tomb an altar, memory for tears
And praise for lamentation through the years.
On such a monument comes no decay,
And Time that conquers all takes not away
Their greatness: for this holy Sepulchre
Of valiant men has called to dwell with her
The glory of all Greece. Bear witness, Sparta's king,
Leonidas! thy ever-flowing spring
Of fame and the high beauty of thy deed!

There is a kindred note echoing through the popular catch in praise of the tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, one of the first bits of Greek that Tennyson made his sons learn:

[Greek: en myrtou kladi to xiphos phorêsô,
hôsper Harmodios kai Aristogeitôn,
hote ton tyrannon ktanetên
isonomous t' Athênas epoiêsatên.]

In myrtle I wreathe my sword
As they wreathed it, the brave,
Brave Harmodius, Aristogeiton,
When they slew the oppressor, the lord,
And to Athens her freedom gave.

Mr. Dakyns must have rejoiced in a spirit that could feed boys on such gallant stuff as this.

From Goethe he would have selected the noble proem to Faust:

Ihr naht Euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten,

for there was a note among his papers to that effect.

And there is one note about Béranger (written in a letter):

It was he too who introduced me to Béranger, _e.g._ "Le Roi d'Yvetot,"
and the refrain:

Toute l'aristocratie à la lanterne![60]

And how _he_ read it! Like the _Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus_ of
Catullus quoted above--with fire and fury, _tauriformis
Aufidus_-like--a refrain which, like the "Marseillaise," stirred my
republican spirit [Greek: nosphin dikas], inordinately, I mean, and in
a monstrous cruel sort of way: but what _he_ liked was the form and
force of the language, the pure art and horror of it, I imagine.

Mr. Dakyns, in the short time I knew him, often spoke to me about Tennyson, and always with stress on "the width of his humanity," and how he could appreciate works at which a smaller man might have been shocked; how, for example, he sympathized with the inmost spirit of Hugo's cry to the awful vastness of God:

Je sais que vous avez bien autre chose à faire
Que de nous plaindre tous;

saw nothing irreverent in it, as lesser critics have done; found in it rather a fortifying quality against "the grief that saps the mind." "I wish you could have heard him read it," he wrote afterwards, "in his organ-voice." Once he said to me how much he had wanted Tennyson to write the Ode on the Stars which was always floating before his mind: "He could have done it, for he had the sense of vastness. And it would have been a far finer work than the 'Idylls of the King.'"

Tennyson also, he told me, was the first man to tell him about Walt Whitman, and the first passage he showed him was one of the most daring Whitman ever wrote. On his side Whitman had a deep feeling for Tennyson and used to write of him affectionately as "the Boss," a touch that pleased Mr. Dakyns greatly, for he admired and loved Walt. He gave me a vivid impression of Tennyson's large-heartedness in all kinds of ways: for instance, his own opinions were always intensely democratic, and the Tennysons sympathized rather with the old Whig and Unionist policy, but he said it never made any difference or any jar between them. "I remember his coming into my little study at the top of the house and finding me absorbed in Shelley, and asking me what I was reading, and I was struck at the time by the quiet satisfied way in which he took my answer, no cavil or criticism, though I knew he did not feel about Shelley as I did.... I don't know how to give in writing the true impression of his dear genial nature. It often came out in what might seem like roughnesses when they were written down. He was very fond of Clough: and Clough at that time was very taciturn--he was ill really, near his death--and I remember once at a discussion on metre Clough would not say one word, and at last Tennyson turned to him with affectionate impatience, quoting Shakespeare in his deep, kindly voice, 'Well, goodman Dull, what do _you_ say?' How can I put that down? I can't give the sweet humorous tone that made the charm of it. And then people called him 'gruff.' His 'gruffness' only gripped one closer."

Another time he told me with keen enjoyment of Tennyson's discovering a likeness to him in some drawing on the cover of the old _Cornhill_--I think it was the figure of a lad ploughing--pointing to it like a child and saying, "Little Dakyns." He would speak with delight of Tennyson's humour, far deeper and wilder, he said, than most people would have guessed, Rabelaisian even in the noble sense of the word, and always fresh and pure.

"I remember an instance of my own audacity," he said, "at which I almost shudder now. We were riding into a French town, it was the evening of a fête, and the whole population seemed to be capering about with the most preposterous antics. It struck a jarring note, and the Poet said to me, 'I can't understand them, it's enough to make one weep.' Somehow I couldn't help answering--but can you imagine the audacity? I assure you I trembled myself as I did so--'Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.' And he took it, he took it! He did indeed!"

The memories of Clough also were very dear to Mr. Dakyns, and he said he could never help regretting that he had not heard him read his last long work, "In Mari Magno," to the Poet. "Tennyson said to me afterwards, 'Clough's Muse has lost none of her power,' and I couldn't help feeling a little hurt that I had not been asked to hear the reading: perhaps it was vanity on my part."

Clough always came down to see them bathe. He was very fond of bathing himself, but could not take part in it then on account of his health. "I never feel the water go down my back now," Mr. Dakyns said, "without thinking of Clough."

But the sweetest of all the memories was, I think, the memory of the valley at Cauteretz, sacred to Tennyson because of Arthur Hallam. I heard Mr. Dakyns speak of that the first time he was at our house. My mother chanced to ask him what he did after taking his degree, and he said, "I was with the Tennysons as tutor to their boys, and we went to the Pyrenees." The name and something in his tone made me start. "Oh," I said, "were you with them at Cauteretz?" He turned to me with his smile, "Yes, I was, and if I had not already a family motto of which I am very proud, I should take for my legend 'Dakyns isn't a fool'" (the last phrase in a gruffly tender voice). And then he told us: "There was a fairly large party of us, the Tennysons, Clough, and myself, some walking and some driving. Tennyson walked, and I being the young man of the company, was the great man's walking-stick. When we came to the valley--I knew it was a sacred place--I dropped behind to let him go through it alone. Clough told me afterwards I had done well. He had noticed it, and the Poet said--and it was quite enough--'Dakyns isn't a fool!'"

It was that evening that Tennyson wrote "All along the Valley."

RECOLLECTIONS OF TENNYSON

By the Rev. H. MONTAGU BUTLER, D.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

You have asked me to put on paper some recollections of the many happy visits which it was my good fortune to pay to Farringford and Aldworth between 1860 and 1890. I wish that I could respond to this kind request more worthily; but the truth is, that, though I have always counted those visits among the happiest events of my life, and though my memory of the general impression left upon me on each occasion is perfectly clear, it is not clear, but on the contrary most confused and hazy, as to any particular incidents.

Speaking first generally in the way of preface, I may say that it would be difficult to exaggerate the hero-worship with which I regarded the great Poet, ever since I was a boy. Before I went up to Trinity in 1851, he had been the delight of my friends and myself at Harrow. And further, through members of the Rawnsley family, I had heard much of his early days when the Tennysons lived at Somersby.

During my life at Trinity, from 1851 to 1855, and then, with long intervals of absence, till the end of 1859, Coleridge and Wordsworth and Tennyson, but especially Tennyson, were the three poets of the nineteenth century who mainly commanded the reverence and stirred the enthusiasm of the College friends with whom I lived. Robert Browning became a power among them almost immediately after, but by that time I had gone back to Harrow. Matthew Arnold and Clough and Kingsley also attracted us greatly in their several ways, and of course Shelley and Keats, but Tennyson was beyond a doubt our chief luminary. "In Memoriam" in particular, followed by "Maud" and the first four "Idylls of the King," was constantly on our lips, and, I may truly say, in our hearts, in those happy hours.

It was with these feelings, then, and these prepossessions that I was prepared to make the acquaintance of the great Poet, should such an honour ever be granted me. It came first, to the best of my recollection, when my late brother-in-law, Francis Galton, and I were taking one of our delightful walking trips or tramps in the Easter holidays. Galton used to plan everything--district, hours, stopping-places, length of each day's march. One Easter--I forget which, but it must have been about 1859--was devoted to the New Forest. From there we crossed over to the Isle of Wight; and after visiting Shanklin and Bonchurch, we walked round to Freshwater. To leave Freshwater without paying our homage to the Poet at Farringford was impossible. Whether we had any definite introduction to him, I cannot now remember, but we had reason to think that we should be kindly received. My brother Arthur had lately been paying more than one visit to that part of the Island, and had keenly enjoyed several long walks with him. His report of these was not lost upon me.

Galton had known intimately some of Tennyson's friends, such as Sumner Maine, W. G. Clark, Franklin Lushington, and specially "Harry" Hallam, younger brother of Arthur. He was, I think, as full of hero-worship for the Poet as I was myself. The fame which he has since won in connexion with Science may make it difficult, even for his later friends, to understand the passion--I can use no weaker word--which he then cherished for some branches of imaginative literature, in particular for Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, and for at least three of Kingsley's novels, _Alton Locke_, _Yeast_, and _Westward Ho!_ These we used in the course of our Easter rambles to read out in the open air after an _al-fresco_ lunch.

Tennyson's works were all very familiar to Galton. He had known them at Cambridge as each came out, and had discussed them eagerly with admiring friends, some of them first-rate critics. He delighted not only in the subtlety and elevation and freedom of the thoughts, but also in the beauty and perfection and melody of the expression.

We went, as I have said, to call on the Poet. We went together with rather beating hearts. He received us cordially as Trinity men, but unfortunately I can remember no detail of any kind. I am not sure whether we were even introduced to Mrs. Tennyson. All I remember is that we left the house happy and exhilarated.

But my real acquaintance with the Tennyson family dates from the end of 1861 and the early days of 1862. My first marriage had been on December 19, 1861, and a few days afterwards we came to Freshwater, and stayed at the hotel close to the sea, where Dr. and Mrs. Vaughan had sometimes stayed during his Harrow Mastership. It was then that we first met the Granville Bradleys, destined to be our dear friends for life, and it was in their company that we soon found ourselves most kindly welcomed guests at Farringford.

The two first incidents that I remember were the Poet showing us the proof of his "Dedication of the Idylls," and, at our request, reading out to us "Enoch Arden." The "Dedication" must have been composed almost immediately after the death of the Prince Consort on December 14. He seemed himself pleased with it. I thought at the time, and I have felt ever since, that these lines rank high, not only among his other tributes of the same kind, but in the literature of epitaphs generally. We felt it a proud privilege to be allowed to stand at his side as he looked over the proof just arrived by the post, and it led us of course to talk sympathetically of the late Prince and the poor widowed Queen.

Very soon after, the Bradleys and we dined at Farringford. The dinner hour was, I think, as early as six, and then, after he had retreated to his _sanctum_ for a smoke, he would come down to the drawing-room, and read aloud to his guests. On this occasion he read to us "Enoch Arden," then only in manuscript. I had before heard much of his peculiar manner of reading, with its deep and often monotonous tones, varied with a sudden lift of the voice as if into the air, at the end of a sentence or a clause. It was, as always, a reading open to criticism on the score of lack of variety, but my dear bride and I were in no mood to criticize. The spell was upon us. Every note of his magnificent voice spoke of majesty or tenderness or awe. It was, in plain words, a prodigious treat to have heard him. We walked back through the winter darkness to our hotel, conscious of having enjoyed a unique privilege.

During this vacation I had, as often in after years, not a few walks with him on the downs, leaving the Beacon on the left and going on to the Needles. It was a walk of about two hours. It is here that my memory so sadly fails me as to his talk. In tone it was friendly, manly, and perfectly simple, without a touch of condescension. He seemed quite unconscious that he was a great man, one of the first Englishmen of his time, talking to one young and utterly obscure. Almost any subject interested him, grave or gay. He would often talk of metres, Greek and Latin; of attempts to translate Homer; of the weak points in the English hexameter; or again of more serious topics, on which he had thought much and felt strongly, such as the life after death, the so-called "Eternity of Future Punishment," the unreality of the world as known to the senses, the grander Human Race, the "crowning race," still to be born.

Occasionally, not very often in these days, he would speak of his own poems. Once, I remember, a few days after an examination of the sixth form at Harrow, I told him that we had set for Greek Iambics the fine passage in "Elaine," where Lancelot says to Lavaine:

... in me there dwells
No greatness, save it be some far-off touch
Of greatness to know well I am not great.
_There_ is the man,

pointing to King Arthur. "Yes," he said in substance, "when I wrote that, I was thinking of Wordsworth and myself."

I noticed that he never spoke of Wordsworth without marked reverence. Obviously, with his exquisite ear for choice words and rhythm, he must have been more sensitive than most men to the prosaic, bathetic side of Wordsworth; but I never heard him say a word implying that he felt this, whereas I _have_ heard him qualify his admiration for Robert Browning's genius and his affection for his person by some allusion to the roughness of his style. This, he thought, must lead to his being less read than he deserved in years to come, and he evidently regretted it.

It was in the period, roughly speaking, between 1862 and 1880 that I saw most of him, for it was then our habit to make frequent visits to Freshwater or Alum Bay, generally at Christmas, and we were always received with the same cordial kindness. It was then that the long walks and the readings of his poetry after dinner continued as a kind of institution, and never palled. Among the poems that he read out to us were "Aylmer's Field," the "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," parts of "Maud," "Guinevere," "The Holy Grail," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," "The Revenge," "The Defence of Lucknow," "In the Valley of Cauteretz." With regard to this beautiful poem I cannot help recalling an amusing and most unexpected laugh. He had read the third and fourth lines in his most sonorous tones:

All along the valley, where thy waters flow,
I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago;

and then suddenly, changing his voice, he said gruffly, "A brute of a ----has discovered that it was thirty-one years and not thirty-two. Two-and-thirty is better than one-and-thirty years ago, isn't it? But perhaps I ought to alter it."

It was at this time that we used often to meet Mr. Jowett and also the Poet's great friend and admirer, the gifted Mrs. Cameron and her dignified and gray-bearded husband, who looked like a grand Oriental Chief.

One trifling incident occurs to me as I write, the Poet's remarkable skill at battledore. One duel with him in particular comes back to my mind, in which I found it hard to hold my own. He was a very hard hitter. He did not care merely to "keep up" long scores. He liked each bout to be a trial of strength, and to aim the shuttlecock where it would be difficult for his opponent to deal with it. In spite of his being short-sighted he played a first-rate game. With the exception of my brother Arthur, I never came upon so formidable an antagonist.

But I must leave these earlier years, of which I cannot find any written record, and pass on to the end of 1886, when, nearly four years after the death of my dear wife and a year and a half after my leaving Harrow, I was, to my great surprise, appointed Master of Trinity.

On December 3 I was installed, and on December 13 I was invited to Farringford, with the prospect of returning on the 16th to Davos Platz, where I had left my invalid daughter. Of this short visit I find I have made a few notes. The Poet was as cordial as ever. After dinner he took me to his _sanctum_, and read me his new Jubilee Ode in Catullian metre, and then "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After." Next morning there came a letter from Dr. W. H. Thompson's executor containing an early poem of Tennyson's of 1826, and a Sonnet, once famous, complaining of defects in the College system of his day:

Therefore your Halls, your ancient Colleges,
Your portals statued with old kings and queens,
Your gardens, myriad-volumed libraries,
Wax-lighted chapels, and rich carven screens,
Your doctors, and your proctors, and your deans,
Shall not avail you, when the Day-beam sports
New-risen o'er awaken'd Albion. No!
Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow
Melodious thunders thro' your vacant courts
At noon and eve, because your manner sorts
Not with this age wherefrom ye stand apart,
Because the lips of little children preach
Against you, you that do profess to teach
And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart.

About eleven o'clock the Poet took me out alone. We went first to Freshwater Gate, where he said the "maddened scream of the sea" in "Maud" had been first suggested to him. He talked of our late friend, Philip Stanhope Worsley, the translator of the _Odyssey_ and half of the _Iliad_, who was living there a good many years ago, and whom I had met at his table. He admired him much. He talked also, but I forget to what effect, of "The Holy Grail" and the old Arthur myth, but before this we talked of the Cambridge Sonnet just mentioned. "There was no _love_," he said, "in the system." I understood him to mean that the dons, as a rule, were out of sympathy with the young men. He spoke also of the bullying he had undergone at his first school; how, when he was a new boy of only seven and a half, he was sitting on the school steps crying and homesick. Up came a big fellow, between seventeen and eighteen, and asked him roughly who he was and what he was crying for, and then gave him a kick in the wind! This experience had evidently rankled in his mind for more than seventy years. Again, in April 1890, he told me the same story.

But to return to our morning walk of December 14, 1886. Something led me to speak of my favourite lines:

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Spedding, it seems, and others had wanted him to alter the "one _good_ custom." "I was thinking" he said, "of knighthood." He went on to speak of his "Experiments in Quantity," and in particular of the Alcaic Ode to Milton, beginning:

O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies.

"I thought _that_," he said, "a bit of a _tour de force_," and surely he was right there. He tilted a little at C. S. Calverley for demurring to

God-gifted organ-voice of England.

"I didn't mean it to be like your

'September, October, November';

I was imitating, not Horace, but the original Greek Alcaic, though Horace's is perhaps the finest metre." The two Latin metres which I have more than once heard him admire were the Hexameter and the Alcaic.

I find that in my Journal I wrote as regards this walk: "I wish I could remember more. He was wholly _facilis_, and I never felt less afraid of him or more reverent." Perhaps I should add that during the walk he told me an extraordinary number of ghost stories--a man appearing to several people, and then vanishing before their eyes.

After dinner that evening we went to his _sanctum_ to hear him read the last Act of the "Promise of May." "Well, isn't that tragic?" he naïvely asked at one point, I think where Eva falls down dead.

Next morning, I had to leave quite early for London. He just appeared at the top of the stairs, and offered to come down to say good-bye, but I would not let him. "I can remember little more of this delightful visit," so I wrote at the time. "He was full, as usual, of the public lies, and the necessity of England being strong at sea."

I did not see him again till after my second marriage, which took place on August 9, 1888. We paid a flying visit to Lambert's Hotel, Freshwater, in April 1889. Of this I have made only the scantiest record. Something led us to speak of the famous line in the chorus of the _Agamemnon_:

[Greek: ommatôn en achêniais.]

"So modern," he remarked. He also spoke of the pathos of Euripides, and of the grandeur of the "Passing of Oedipus" in the _Oedipus Coloneus_, and _Theseus_

[Greek: cheir' antechonta kratos.]

He referred again to lack of sympathy in his time between dons and undergraduates. This seemed to be a memory often present to his mind.

Our next visit was in March 1890, when, with my wife's sister, we stayed at Lambert's Hotel. On Friday, March 28, we went to tea at Farringford, and found him in his little sun-trap of a summer-house, the evening sun playing full upon us, and bringing into perfect beauty the green lawn, the spreading trees, and the clumps of daffodils. He began by speaking of himself as depressed, but soon smiled away all such symptoms, and made us laugh with a story of the Duke of Wellington, when some prosy personage addressed him with a flattering compliment. He always seemed to enjoy anecdotes of the Great Duke. He was wearing a red cap which, in the sunlight, became him well; but he said playfully that Lady Tennyson disliked it as too suggestive of a "bonnet rouge." Something, I forget what, led to a reference to the well-known verse:

Birds in the high Hall-garden
When twilight was falling,
Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,
They were crying and calling.

He once asked a rather gushing lady what sort of birds she supposed these to be. "Nightingales," was the rather sentimental answer. "Who ever heard a nightingale say 'Maud'?" was the somewhat stern reply. "They were rooks of course."

My wife mentioned that she and her sister had been reading the "Idylls" of late. "Do you mean _my_ Idylls," he said; "I am glad you don't call them Idylls." We soon got talking of his recently published "Crossing the Bar." When asked what was the precise grammatical reference in the third line of the verse:

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
_When that which drew from out the boundless deep_
Turns again home,

he answered rather emphatically, "I meant _both_ human life[61] _and_ the water." He went on, "They say I write so slowly. Well, that poem came to me in five minutes. Anyhow, under ten minutes." Afterwards, when I had some quiet talk with Lady Tennyson, she confirmed what he had implied as to the rapidity with which he usually composed.

At this point I shall do well to insert extracts from my dear wife's journal, describing a few incidents in what proved our last visit to Farringford. It was at the end of January 1892, when the Poet, born on August 6,[62] 1809, was well on in his eighty-third year. She writes as follows:

VISIT TO FARRINGFORD, JANUARY 1892

By Mrs. MONTAGU BUTLER

On January 26 Montagu and I left our two small boys at Eton Villa,
Shanklin, to spend the night at Lambert's Hotel, Freshwater. After
leaving our traps at the hotel we walked up to Farringford in time for
two o'clock lunch. I sat next the Poet at table, and had some talk
with him. He spoke of the metres of Horace, and said that he always
thought his Sapphics uninteresting and monotonous. "What a relief it
is," he said, "when he _does_ allow himself some irregularity, for
instance:

Laurea donandus Apollinari."

On the other hand, he admired his Alcaics immensely. The discovery for
which he always hoped the most was of some further writings of Sappho
herself. He considered the metre beautiful under her treatment.

Then we spoke of Schliemann, of whom I had just been reading in
Schuchardt's book, and he said he had no faith in him. "How could a
great city have been built on a little ridge like that (meaning
Hissarlik)? Where would have been the room for Priam's fifty sons and
fifty daughters?"

He also thought the supposed identifications of topography absurd, and
preferred to believe that Homer's descriptions were entirely
imaginary. When I said that I thought that a disappointing view, he
called me "a wretched localizer." "They try to localize me too," he
said. "There is one man wants to make out that I describe nothing I
have not seen." Also, with some irritation, of other accounts of
himself: "Full of lies, and ---- made me tell a big one at the end."

Next day we walked up at about 12.20 to accompany him in his morning
walk. Montagu and he were in front, Hallam Tennyson and I behind.
Montagu tells me how he was indignant with Z. for charging him with
general plagiarism, in particular about Lactantius and other classics,
"of whom," he said, "I haven't read a word." Also, of taking from
Sophocles, "whom I never read since I was a young man"; and of owing
his "moanings of the sea" to Horace's _gementis litora Bospori_. Some
one charged him with having stolen the "In Memoriam" metre from some
very old poet of whom he had never heard. He said, in answer to
Montagu's question, that the metres of both "Maurice" and "The Daisy"
were original. He had never written in the metre of Gray's _Elegy_,
except epitaphs in Westminster Abbey. He admired the metre much, and
thought the poem immortal[63].

Hartley Coleridge, he said, spoke of Pindar as the "Newmarket Poet."
He thought the loss of his Dithyrambs most serious, judging from the
remaining fragment. He had from early boyhood been familiar with the
fact that Wolsey and Cromwell in _Henry VIII._ were by Fletcher, but
he felt absolutely certain that the description of the Field of the
Cloth of Gold was by Shakespeare's own hand. He quoted it, as well as
several lines from Wolsey. When I said how glad I was he had written
about the Duke of Clarence, he said, "Yes, but I wouldn't write an
Installation Ode for the Chancellor."

So far Montagu reported. After this we others came up, and the old
Poet and I walked home together.

We spoke a little of our projected tour to Greece. He had never been
there, but would have greatly liked to go--in a private yacht--"but
they tell me an old man is safest at home, and I dare say it is true;
and I couldn't stand the vermin!" I told him I was hoping to study
classical architecture a little before going out, and he said that he
thought, after all, Gothic architecture was finer than classic. "It is
like blank verse," he said; "it will suit the humblest cottage and the
grandest cathedral. It has more mystery than the classic." He thought
many of our cathedrals spoiled by their vile glass. He had been
disappointed, in his late visit to Cambridge, to notice that the
windows in King's seemed to be losing their brilliancy and to look
dark.

After we had been walking a few minutes in silence, he said to me, "Do
you see what the beauty is in the line,

That all the Thrones are clouded by your loss?"--

quoting from his still unpublished poem on the young Prince. I said I
thought it very beautiful; but he asked if I saw why he had used the
word _clouded_ instead of _darkened_ or another. "It makes you think
of a great mountain," he explained. Then he spoke of the great
richness of the English language due to its double origin, the Norman
and Saxon words. How hard it would be for a foreigner to feel the
difference in the line

An _infant_ crying for the light,

had the word _baby_ been substituted, which would at once have made it
ridiculous. He told me that his lines "came to" him; he did not make
them up, but that, when they had come, he wrote them down, and looked
into them to see what they were like. This was very interesting,
especially as he had told Montagu, at Easter, 1890, that he had
composed "Crossing the Bar" in less than ten minutes.

Then he said again, what I have heard him say before, that though a
poet is _born_, he will not be much of a poet if he is not _made_ too.
Then he asked me if I was fond of Pindar. I am very glad that he
admires him greatly. He could not believe Paley's theory that Pindar
is earlier than Homer. I vented my dislike of Paley's horribly prosaic
translations in his notes on Aeschylus, and he said _he_ had always
used Blomfield, he found his Glossary such a help.

We were now indoors, and in a few minutes went in to luncheon. I was
again seated next him, and we had some more talk. He got upon the
subject of College life, and told me anecdotes of himself and his
friends, one very amusing one about Tom Taylor. During some vacation
Tom Taylor's rooms were lent by the College authorities to a farmer, a
member of an Agricultural Society which they were entertaining. Taylor
knew this perfectly well; but in the middle of the night suddenly
entered the room, in a long traveller's cloak and with a lantern in
his hand, "Pray, what are you doing in my room, sir, and in my bed?"
feigning great surprise and indignation. The poor old farmer tried to
explain that he was honoured by being the guest of the College, but
Taylor refused to be pacified; when suddenly, in the midst of their
altercation, enter Charles Spring Rice, brother of Stephen,
personating the Senior Dean, who forthwith laid forcible hands on Tom
Taylor. Thereupon ensued a regular scuffle, in which they both tumbled
on to the bed, and Tom Taylor got so much the worst of it that the
kindly agriculturist began to intercede, "Oh, please, Mr. Dean, don't
be too hard on the young man!"

Tennyson himself had been proctorized once or twice. Once, during the
first few days of his College life, he came out to receive a parcel by
a midnight mail. "Pray, sir, what are you doing at this time of
night?" said the Proctor. "And pray, sir, what business of yours is it
to ask me?" replied the Freshman, who in his innocence knew nothing
about the Proctor. He was told to call upon him next day, but then
explained his ignorance, and was let off.

On one occasion a throng of University men outside the Senate House
had been yelling against Whewell. Tennyson was standing by the door of
Macmillan's shop, and raised a counter-cry _for_ Whewell. He was,
however, seen standing, and was sent for to Whewell. "I was surprised,
sir, to see _you_ among that shouting mob the other day." "I was
shouting _for_ you," was the reply. Whewell was greatly pleased, and
grunted his approbation.

Another funny story. A wine-party was going on in Arthur Hallam's
rooms in the New Court, when enter angrily the Senior Dean, "Tommy
Thorp." "What is the meaning, Mr. Hallam, of all this noise?" "I am
very sorry, sir," said Hallam, "we had no idea we were making a
noise." "Well, gentlemen, if you'll all come down into the Court,
you'll _hear_ what a noise you're making." "Perhaps," admits Tennyson,
"I may have put in the _all_."

So ends my wife's short journal, and it only remains for me to sum up very briefly the impressions left upon me, after a lapse of fifty, forty, thirty, twenty years, by these visits to Farringford which once made so large a part of my interest and my happiness.

Little as I am able to put these impressions into words, I can say with truth that no personality with which I have ever come in close touch, either seemed to me at the time, or has seemed in later recollection, to cover so large, so rich, and so diverse a field for veneration, wonder, and regard.

Tennyson was, and is, to me the most remarkable man that I have ever met. Often when I was with him, whether in long walks or in his study, and when I came to think of him silently afterwards, I used to recall his own lines on Wellington:

Our greatest yet with least pretence...,
Rich in saving common-sense,
_And, as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime_.