Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  And the sound of a voice that is still!

  Break, break, break,

  At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

  But the tender grace of a day that is dead

  Will never come back to me.

  Out of these few simple words, deep and melancholy, and sounding as the sea, as out of a well of the living waters of love, flows forth all “In Memoriam,” as a stream flows out of its spring-all is here. “I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,”—”the touch of the vanished hand — the sound of the voice that is still,” — the body and soul of his friend. Rising as it were out of the midst of the gloom of the valley of the shadow of death:

  The mountain infant to the sun comes forth

  Like human life from darkness;

  and how its waters flow on! carrying life, beauty, magnificence, — shadows and happy lights, depths of blackness, depths clear as the very body of heaven. How it deepens as it goes, involving larger interests, wider views, “thoughts that wander through eternity,” greater affections, but still retaining its pure living waters, its unforgotten burden of love and sorrow. How it visits every region! “The long unlovely street,” pleasant villages and farms, “the placid ocean-plains,” waste howling wildernesses, grim woods, nemorumque noctem, informed with spiritual fears, where may be seen, if shapes they may be called:

  Fear and trembling Hope,

  Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,

  And Time the Shadow;

  now within hearing of the Minster clock, now of the College bells, and the vague hum of the mighty city. And overhead through all its course the heaven with its clouds, its sun, moon, and stars; but always, and in all places, declaring its source; and even when laying its burden of manifold and faithful affection at the feet of the Almighty Father, still remembering whence it came:

  That friend of mine who lives in God,

  That God, which ever lives and loves,

  One God, one law, one element,

  And one far-off divine event,

  To which the whole creation moves.

  It is to that chancel, and to the day, 3rd January 1834, that he refers in Poem XVIII. of “In Memoriam”:

  ‘Tis well; ‘tis something; we may stand

  Where he in English earth is laid,

  And from his ashes may be made

  The violet of his native land.

  ‘Tis little; but it looks in truth

  As if the quiet bones were blest

  Among familiar names to rest

  And in the places of his youth.

  And again in XIX.:

  The Danube to the Severn gave

  The darken’d heart that beat no more;

  They laid him by the pleasant shore,

  And in the hearing of the wave.

  There twice a day the Severn fills;

  The salt sea-water passes by,

  And hushes half the babbling Wye,

  And makes a silence in the hills.

  Here, too, it is, LXVII.:

  When on my bed the moonlight falls,

  I know that in thy place of rest

  By that broad water of the west,

  There comes a glory on the walls:

  Thy marble bright in dark appears,

  As slowly steals a silver flame

  Along the letters of thy name,

  And o’er the number of thy years.

  This young man, whose memory his friend has consecrated in the hearts of all who can be touched by such love and beauty, was in nowise unworthy of all this. It is not for us to say, for it was not given to us the sad privilege to know, all that a father’s heart buried with his son in that grave, all “the hopes of unaccomplished years”; nor can we feel in its fulness all that is meant by

  such

  A friendship as had master’d Time;

  Which masters Time indeed, and is

  Eternal, separate from fears:

  The all-assuming months and years

  Can take no part away from this.

  But this we may say, we know nothing of in all literature to compare with the volume from which these lines are taken, since David lamented with this lamentation: “The beauty of Israel is slain. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither rain upon you. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me, thy love for me was wonderful.” We cannot, as some have done, compare it with Shakespeare’s sonnets, or with “Lycidas.” In spite of the amazing genius and tenderness, the never-wearying, all-involving reiteration of passionate attachment, the idolatry of admiring love, the rapturous devotedness, displayed in these sonnets, we cannot but agree with Mr. Hallam in thinking “that there is a tendency now, especially among young men of poetical tempers, to exaggerate the beauties of these remarkable productions”; and though we would hardly say with him, “that it is impossible not to wish that Shakespeare had never written them,” giving us, as they do, and as perhaps nothing else could do, such proof of a power of loving, of an amount of attendrissement, which is not less wonderful than the bodying forth of that myriad-mind which gave us Hamlet, and Lear, Cordelia, and Puck, and all the rest, and indeed explaining to us how he could give us all these; — while we hardly go so far, we agree with his other wise words:—”There is a weakness and folly in all misplaced and excessive affection”; which in Shakespeare’s case is the more distressing, when we consider that “Mr. W. H., the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets,” was, in all likelihood, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a man of noble and gallant character, but always of licentious life.

  As for “Lycidas,” we must confess that the poetry — and we all know how consummate it is — and not the affection, seems uppermost in Milton’s mind, as it is in ours. The other element, though quick and true, has no glory through reason of the excellency of that which invests it. But there is no such drawback in “In Memoriam.” The purity, the temperate but fervent goodness, the firmness and depth of nature, the impassioned logic, the large, sensitive, and liberal heart, the reverence and godly fear, of

  That friend of mine who lives in God,

  which from these Remains we know to have dwelt in that young soul, give to “In Memoriam” the character of exactest portraiture. There is no excessive or misplaced affection here; it is all founded in fact: while everywhere and throughout it all, affection — a love that is wonderful — meets us first and leaves us last, giving form and substance and grace, and the breath of life and love, to everything that the poet’s thick-coming fancies so exquisitely frame. We can recall few poems approaching to it in this quality of sustained affection. The only English poems we can think of as of the same order, are Cowper’s lines on seeing his mother’s portrait:

  O that these lips had language!

  Burns’ “To Mary in Heaven”; and two pieces of Vaughan — one beginning

  O thou who know’st for whom I mourn;

  and the other:

  They are all gone into the world of light.

  But our object now is, not so much to illustrate Mr. Tennyson’s verses, as to introduce to our readers, what we ourselves have got so much delight, and, we trust, profit from — The Remains in Verse and Prose, of Arthur Henry Hallam, 1834; privately printed. We had for many years been searching for this volume, but in vain; a sentence quoted by Henry Taylor struck us, and our desire was quickened by reading “In Memoriam.” We do not remember when we have been more impressed than by these Remains of this young man, especially when taken along with his friend’s Memorial; and instead of trying to tell our readers what this impression is, we have preferred giving them as copious extracts as our space allows, that they may judge and enjoy for themselves. The italics are our own. We can promise them few finer, deeper, and better pleasures than reading, and detaining their minds over these two books together, filling their hearts with the fulness of their truth and tenderness. They will see how accurate as well as how affectionate and “of imagination all compact” Tennyson is, and
how worthy of all that he has said of him, that friend was. The likeness is drawn ad vivum:

  When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

  He summons up remembrance of things past.

  “The idea of his Life” has been sown a natural body, and has been raised a spiritual body, but the identity is unhurt; the countenance shines and the raiment is white and glistering, but it is the same face and form.

  The Memoir is by Mr. Hallam. We give it entire, not knowing anywhere a nobler or more touching record of a father’s love and sorrow.

  Arthur Henry Hallam was born in Bedford Place, London, on the 1st of February 1811. Very few years had elapsed before his parents observed strong indications of his future character, in a peculiar clearness of perception, a facility of acquiring knowledge, and, above all, in an undeviating sweetness of disposition, and adherence to his sense of what was right and becoming. As he advanced to another stage of childhood, it was rendered still more manifest that he would be distinguished from ordinary persons, by an increasing thoughtfulness, and a fondness for a class of books, which in general are so little intelligible to boys of his age, that they excite in them no kind of interest.

  In the summer of 1818 he spent some months with his parents in Germany and Switzerland, and became familiar with the French language, which he had already learned to read with facility. He had gone through the elements of Latin before this time; but that language having been laid aside during his tour, it was found upon his return that, a variety of new scenes having effaced it from his memory, it was necessary to begin again with the first rudiments. He was nearly eight years old at this time; and in little more than twelve months he could read Latin with tolerable facility. In this period his mind was developing itself more rapidly than before; he now felt a keen relish for dramatic poetry, and wrote several tragedies, if we may so call them, either in prose or verse, with a more precocious display of talents than the Editor remembers to have met with in any other individual. The natural pride, however, of his parents, did not blind them to the uncertainty that belongs to all premature efforts of the mind; and they so carefully avoided everything like a boastful display of blossoms which, in many cases, have withered away in barren luxuriance, that the circumstances of these compositions was hardly ever mentioned out of their own family.

  In the spring of 1820, Arthur was placed under the Rev. W. Carmalt, at Putney, where he remained nearly two years. After leaving this school, he went abroad again for some months; and, in October 1822, became the pupil of the Rev. E. C. Hawtrey, an Assistant Master of Eton College. At Eton he continued till the summer of 1827. He was now become a good though not perhaps a first-rate scholar in the Latin and Greek languages. The loss of time, relatively to this object, in travelling, but far more his increasing avidity for a different kind of knowledge, and the strong bent of his mind to subjects which exercise other faculties than such as the acquirement of languages calls into play, will sufficiently account for what might seem a comparative deficiency in classical learning. It can only, however, be reckoned one, comparatively to his other attainments, and to his remarkable facility in mastering the modern languages. The Editor has thought it not improper to print in the following pages an Eton exercise, which, as written before the age of fourteen, though not free from metrical and other errors, appears, perhaps to a partial judgment, far above the level of such compositions. It is remarkable that he should have selected the story of Ugolino, from a poet with whom, and with whose language, he was then but very slightly acquainted, but who was afterwards to become, more perhaps than any other, the master-mover of his spirit. It may be added, that great judgment and taste are perceptible in this translation, which is by no means a literal one; and in which the phraseology of Sophocles is not ill substituted, in some passages, for that of Dante.

  The Latin poetry of an Etonian is generally reckoned at that School the chief test of his literary talent. That of Arthur was good without being excellent; he never wanted depth of thought, or truth of feeling; but it is only in a few rare instances, if altogether in any, that an original mind has been known to utter itself freely and vigorously, without sacrifice of purity, in a language the capacities of which are so imperfectly understood; and in his productions there was not the thorough conformity to an ancient model which is required for perfect elegance in Latin verse. He took no great pleasure in this sort of composition; and perhaps never returned to it of his own accord.

  In the latter part of his residence at Eton, he was led away more and more by the predominant bias of his mind, from the exclusive study of ancient literature. The poets of England, especially the older dramatists, came with greater attraction over his spirit. He loved Fletcher, and some of Fletcher’s contemporaries, for their energy of language and intenseness of feeling; but it was in Shakespeare alone that he found the fulness of soul which seemed to slake the thirst of his own rapidly expanding genius for an inexhaustible fountain of thought and emotion. He knew Shakespeare thoroughly; and indeed his acquaintance with the earlier poetry of this country was very extensive. Among the modern poets, Byron was at this time, far above the rest, and almost exclusively, his favourite; a preference which, in later years, he transferred altogether to Wordsworth and Shelley.

  He became, when about fifteen years old, a member of the debating society established among the elder boys, in which he took great interest; and this served to confirm the bias of his intellect towards the moral and political philosophy of modern times. It was probably, however, of important utility in giving him that command of his own language which he possessed, as the following Essays will show, in a very superior degree, and in exercising those powers of argumentative discussion, which now displayed themselves as eminently characteristic of his mind. It was a necessary consequence that he declined still more from the usual paths of study, and abated perhaps somewhat of his regard for the writers of antiquity. It must not be understood, nevertheless, as most of those who read these pages will be aware, that he ever lost his sensibility to those ever-living effusions of genius which the ancient languages preserve. He loved Aeschylus and Sophocles (to Euripides he hardly did justice), Lucretius and Virgil; if he did not seem so much drawn towards Homer as might at first be expected, this may probably be accounted for by his increasing taste for philosophical poetry.

  In the early part of 1827, Arthur took a part in the Eton Miscellany, a periodical publication, in which some of his friends in the debating society were concerned. He wrote in this, besides a few papers in prose, a little poem on a story connected with the Lake of Killarney. It has not been thought by the Editor advisable, upon the whole, to reprint these lines; though, in his opinion, they bear very striking marks of superior powers. This was almost the first poetry that Arthur had written, except the childish tragedies above mentioned. No one was ever less inclined to the trick of versifying. Poetry with him was not an amusement, but the natural and almost necessary language of genuine emotion; and it was not till the discipline of serious reflection, and the approach of manhood, gave a reality and intenseness to such emotions, that he learned the capacities of his own genius. That he was a poet by nature, these Remains will sufficiently prove; but certainly he was far removed from being a versifier by nature; nor was he probably able to perform, what he scarce ever attempted, to write easily and elegantly on an ordinary subject. The lines on the story of Pygmalion are so far an exception, that they arose out of a momentary amusement of society; but he could not avoid, even in these, his own grave tone of poetry.

  Upon leaving Eton in the summer of 1827, he accompanied his parents to the Continent, and passed eight months in Italy. This introduction to new scenes of nature and art, and to new sources of intellectual delight, at the very period of transition from boyhood to youth, sealed no doubt the peculiar character of his mind, and taught him, too soon for his peace, to sound those depths of thought and feeling from which, after this time, all that he wrote was derived. He had, when he passed the Alps, only a modera
te acquaintance with the Italian language; but during his residence in the country he came to speak it with perfect fluency, and with a pure Sienese pronunciation. In its study he was much assisted by his friend and instructor, the Abbate Pifferi, who encouraged him to his first attempts at versification. The few sonnets, which are now printed, were, it is to be remembered, written by a foreigner, hardly seventeen years old, and after a very short stay in Italy. The Editor might not, probably, have suffered them to appear even in this private manner, upon his own judgment. But he knew that the greatest living writer of Italy, to whom they were shown some time since at Milan, by the author’s excellent friend, Mr. Richard Milnes, has expressed himself in terms of high approbation.

  The growing intimacy of Arthur with Italian poetry led him naturally to that of Dante. No poet was so congenial to the character of his own reflective mind; in none other could he so abundantly find that disdain of flowery redundance, that perpetual preference of the sensible to the ideal, that aspiration for somewhat better and less fleeting than earthly things, to which his inmost soul responded. Like all genuine worshippers of the great Florentine poet, he rated the Inferno below the two latter portions of the Divina Commedia; there was nothing even to revolt his taste, but rather much to attract it, in the scholastic theology and mystic visions of the Paradiso. Petrarch he greatly admired, though with less idolatry than Dante; and the sonnets here printed will show to all competent judges how fully he had imbibed the spirit, without servile centonism, of the best writers in that style of composition who flourished in the sixteenth century.

  But poetry was not an absorbing passion at this time in his mind. His eyes were fixed on the best pictures with silent intense delight. He had a deep and just perception of what was beautiful in this art, at least in its higher schools; for he did not pay much regard, or perhaps quite do justice, to the masters of the seventeenth century. To technical criticism he made no sort of pretension; painting was to him but the visible language of emotion; and where it did not aim at exciting it, or employed inadequate means, his admiration would be withheld. Hence he highly prized the ancient paintings, both Italian and German, of the age which preceded the full development of art. But he was almost as enthusiastic an admirer of the Venetian, as of the Tuscan and Roman schools; considering these masters as reaching the same end by the different agencies of form and colour. This predilection for the sensitive beauties of painting is somewhat analogous to his fondness for harmony of verse, on which he laid more stress than poets so thoughtful are apt to do. In one of the last days of his life, he lingered long among the fine Venetian pictures of the Imperial Gallery at Vienna.