CHAPTER XIV TENNYSON AND BROWNING IN the reassertion of literary freedom the Lake School and the Romantic movement had been unconscious allies. They quarrelled among themselves, as rival leaders of the host have not infrequently done, but they presented a common front against the forces of tradition and conventionalism. The conquest which they achieved became the heritage of their younger contemporaries and successors: Campbell, with a true lyric song of narrow compass; Moore, a cage-bird taught to whistle an artificial tune but remembering ever and again his native wood-notes; the hectic talent of Beddoes, the romantic feeling of Hogg, the manliness of Sir Henry Taylor, the Mendelssohnian church music of Keble-all these grew and burgeoned in the larger atmosphere which surrounded English letters during the first thirty years of the century. From among them emerged the two men of genius by whom the poetry of our mid-Victorian age is chiefly represented. Tennyson's first acknowledged volume appeared in 1830; in 1833 appeared Browning's Pauline. Tennyson is a great artist rather than a great thinker. He does not penetrate to the recesses of human nature-its energy, its revolt, its power of reconstruction: he dismisses a revolution in Paris as the red fool-fury of the Seine'; he is interested in science not because it makes fresh discoveries, but because it extends the domain of law. Of a temper essentially conservative, he has little sympathy with new movements and new beliefs: he is the poet of dignity, of temperance, of restraint, a typical English gentleman incapable of a base thought or an unjust action, but rather suspicious of that blind enthusiasm which will stake all on a single cast. Much influenced by Byron, he has not that virility of passion which Byron's pose never entirely concealed: his greatest work is usually his least passionate, his extremes of feeling strike false notes, as though touched by an unaccustomed hand-below pitch in Locksley Hall, strained above it in Maud and Stylites. He has a wonderfully accurate eye for the externals of landscape, but he does not, like Wordsworth, lay bare to our gaze its inner meaning: the scene is full of charm and colour, but we miss the essential significance which should vitalize it all. On the other hand, for sheer mastery of words he has no superior in our language except Keats. He was, we are told, slow and deliberate in composition: 'I had rather lose a thought,' he said, 'than get two s's together,' and it is one of the supreme triumphs of his art that a method so artificial should appear spontaneous. Throughout his life he was continually perfecting the command of his instrument: a comparison between the first and second versions of Oenone is not less significant than a contrast between the chime of Lilian or Oriana and the deep full melody of Maeldune or Crossing the Bar. His music is written in few keys, but in shapeliness of rhythm and curve it is never at fault. Almost every quality which can be found in Tennyson may be matched in Browning by its exact opposite. He is one of the most adventurous of poets his lyric forms are innumerable, his blank verse is a breathless impromptu, his interest in the problems of life and thought is unlimited. There is a figure in logic called the enthymeme, which omits part of the argument in the confident hope that the hearer will take it for granted. Browning's poetry is the enthymeme running riot. It never seems to occur to him that the reader may not know enough Italian history to supply the lacunae in Sordello, or enough psychology to thread the mazes of Pauline: we must be musicians to follow Abt Vogler, we must be artists to follow Old Pictures in Florence: and all the while our guide marches ahead over briars and boulders without any conception that the way may be difficult for our faltering steps. The ideas come so fast that a theory is compressed into half a line, a crisis hinted in a nickname, a whole succession of events crystallized in a single epithet. To comprehend the obscurer work of Browning needs not a commentary on the poem, but a history of the subject with which it deals. Hence he is at his best when he treats of some broad elementary fact of human nature; with the passion of Life in a Love, with the vicissitudes of fame in The Patriot, with the questionings of religious belief in Karshish, with its serene acceptance in The Guardian Angel. And through all alike, though we are interested in the form, we are mainly impressed by the content. No great poet has given less pleasure to the ear, few have given more impetus to the understanding. As we read him we see the whole nineteenth century deploy before us: its discoveries, its controversies, its ideals, its unshakable belief in human progress; and if the verse is often rugged and unmusical, we are so deeply absorbed by the thought that we forget to criticize. People are always debating,' said Goethe to Schiller, which of us is the greater poet. They would do better to give thanks that they have both of us.' We may feel the same with regard to Tennyson and Browning. They are in no way comparable: the strength of each is the weakness of the other, and it is idle to forecast with which of them posterity will be the more concerned. To our own age Tennyson stands for beauty of form and Browning for stimulus of thought: to read one is an artistic education, to study the other is to graduate in the school of life. ALFRED TENNYSON, first Baron (1809-1892), was the son of a Lincolnshire clergyman. He wrote verses from a very early age, and at eleven had already written 'hundreds and hundreds of lines in the regular Popeian metre'. In 1827 he and his brother Charles published a joint volume entitled Poems by two Brothers. In 1828 the brothers went to Cambridge, and here Alfred formed his memorable friendship with Arthur Hallam. He won a University prize for a poem on 'Timbuctoo' in 1829, and soon after published a slender volume of Poems chiefly Lyrical. In 1832 appeared another volume of Poems, which included 'The Lady of Shalott,' 'Enone,' 'The Miller's Daughter,' 'A Dream of Fair Women,' and many others. In September, 1833, Hallam died suddenly, and though In Memoriam was not published till seventeen years later, Tennyson wrote numerous fragmentary verses at the time, some of which were afterwards included in the complete work. In 1842 came another volume of Poems, including 'Locksley Hall,' 'Morte d'Arthur,' Ulysses,' 'Godiva,' and 'Break, break, break.' In 1847 came The Princess. In Memoriam appeared in 1850, and in the same year Tennyson was made Poet Laureate. Maud appeared in 1855, and Tennyson now began to work steadily at the Arthurian legends. The Idylls of the King appeared in 1859. In the meantime he had published a number of 'incidental ' poems on various occasions, including the Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, and the Charge of the Light Brigade. The volume entitled Enoch Arden appeared in 1864. Various poems in magazines followed, but there was no further volume until The Holy Grail in 1869. In 1875 came his first drama, Queen Mary, which was followed by Harold in 1876, and The Falcon in 1879. In 1880 came Ballads and Poems, including ‘The Revenge'. The Cup was produced at the Lyceum in 1881, The Promise of May at the Globe in 1882, and Becket at the Lyceum in 1884. His last volumes, Tiresias, Demeter, and The Death of Enone, were published respectively in 1885, 1889, and 1892. 6 LYRICS FROM THE PRINCESS' I As thro' the land at eve we went, We fell out, my wife and I, For when we came where lies the child There above the little grave, O there above the little grave, II SWEET and low, sweet and low, Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. 10 20 |