This love of excitement sometimes took forms which modern taste would call excessive and unwholesome. His attendance at the public execution of the Mannings in 1849, his going so often to the Morgue in Paris, his visit to America to 'the exact site where Professor Webster did that amazing murder', may seem legitimate for one who had to study crime among the other departments of life; but at times he revels in gruesome details in a way which jars on our feeling, and betrays too theatrical a love of sensation. However, no one could say that Dickens is generally morbid, in view of the sound and hearty appreciation which he had for all that is wholesome and genial in life.

In many ways the latter part of his life shows a less even tenor, a less steady development. Though he was so domestic in his tastes and devoted to his children, his relations with his wife became more and more difficult owing to incompatibility of temperament; and from 1858 they found it desirable to live apart. This no doubt added to his restlessness and the craving for excitement, which showed itself in the ardour with which he took up the idea of public readings. These readings are only less famous than his writings, so prodigious was their success. His great dramatic gifts, enlisted in the service of his own creations, made an irresistible appeal to the public, and till the day of his collapse, ten years later, their popularity showed no sign of waning. The amount of money which he earned thereby was amazing; the American tour alone gave him a net profit of L20,000; and he expected to make as much more in two seasons in England. But he paid dearly for these triumphs, being often in trouble with his voice, suffering from fits of sleeplessness, aggravating the pain in his foot, and affecting his heart. In spite, then, of the success of the readings, his faithful friends like Forster would gladly have seen him abandon a practice which could add little to his future fame, while it threatened to shorten his life. But, however arduous the task which he set himself, when the moment came Dickens could brace himself to meet the demands and satisfy the high expectations of his audience. His nerves seemed to harden, his voice to gain strength; his spirit flashed out undimmed, and he won triumph after triumph, in quiet cathedral cities, in great industrial towns, in the more fatiguing climate of America and before the huge audiences of Philadelphia and New York. He began his programme with a few chosen pieces from Pickwick and the Christmas Books, and with selected characters like Paul Dombey and Mrs. Gamp; he added Dotheboys Hall and the story of David Copperfield in brief; in his last series, against the advice of Forster, he worked up the more sensational passages from Oliver Twist. His object, he says, was 'to leave behind me the recollection of something very passionate and dramatic, done with simple means, if the act would justify the theme'. It was because the art of reading was unduly strained that Forster protested, and his judgement is confirmed by Dickens's boast (perhaps humorously exaggerated) that 'at Clifton we had a contagion of fainting, and yet the place was not hot—a dozen to twenty ladies taken out stiff and rigid at various times'. The physical effects of this fresh strain soon appeared. After a month his doctor ordered him to cease reading; and, though he resumed it after a few days' rest, in April 1869 he had a worse attack of giddiness and was obliged to abandon it permanently. The history of these readings illustrates the character of Dickens perhaps better than any other episode in his later life.

But the same restless energy is visible even in his life at Gadshill, which was his home from 1860 to 1870. The house lies on the London road a few miles west of Rochester, and can easily be seen to-day, almost unaltered, by the passer-by. It had caught his fancy in his childhood before the age of ten when he was walking with his father, and his father had promised that, if he would only work hard enough, he might one day live in it. The associations of the place with the Falstaff scenes in Henry IV had also endeared it to him; and so, when in 1855 he heard that it was for sale, he jumped at the opportunity. For some years after purchasing it he let it to tenants, but from 1860 he made it his permanent abode. It has no architectural features to charm the eye; with its many changes and additions made for comfort, its bow-windows and the plantations in the garden, it is a typical Victorian home. Here Dickens could live at ease, surrounded by his children, his dogs, his books, his souvenirs of his friends, and the Kentish scenery which he loved. To the north lay the flat marshlands of the lower Thames, to the south and west lay rolling hills crowned with woodlands, with hop gardens on the lower slopes; to the east lay the valley of the Medway with the quaint old streets of Rochester and the bustling dockyard of Chatham. All that makes the familiar beauty and richness of English landscape was here, above all the charm of associations. So many names preserved memories of his books. To Rochester the Pickwickians had driven on their first search for knowledge; to Cobham Mr. Winkle had fled, and at the 'Leather Bottle' his friends had found him; in the marshlands Joe Gargery and Pip had watched for the escaped convict; in the old gateway by the cathedral Jasper had entertained Edwin Drood on the eve of his disappearance; along that very high-road over which Dickens's windows looked the child David Copperfield had tramped in his journey from London to Dover.

Meanwhile, though his creative vein may have been less fertile than of old, his efforts for the good of his fellow men were no less continuous and sincere. His first books had aimed at killing by ridicule certain social institutions which had sunk into abuses. The pictures of parliamentary elections, of schools, of workhouses, had not only created a hearty laugh, but they had disposed the public to listen to the reformers and to realize the need for reform. As he grew older he went deeper into the evil, and he also blended his reforming purpose better with his story. The characters of Mr. Dombey and the Chuzzlewits are not mere incidents in the tale, nor are they monstrosities which call forth immediate astonishment and horror. But in each case the ingrained selfishness which spreads misery through a family is the very mainspring of the story; and the dramatic power by which Dickens makes it reveal itself in action has something Shakespearian in it. Here there is still a balance between the different elements, the human interest and the moral lesson, and as works of art they are on a higher plane than Hard Times, where the purpose is too clearly shown. Still if we wish to understand this side of Dickens's work, it is just such a book as Hard Times that we must study.

It deals with the relation of classes to one another in an industrial district, and especially with the faults of the class that rose to power with the development of manufacturing. Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the well-meaning pedant and the offensive parvenu, preach the same gospel. Political economy, as they understand it, is to rule life, and this dismal science is not concerned with human well-being and happiness, but only with the profit and loss on commercial undertakings. Hard facts then are to be the staple of education; memory and accurate calculation are to be cultivated; the imagination is to be driven out. In depicting the manner of this education Dickens rather overshoots the mark. The visit of Mr. Gradgrind to Mr. M'Choakumchild's school (when the sharp-witted Bitzer defines the horse according to the scientific handbook, while poor Cissy, who has only an affection for horses, indulges in fancies and collapses in disgrace) is too evident a caricature. But the effects of this kind of teaching are painted with a powerful hand, and we see the faculty for joy blighted almost in the cradle. And the lesson is enforced not only by the working man and his family but by Gradgrind's own daughter, who pitilessly convicts her father of having stifled every generous impulse in her and of having sacrificed her on the altar of fancied self-interest.

Side by side with the dismal Mr. Gradgrind is the poor master of the strolling circus, Mr. Sleary, with his truer philosophy of life. He can see the real need that men have for amusement and for brightness in their lives; and, though he lives under the shadow of bankruptcy, he can hold his head up and preach the gospel of happiness. This was a cause which never failed to win the enthusiastic advocacy of Dickens. He fought, as men still have to fight to-day, against those Pharisees who prescribe for the working classes how they should spend their weekly day of freedom; he supported the opening on Sunday of parks, museums, and galleries; whole-heartedly he loved the theatre and the circus, and he wished as many as possible to share those delights. In defiance of 'Mrs. Grundy' he ventured to maintain that the words 'music-hall' and 'public-house', rightly understood, should be held in honour. It is one thing to hate drunkenness and indecency; it is quite another to assume that these must be found in the poor man's place of recreation, and this roused him to anger. To him 'public-house' meant a place of fellowship, and 'music-hall' a place of song and mirth; and if some critics complain of an excess of material good-cheer in his picture of life, Dickens is certainly here in sympathy with the bulk of his fellow-countrymen.

Another cause in which Dickens was always ready to lead a crusade was the amendment of the Poor Law. This will remind us of the early days of Oliver Twist, of such a friendless outcast as Jo in Bleak House, of the struggle of Betty Higden in Our Mutual Friend and her determination never to be given up to 'the Parish'. But, even more than the famous novels, the casual writings of Dickens in his own magazines and elsewhere throw light on his activities in this cause and on the researches which he made into the working of the system. Mr. Crotch describes visits which he paid to the workhouses in Wapping and Whitechapel, quoting his comments on the 'Foul Ward' in one, on the old men's ward in the other, and on the torpor of despair which settled down on these poor wrecks of humanity. Could such a system, he asked himself, be wise which robbed men not of liberty alone but of all hope for the future, which left them no single point of interest except the statistics of their fellows who had gone before them and who had been finally liberated by death? A still more striking passage, just because Dickens here shows unusual restraint and moderation in his language, tells us of the five women whom he saw sleeping all night outside the workhouse through no fault of any official, but simply because there was no room for them inside and because society had nothing to offer, no form of 'relief' which could touch these unfortunates. Many will be familiar with passages in Ruskin, where he denounces similar tragedies due to our inhuman disregard of what is happening at our doors.

Though the most valuable part of his work was the effective appeal to the hearts of his brother men, Dickens had the practical wisdom to suggest definite remedies in some cases. He saw that the districts in the East End of London, even with a heavy poor rate, failed to supply adequate relief for their waifs and strays, while the wealthy inhabitants of the West End, having few paupers, paid on their riches a rate that was negligible, and he boldly suggested the equalization of rates. All London should jointly share the burden of maintaining those for whose welfare they were responsible and should pay shares proportioned to their wealth. This wise reform was not carried into effect till some thirty or forty years later; but the principle is now generally accepted. Though in this case, as in his famous attack on the Court of Chancery in Bleak House, Dickens failed in obtaining any immediate effect, it is unquestionable that he influenced the minds of thousands and changed the temper in which they looked at the problem of the poor. In this nothing that he wrote was more powerful than the series of Christmas Books, in which his imagination, with the power of a Rembrandt, threw on to a smaller canvas the lights and shades of London life, the grim background of mean streets, and the cheerful virtues which throw a glamour over their humble homes. His advocacy of these social causes came to be known far and wide and contributed a second element to the popularity won by his novels; long before his death Dickens stood on a pinnacle alone, loved by the vast reading public among those who toil in our towns and villages, and wherever English is read and understood. He was not only their entertainer, but their friend and brother; he had been through his days of sorrow and suffering and he had kept that vast fund of cheerfulness which overflowed into his books and gladdened the lives of so many thousands. When he died in 1870 after a year of intermittent illness, following on his breakdown over the public readings, there was naturally a widespread desire that he should be buried in Westminster Abbey, as a great Englishman and a true representative of his age. During life he had expressed his desire for a private funeral, unheralded in the press, and he had thought of two or three quiet churches in the neighbourhood of Rochester and Gadshill. These particular graveyards were found to be already closed, and the family consented to a compromise by which their father should be buried in the Abbey at an early hour when no strangers would be aware of it. After his body was laid to rest, the people were admitted to pay their homage; the universality and the sincerity of their feelings was shown in a wonderful way. Among men of letters he had reigned in the hearts of the people, as Queen Victoria reigned among our sovereigns. In the annals of her reign his name will outlive those of soldiers, of prelates, and of politicians.

The causes for which he fought have not all been won yet. Officialdom still dawdles over the work of the State, hearts are still broken by the law's delays, the path of crime still lies too easily open to the young. Vast progress has been made; a humane spirit is to be found in the working of our Government, and a truer knowledge of social problems is spreading among all classes. But the world cannot afford to relegate Charles Dickens to oblivion, and shows no desire to do so; his books are and will be a wellspring of cheerfulness, of faith in human nature, and of true Christian charity from which all will do well to drink.



ALFRED TENNYSON

1809-92

1809. Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, August 6. 1816-20. At school at Louth. 1820-7. Educated at home. 1827. Poems by Two Brothers, Charles and Alfred. 1828-31. Trinity College, Cambridge. 1830-2. Early volumes of poetry published. 1833. Death of Arthur Hallam at Vienna. 1837. High Beech, Essex. 1840. Tunbridge Wells. 1842. Collected poems, including 'Morte d'Arthur' and 'English Idyls'. 1846. Cheltenham. 1847. The Princess. 1850. In Memoriam, printed and given to friends before March; published June. Marriage, June. Poet Laureate, November. 1852. 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.' 1853. Becomes tenant—1856, owner—of Farringford, Isle of Wight. 1855. Maud. 1859. First four 'Idylls of the King' published. 1864. Enoch Arden. 1869. Second home at Aldworth, near Haslemere. 1875-84. Plays (1875 'Queen Mary', 1876 'Harold', 1884 'Becket'). 1880. Ballads and other Poems ('The Revenge', &c.). 1884. Created a Peer of the realm. 1892. October 6, death at Aldworth. October 12, funeral at Westminster Abbey.

TENNYSON

POET

The Victorians, as a whole, were a generation of fighters. They battled against Nature's forces, subduing floods and mountain barriers, pestilence and the worst extremes of heat and cold; they also went forth into the market-place and battled with their fellow men for laws, for tariffs, for empire. Their triumphs, like those of the Romans, are mostly to be seen in the practical sphere. But there were others of that day who chose the contemplative life of the recluse, and who yet, by high imaginings, contributed in no less degree to enrich the fame of their age; and among these the first name is that of Alfred Tennyson, the most representative of Victorian poets.



His early environment may be said to have marked him out for such a life. He was born in one of the remotest districts of a rural county. The village of Somersby lies in a hollow among the Lincolnshire wolds, twenty miles east of Lincoln, midway between the small towns of Spilsby, Horncastle, and Louth. There are no railways to disturb its peace; no high roads or broad rivers to bring trade to its doors. The 'cold rivulet' that rises just above the village flows down some twenty miles to lose itself in the sea near Skegness; in the valley the alders sigh and the aspens quiver, while around are rolling hills covered by long fields of corn broken by occasional spinneys. It is not a country to draw tourists for its own sake; but Tennyson knew, as few other poets know, the charm that human association lends to the simplest English landscape, and he cherished the memory of these scenes long after he had gone to live among the richer beauties of the south. From the garners of memory he drew the familiar features of this homely land showing that he had forgotten

No grey old grange, or lonely fold, Or low morass and whispering reed, Or simple stile from mead to mead, Or sheepwalk up the winding wold.[23]

[Note 23: In Memoriam, c.]

There are days when the wolds seem dreary and monotonous; but if change is wanted, a long walk or an easy drive will take us from Somersby, as it often took the Tennyson brothers, to the coast at Mablethorpe, where the long rollers of the North Sea beat upon the sandhills that guard the flat stretches of the marshland. Here the poet as a child used to lie upon the beach, his imagination conjuring up Homeric pictures of the Grecian fleet besieging Troy; and if, on his last visit before leaving Lincolnshire, he found the spell broken, he could still describe vividly what he saw with the less fanciful vision of manhood.

Grey sandbanks, and pale sunsets, dreary wind, Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea![24]

[Note 24: Lines written in 1837 and published in the Manchester Athenaeum Album, 1850.]

These wide expanses of sea, sand, and sky figure many times in his poetry and furnish a background for the more tragic scenes in the Idylls of the King.

Nor does the vicarage spoil the harmony of the scene, an old-fashioned low rambling house, to which a loftier hall adjoining, with its Gothic windows, lends a touch of distinction. The garden with one towering sycamore and the wych-elms, that threw long shadows on the lawn, opened on to the parson's field, where on summer mornings could be heard the sweep of the scythe in the dewy grass. Here Tennyson's father had been rector for some years when his fourth child Alfred was born in August 1809, the year which also saw the birth of Darwin and Gladstone. The family was a large one; there were eight sons and four daughters, the last of whom was still alive in 1916. Alfred's education was as irregular as a poet's could need to be, consisting of a few years' attendance at Louth Grammar School, where he suffered from the rod and other abuses of the past, and of a larger number spent in studying literature at home under his father's guidance. These left him a liberal amount of leisure which he devoted to reading at large and roaming the country-side. His father was a man of mental cultivation far beyond the average, well fitted to expand the mind of a boy of literary tastes and to lead him on at a pace suited to his abilities. He had suffered from disappointments which had thrown a shadow over his life, having been disinherited capriciously by his father, who was a wealthy man and a member of Parliament. The inheritance passed to the second brother, who took the name of Tennyson d'Eyncourt; and though the Rector resented the injustice of the act, he did not allow it to embitter the relations between his own children and their cousins. His character was of the stern, dominating order, and both his parishioners and his children stood in awe of him; but the gentle nature of their mother made amends. She is described by Edward FitzGerald, the poet's friend, as 'one of the most innocent and tender-hearted ladies I ever met, devoted to husband and children'. In her youth she had been a noted beauty, and in her old age was not too unworldly to remember that she had received twenty-five proposals of marriage. It was from her that the family derived their beauty of feature, while in their strength of intellect they resembled rather their father. One of Alfred's earliest literary passions was a love of Byron, and he remembered in after life how as a child he had carved on a rock the woful tidings that his hero was dead. In this period he was already writing poetry himself, though he did not publish his first volume till after he had gone up to Cambridge.

From this home life, filled with leisurely reading, rambling, and dreaming, he was sent in 1828 to join his brother Frederick at Trinity College, Cambridge, and he came into residence in February of that year. Cambridge has been called the poets' University. Here in early days came Spenser and Milton, Dryden and Gray; and—in the generation preceding Tennyson—Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron had followed in their steps. However little we can trace directly the development of the poetic gift to local influence, at least we can say that Tennyson gained greatly by the time he spent within its walls. He came up an unknown man without family connexions to help him, and without the hall-mark of any famous school upon him. Shy and retiring by nature as he was, he might easily have failed to win his way to notice. But there was something in his appearance, in his manner, and in the personality that lay behind, which never failed to impress observers, and gradually he attached to himself the most brilliant undergraduates of his time and became a leader among them. Thackeray and FitzGerald were in residence; but it was not till later that he came to know them well, and we hear more of Spedding (the editor of Bacon), of Alford and Merivale (deans of Canterbury and Ely), of Trench (Archbishop of Dublin), of Lushington, who married one of his sisters, and of Arthur Hallam, who was engaged to another sister at the time of his early death. Hallam came from Eton, where his greatest friend had been W. E. Gladstone, and he had not been long at Cambridge before he was led by kindred tastes and kindred nature into close friendship with Tennyson. In the judgement of all who knew him, a career of the highest usefulness and distinction was assured to him. His intellectual force and his high aspirations would have shone in the public service; and at least they won him thus early the affection of the noblest among his compeers, and a fame that is almost unique in English literature.

Much has been written about the society which these young men formed and which they called 'the Apostles'. The name has been thought to suggest a certain complacency and mutual admiration. But enough letters and personal recollections of their talk have been preserved to show how simple and unaffected the members were in their intercourse with one another. They had their enthusiasms, but they had also their jests. Their humour was not perhaps the boisterous fun of William Morris and Rossetti, but it was lively and buoyant enough to banish all suspicion of priggishness. Just because their enthusiasm was for the best in literature and art, Tennyson was quickly at home among them. Already he had learnt at home to love Shakespeare and Milton, Coleridge and Keats, and no effort was required, in this circle of friends, to keep his reading upon this high level. Lycidas was always a special favourite of Tennyson's, and appreciation of it seemed to him a sure 'touchstone of poetic taste'. In conversation he did not tend to declaim or monopolize the talk. He was noted rather for short sayings and for criticisms tersely expressed. He had his moods, contemplative, genial or gay; but all his utterances were marked by independence of thought, and his silence could be richer than the speech of other men. But for display he had no liking. In fact, so reluctant was he to face an audience of strangers, that when in 1829 it was his duty to recite his prize poem in the senate-house, he obtained leave for Merivale to read it on his behalf. On the other hand, he was ready enough to impart to his real friends the poems that he wrote from time to time, and he would pass pleasant hours with them reciting old ballads and reading aloud the plays of Shakespeare. His sonorous voice, his imagination, and his feeling for all the niceties of rhythm made his reading unusually impressive, as we know from the testimony of many who heard him.

The course of his education is, in fact, more truly to be found in this free companionship than in the lecture room or the examination hall. His opinion of the teaching which he received from the Dons was formed and expressed in a sonnet of 1830, though he refrained from publishing it for half a century. He addresses them as 'you that do profess to teach and teach us nothing, feeding not the heart'—and complains of their indifference to the movements of their own age and to the needs of their pupils. For, despite the ferment which was spreading in the realms of theology, of politics, and of natural science, the Dons still taught their classics in the dry pedantic manner of the past, and refused to face the problems of the nineteenth century. For Tennyson, whose mind was already capacious and deep, these problems had a constant attraction, and he had to fall back upon solitary musings and on talks with Hallam and other friends. Partly perhaps because he missed the more rigorous training of the schools, we have to wait another ten years before we see marks of his deeper thinking in his work. He was but groping and feeling his way. In the 'Poems, chiefly Lyrical' which he produced in 1830, rich images abound, play of fancy and beauty of expression; but there are few signs of the power of thought which he was to show in later volumes.

After three years thus spent, by no means unfruitfully, though it was only by his prize poem of 'Timbuctoo' that he won public honours, he was called away from Cambridge by family troubles and returned to Somersby in February 1831. His father had broken down in health, and a month later he died, suddenly and peacefully, in his arm-chair. After the rector's death an arrangement was made that the family should continue to inhabit the Rectory; and Tennyson, who was now his mother's chief help and stay, settled down to a studious life at home, varied by occasional visits to London. The habit of seclusion was already forming. He was much given to solitary walking and to spending his evening in an attic reading by himself. But this was not due to moroseness or selfishness, as we can see from his intercourse with family and friends. He would willingly give hours to reading aloud to his mother, or sit listening happily while his sisters played music. From this time indeed he seems to have taken his father's place in the home; and with Hallam and other friends he continued on the same affectionate terms. He had not Dickens's buoyant temper and love of company, nor did he indulge in the splenetic outbursts of Carlyle. He could, when it was needed, find time to fulfil the humblest duties and then return with contentment to his solitude. But his thoughts seemed naturally to lift him above the level of others, and he was most truly himself when he was alone. Apart from his eyesight, which began to trouble him at this time, he was enjoying good health, which he maintained by a steady regime of physical exercise. His strength and his good looks were alike remarkable.[25] As his friend Brookfield laughingly said, 'It was not fair that he should be Hercules as well as Apollo'.

Another volume of verse appeared in 1832; and its appearance seems to have been due rather to the urgent persuasion of his friends than to his own eagerness to appear in print. Though J. S. Mill and a few other critics wrote with good judgement and praised the book, it met with a cold reception in most places, and the Quarterly Review, regardless of its blunder over Keats, spoke of it in most contemptuous terms. All can recognize to-day how unfair this was to the merits of a volume which contained the 'Lotos-Eaters', 'Oenone', and the 'Lady of Shalott'; but the effect of the harsh verdict on the poet, always sensitive about the reception of his work, was unfortunate to a degree. For a time it seemed likely to chill his ardour and stifle his poetic gifts at the very age when they ought to be bearing fruit. He writes of himself at this time as 'moping like an owl in an ivy bush, or as that one sparrow which the Hebrew mentioneth as sitting on the house-top'; and, despite his friendship with Hallam, which was closer than ever since the latter's engagement to his sister Emily, he had thoughts of settling abroad in France or Italy, since he found, or fancied that he found, in England too unsympathetic an atmosphere.

[Note 25: The portrait of 1838 by Samuel Laurence, of which the original is at Aldworth, speaks for itself.]

Such a decision would have been disastrous. Residence abroad might suit the robust, many-sided genius of Robert Browning with his gift for interpreting the thoughts of other nations and other times; it would have been fatal to Tennyson, whose affections were rooted in his native soil, and who had a special call to speak to Englishmen of English scenes and English life.

The following year brought him a still severer shock in the loss of his beloved friend, Arthur Hallam, who was taken ill at Vienna and died there a few days later, to the deep sorrow of all who knew him. Many besides Tennyson have borne witness to his character and gifts; thanks to their tribute, and above all to the verses of In Memoriam, though his life was all too short to realize the promise of his youth, his name will be preserved. The gradual growth of Tennyson's elegy can be discerned from the letters of his friends, to whom from time to time he read some of the stanzas which he had completed. Even in the first winter after Hallam's death, he wrote a few lines in the manuscript book which he kept by him for the purpose during the next fifteen years, and which he was within an ace of losing in 1850, just when the poem was completed and ready for publication. As a statesman turns from his private sorrow to devote himself to a public cause, so the poet's instinct was to find comfort in the practice of his art. Under the stress of feelings aroused by this event and under the influence of a wider reading, his mind was maturing. We hear of a steady discipline of mental work, of hours given methodically to Italian and German, to theology and history, to chemistry, botany, and other branches of science. Above all, he pondered now, as he did later so constantly, on the mystery of death and life after death. Outwardly this seems the most uneventful period of his career; but, in their effect on his mind and work, these years were very far from being wasted. When next, in 1842, he emerges from seclusion to offer his verses to the public, he had enlarged the range of his subjects and deepened his powers of thought. We see less richness in the images, less freedom in the play of fancy, but there is a firmer grip of character, a surer handling of the problems affecting the life of man. Underground was flowing the hidden stream of In Memoriam, unknown save to the few; only in part were the fruits of this period to be seen in the two volumes containing 'English Idyls' and other new poems, along with a selection of earlier lyrics now revised and reprinted.

The distinctive quality of the book is given by the word Idyl, which was to be so closely connected with Tennyson's fame. Here he is working in a small compass, but he breaks fresh ground in describing scenes of English village life, and shows that he has used his gifts of observation to good purpose. Better than the slight sketches of character, of girls and their lovers, of farmers and their children, are the landscapes in which they are set; and many will remember the charming passages in which he describes the morning songs of birds in a garden, or the twinkling of evening lights in the still waters of a harbour. More original and more full of lyrical fervour was 'Locksley Hall', where he expresses many thoughts that were stirring the younger spirits of his day. Perhaps the most perfect workmanship, in a volume where much calls for admiration, is to be found in 'Ulysses', which the poet's friend Monckton Milnes gave to Sir Robert Peel to read, in order to convince him that Tennyson's work merited official recognition. His treatment of the hero is as far from the classical spirit as anything which William Morris wrote. He preserves little of the directness or fierce temper of the early epic. Rather does his Ulysses think and speak like some bold adventurer of the Renaissance, with the combination of ardent curiosity and reflective thought which was the mark of that age. Even so Tennyson himself, as he passed from youth to middle life, and from that to old age, was ever trying to achieve one more 'work of noble note', and yearning

To follow knowledge like a sinking star Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

But between this and the production of his next volume comes the most unhappy period in the poet's career, when his friends for a time despaired of his future and even of his life. At the marriage of his brother Charles in 1836, Tennyson had fallen in love with the bride's sister, Emily Sellwood; and in the course of the next three or four years they became informally engaged to one another. But his prospects of earning enough money to support a wife seemed so remote that in 1840 her family insisted on breaking off the engagement, and the lovers ceased to write to one another. Even the volumes of 1842, while winning high favour with cultivated readers, and stirring enthusiasm at the Universities, failed to attract the larger public and to make a success in the market. So when he sustained a further blow in the loss of his small fortune owing to an unwise investment, his health gave way and he fell into a dark mood of hypochondria. His star seemed to be sinking, just as he was winning his way to fame. Thanks to medical attention, aided by his own natural strength and the affections of his friends, he was already rallying in 1845, when Peel conferred on him the timely honour of a pension; and he was able not only to continue working at In Memoriam, but also to produce in 1847 The Princess, which gives clear evidence of renewed cheerfulness and vigour. Dealing as it does, half humorously, with the question of woman's education and her claim to a higher place in the scheme of life, it illustrates the interest which Tennyson, despite his seclusion, felt in social questions of the day. From this point of view it may be linked with Locksley Hall and Maud; but in The Princess the treatment is half humorous and the setting is more artificial. Tennyson's lyrical power is seen at its best in the magical songs which occur in the course of the story or interposed between the different scenes. They have deservedly won a place in all anthologies. His facility in the handling of blank verse is also remarkable. Lovers of Milton may regret the massive grandeur of an earlier style; but, as in every art, so in poetry, we pay for advance in technical accomplishment, in suppleness and melodious phrasing, by the loss of other qualities which are difficult to recapture.

Meanwhile In Memoriam was approaching completion; and this the most central and characteristic of his poems illustrates, more truly than a narrative of outward events, the phases through which Tennyson had been passing. Desultory though the method of its production be, and loose 'the texture of its fabric', there is a certain sequence of thought running through the cantos. We see how from the first poignancy of grief, when he can only brood passively over his friend's death, he was led to questioning the basis of his faith, shaken as it was by the claims of physical science—how from those doubts of his own, he was led to think of the universal trouble of the world—how at length by throwing himself into the hopes and aspiration of humanity he attained to victory and was able to put away his personal grief, believing that his friend's soul was still working with him in the universe for the good of all. At intervals, during the three years mirrored in the poem, we get definite notes of time. We see how the poet is affected each year as the winter and the spring come round, and how the succeeding anniversaries of Hallam's death stir the old pain in varying degree. But we must not suppose that each section was composed at the time represented in this scheme. Seventeen years went to the perfecting of the work; it is impossible to tell when each canto was first outlined and how often it was re-written; and we must be content with general notions of its development. The poet's memory was fully charged. As he could recall so vividly the Lincolnshire landscape when he was living in the south, so he could portray the emotions of the past though he had entered on a new period of life fraught with a different spirit.

Thus many elements go to make up the whole, and readers of In Memoriam can choose what suits their mood. To some, who wish to compare the problems of different ages, chief interest will attach to that section where the active mind wakes up to the conflict between science and faith. It was a difficult age for poets and believers. The preceding generation had for a time been swept far from their bearings by the tornado of the French Revolution. Some of them found an early grave while still upholding the flag; others had won back to harbour when their youth was past and ended their days in calm—if not stagnant—waters. But the advance of scientific discoveries and the scientific spirit sapped the defences of faith in more methodical fashion, and Tennyson's mind was only too open to all the evidence of natural law and the stern lessons of the struggle for life. To understand the influence of Tennyson on his age it is necessary to inquire how he reconciled religion with science; but this is too large a subject for a biographical sketch, and valuable studies have been written which deal with it more or less fully, by Stopford Brooke[26] and many others.

[Note 26: Tennyson, by Stopford Brooke (Isbister, 1894).]

To Queen Victoria, and to others who had been stricken in their home affections, the human interest outweighed all others; the sorrow of those who gave little thought to systems of philosophy or religion was instinctively comforted by the note of faith in a future life and by the haunting melodies in which it found expression.

Many were content to return again and again to those passages where the beauty of nature is depicted in stanzas of wonderful felicity. No such gift of observation had yet ministered to their delight. Readers of Mrs. Gaskell will be reminded of the old farmer in Cranford revelling in the new knowledge which he has gained of the colour of ash-buds in March. So too we are taught to look afresh at larch woods in spring and beech woods in autumn, at the cedar in the garden and the yew tree in the churchyard. We are vividly conscious of the summer's breeze which tumbles the pears in the orchard, and the winter's storm when the leafless ribs of the wood clang and gride. As the perfect stanza lingers in our memory, our eyes are opened and we are taught to observe the marvels of nature for ourselves. Here, more than anywhere else, is he the true successor of Wordsworth, the Wordsworth of the daisy, the daffodil, and the lesser celandine, though following a method of his own—at once a disciple and a master.

But other influences than those of nature were coming into his life. In 1837 the Tennyson family had been compelled to leave Somersby; and the poet, recluse though he was, showed that he could rouse himself to meet a practical emergency with good sense. He took charge of all arrangements and transplanted his mother successively to new homes in Essex and Kent. This brought him nearer to London and enlarged considerably his circle of friends. The list of men of letters who welcomed him there is a long one, from Samuel Rogers to the Rossettis, and includes poets, novelists, historians, scholars, and scientists. The most interesting, to him and to us, was Carlyle, then living at Chelsea, who had published his French Revolution in 1837, and had thereby become notable among literary men. Carlyle's judgements on the poet and his poems have often been quoted. At first he was more than contemptuous over the latter, and exhorted Tennyson to leave verse and rhyme and apply himself to prose. But familiar converse, in which both men spoke their opinions without reserve, soon enlightened 'the sage', and he delighted in his new friend. Long after, in 1879, he confessed that 'Alfred always from the beginning took a grip at the right side of every question'. He could not fail to appreciate the man when he saw him in the flesh, and it is he who has left us the most striking picture of Tennyson's appearance in middle life. In 1842 he wrote to Emerson: 'Alfred is one of the few... figures who are and remain beautiful to me;—a true human soul... one of the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of rough dusty-dark hair, bright-laughing hazel eyes, massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;—smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,—fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe!' Not only were pipes smoked at home, but walks were taken in the London streets at night, with much free converse, in which art both were masters, but of which Carlyle, no doubt, had the larger share. Tennyson was a master of the art of silence, which Carlyle could praise but never practice; but when he spoke his remarks rarely failed to strike the bell.

Another comrade worthy of special notice was FitzGerald, famous to-day as the translator of Omar Khayyam, and also as the man whom two great authors, Tennyson and Thackeray, named as their most cherished friend. He was living a hermit's life in Suffolk, dividing his day between his yacht, his garden, and his books; and writing, when he was in the humour, those gossipy letters which have placed him as a classic with Cowper and Lamb. From time to time he would come to London for a visit to a picture gallery or an evening with his friends; and for many years he never failed to write once a year for news of the poet, whose books he might criticize capriciously, but whose image was always fresh in his affectionate heart. Of his old Cambridge circle Tennyson honoured, above all others, 'his domeship' James Spedding, of the massive rounded head, of the rare judgement in literature, of the unselfish and faithful discharge of all the duties which he could take upon himself. Great as was his edition of Bacon, he was by the common consent of his friends far greater than anything which he achieved, and his memory is most worthily preserved in the letters of Tennyson, and of others who knew him. In London he was present at gatherings where Landor and Leigh Hunt represented the elder generation of poets; but he was more familiar with his contemporaries Henry Taylor and Aubrey de Vere. It is the latter who gives us an interesting account of two meetings between Wordsworth and his successor in the Laureateship.[27] The occasions when Tennyson and Browning met one another and read their poetry aloud were also cherished in the memory of those friends who were fortunate enough to be present.[28] Differing as they did in temperament and in tastes, they were rivals in generosity to one another and indeed to all their brethren who wielded the pen of the writer. To meet such choice spirits Tennyson would leave for a while his precious solitude and his books. London could not be his home, but it became a place of pleasant meetings and of friendships in which he found inspiration and help.

[Note 27: Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir, by his son, vol. i, p. 209 (Macmillan & Co.).]

[Note 28: Robert Browning, by Edward Dowden, p. 173 (J. M. Dent & Co.).]

Thus it was that Tennyson spent the quiet years of meditation and study before he achieved his full renown. This was no such sensational event as Byron's meteoric appearance in 1812; but one year, 1850, is a clear landmark in his career. This was the date of the publication of In Memoriam and of his appointment, on the death of Wordsworth, to the office of Poet Laureate. This year saw the end of his struggle with ill-fortune and the end of his long courtship. In June he was married, at Shiplake on the Thames, to Emily Sellwood. Henceforth his happiness was assured and he knew no more the restlessness and melancholy which had clouded his enjoyment of life. His course was clear, and for forty years his position was hardly questioned in all lands where the English tongue was spoken. Noble companies of worshippers might worthily swear allegiance to Thackeray and Browning; but by the voice of the people Dickens and Tennyson were enthroned supreme.

To deal with all the volumes of poetry that Tennyson published between 1850 and his death would be impossible within the limits of these pages. In some cases he reverted to themes which he had treated before and he preserved for many years the same skill in craftsmanship. But in Maud, in The Idylls of the King, and in the historical dramas, unquestionably, he broke new ground.

Partly on account of the scheme of the poem, partly for the views expressed on questions of the day, Maud provoked more hostile criticism than anything which he wrote; yet it seems to have been the poet's favourite work. The story of its composition is curious. It was suggested by a short lyric which Tennyson had printed privately in 1837 beginning with the words 'Oh, that 'twere possible after long grief'. His friend, Sir John Simeon, urged him to write a poem which would lead up to and explain it; and the poet, adopting the idea, used Maud as a vehicle for much which he was feeling in the disillusionment of middle life. The form of a monodrama was unfamiliar to the public and has difficulties of its own. Tennyson has combined action, proceeding somewhat spasmodically, with a skilful study of character, showing us the exaggerated sensibility of a nature which under the successive influence of misanthropy, hope, love, and tragic disappointment, may easily pass beyond the border-land of insanity. In the scene where love is triumphant, Tennyson touches the highest point of lyrical passion; but there are jarring notes introduced in the satirical descriptions of Maud's brother and of the rival who aspires to her hand. And in the later cantos where, after the fatal quarrel, the hero is driven to moody thoughts and dark presages of woe, there are passages which seem to be charged with the doctrine that England was being corrupted by long peace and needed the purifying discipline of war. For this the poet was taken to task by his critics; and, though it is unfair in dramatic work to attribute to an author the words of his characters, Tennyson found it difficult to clear himself of suspicion, the more so that the Crimean War inspired at this time some of his most popular martial ballads and songs.

The Idylls of the King had a different fate and achieved instant popularity. The first four were published in 1859 and within a few months 10,000 copies were sold. Tennyson's original design, formed early in life, had been to build a single epic on the Arthurian theme, which seemed to him to give scope, like Virgil's Aeneid, for patriotic treatment. 'The greatest of all poetical subjects' he called it, and it haunted his mind perpetually. But if Virgil found such a task difficult nineteen hundred years before, it was doubly difficult for Tennyson to satisfy his generation, with scientific historians raking the ash heaps of the past, and pedants demanding local colour. In shaping his poem to meet the requirements of history he was in danger of losing that breadth of treatment which is essential for epic poetry. He fell back on the device of selecting episodes, each a complete picture in itself, and grouping them round a single hero. The story is placed in the twilight between the Roman withdrawal and the conquests of the Saxons, when the lamp of history was glimmering most faintly. In these troublous times a king is miraculously sent to be a bulwark to the people against the inroads of their foes. He founds an order of Knighthood bound by vows to fight for all just and noble causes, and upholds for a time victoriously the standard of chivalry within his realm, till through the entrance of sin and treachery the spell is broken and the heathen overrun the land. After his last battle, in the far west of our island, the king passes away to the supernatural world from which he came. This last episode had been handled many years before, and the 'Morte d'Arthur', which had appeared in the volume of 1842, was incorporated into the 'Passing of Arthur' to close the series of Idylls.

With what admixture of allegory this story was set out it is hard to say—Tennyson himself could not in later years be induced to define his purpose—but it seems certain that many of the characters are intended to symbolize higher and lower qualities. According to some interpretations King Arthur stands for the power of conscience and Queen Guinevere for the heart. Galahad represents purity, Bors rough honesty, Percivale humility, and Merlin the power of the intellect, which is too easily beguiled by treachery. So the whole story is moralized by the entrance, through Guinevere and Lancelot, of sin; by the gradual fading, through the lightness of one or the treachery of another, of the brightness of chivalry; and by the final ruin which shatters the fair ideal.

But there is no need to darken counsel by questions about history or allegory, if we wish, first and last, to enjoy poetry, for its own sake. Here, as in Spenser's Faerie Queene, forth go noble knights with gentle maidens through the enchanted scenes of fairyland; for their order and its vows they are ready to dare all. Lawlessness is tamed and cruelty is punished, and no perilous quest presents itself but there is a champion ready to follow it to the end. And if severe critics tell us that they find no true gift of story-telling here, let us go for a verdict to the young. They may not be good judges of style, or safe interpreters of shades of thought, but they know when a story carries them away; and the Idylls of the King, like the Waverley Novels, have captured the heart of many a lover of literature who has not yet learnt to question his instinct or to weigh his treasures in the scales of criticism. And older readers may find themselves kindled to enthusiasm by reflective passages rich in high aspiration, or charmed by descriptions of nature as beautiful as anything which Tennyson wrote.

In the historical plays, which occupied a large part of his attention between 1874 and 1879, Tennyson undertook a yet harder task. He chose periods when national issues of high importance were at stake, such as the conflict between the Church and the Crown, between the domination of the priest and the claim of the individual to freedom of belief. He put aside all exuberance of fancy and diction as unsuited to tragedy; he handled his theme with dignity and at times with force, and attained a literary success to which Browning and other good judges bore testimony. Of Becket in particular he made a sympathetic figure, which, in the skilful hands of Henry Irving, won considerable favour upon the stage. But the times were out of joint for the poetic drama, and he had not the rich imagination of Shakespeare, nor the power to create living men and women who compel our hearts to pity, to horror, or to delight. For the absence of this no studious reading of history, no fine sentiment, no noble cadences, can make amends, and it seems doubtful whether future ages will regard the plays as anything but a literary curiosity.

On the other hand, nothing which he wrote has touched the human heart more genuinely than the poems of peasant life, some of them written in the broadest Lincolnshire dialect, which Tennyson produced during the years in which he was engaged on the Idylls and the plays. 'The Grandmother', 'The Northern Cobbler', and the two poems on the Lincolnshire farmers of following generations, were as popular as anything which the Victorian Age produced, and seem likely to keep their pre-eminence. The two latter illustrate, by their origin, Tennyson's power of seizing on a single impression, and building on it a work of creative genius. It was enough for him to hear the anecdote of the dying farmer's words, 'God A'mighty little knows what he's about in taking me! And Squire will be mad'; and he conceived the character of the man, and his absorption in the farm where he had lived and worked and around which he grouped his conceptions of religion and duty. The later type of farmer was evoked similarly by a quotation in the dialect of his county: 'When I canters my herse along the ramper, I 'ears "proputty, proputty, proputty"'; and again Tennyson achieved a triumph of characterization. It is here perhaps that he comes nearest to the achievements of his great rival Browning in the field of dramatic lyrics.

Apart from the writing and publication of his poems, we cannot divide Tennyson's later life into definite sections. By 1850 his habits had been formed, his friendships established, his fame assured; such landmarks as are furnished by the birth of his children, by his journeyings abroad, by the homes in which he settled, point to no essential change in the current of his life. Of the perfect happiness which marriage brought to him, of the charm and dignity which enabled Mrs. Tennyson to hold her place worthily at his side, many witnesses have spoken. Two sons were born to him, one of whom died in 1886, while the other, named after his lost friend, lived to write the Memoir which will always be the chief authority for our knowledge of the man. His homes soon became household words—so great was the spell which Tennyson cast over the hearts of his readers. Farringford, at the western end of the Isle of Wight, was first tenanted by him in 1853, and was bought in 1856. Here the poet enjoyed perfect quiet, a genial climate and the proximity of the sea, for which his love never failed. It was a very different coast to the bleak sandhills and wide flats of Mablethorpe. Above Freshwater the noble line of the Downs rises and falls as it runs westward to the Needles, where it plunges abruptly into the sea; and here on the springy turf, a tall romantic figure in wide-brimmed hat and flowing cloak, the poet would often walk. But Farringford, lying low in the shelter of the hills, proved too hot in summer; Freshwater was discovered by tourists too often inquisitive about the great; and so, after ten or twelve years, he was searching for another home, some remoter fastness set on higher ground. This he discovered on the borders of Surrey and Sussex near Haslemere, where Black Down rises to a height of 900 feet above the sea and commands a wide prospect over the blue expanse of the weald. Here he found copses and commons haunted by the song of birds, here he raised plantations close at hand to shelter him from the rude northern winds, and here he built the stately house of Aldworth where, some thirty years later, he was to die.

To both houses came frequent guests. For, shy as he was of paying visits, he loved to see in his own house men and women who could talk to him as equals—nor was he always averse to those of reverent temper, so they were careful not to jar on his fastidious tastes. In some ways it was a pity that he did not come to closer quarters with the rougher forces that were fermenting in the industrial districts. It might have helped him to a better understanding of the classes that were pushing to the front, who were to influence so profoundly the England of the morrow. But the strain of kindly sympathy in Tennyson's nature can be seen at its best in his intercourse with cottagers, sailors, and other humble folk who lived near his doors. The stories which his son tells us show how the poet was able to obtain an insight into their minds and to write poems like 'The Grandmother' with artistic truth. And no visitor received a heartier welcome at Farringford than Garibaldi, who was at once peasant and sailor, and who remained so none the less when he had become a hero of European fame. To Englishmen of nearly every cultured profession Tennyson's hospitality was freely extended—we need only instance Professor Tyndall, Dean Bradley, James Anthony Froude, Aubrey de Vere, G. F. Watts, Henry Irving, Hubert Parry, Lord Dufferin, and that most constant of friends, Benjamin Jowett, pre-eminent among the Oxford celebrities of the day. Among his immediate neighbours he conceived a peculiar affection for Sir John Simeon, whose death in 1870 called forth the stanzas 'In the Garden at Swainston'; and no one was more at home at Farringford than Julia Cameron, famous among early photographers, who has left us some of the best likenesses of the poet in middle and later life.

Tennyson was not familiar with foreign countries to the same degree as Browning, nor was he ever a great traveller. When he went abroad he needed the help of some loyal friend, like Francis Palgrave or Frederick Locker, to safeguard him against pitfalls, and to shield him from annoyance. When he was too old to stand the fatigue of railway journeys, he was willing to be taken for a cruise on a friend's yacht; and thus he visited many parts of Scotland and the harbours of Scandinavia. Amid new surroundings he was not always easy to please; bad food or smelly streets would call forth loud protests and upset him for a day; but his friends found it worth their while to risk some anxiety in order to enjoy his keen observation and the originality of his talk. Wherever he went he took with him his stored wisdom on Homer, Dante, and the 'Di maiores' of literature; and when Gladstone, too, happened to be one of the party on board ship, the talk must have been well worth hearing. As in his youth, so now, Tennyson's mind moved most naturally on a lofty plane and he was most at home with the great poets of the past; and with the exception of a few poems like 'All along the valley', where the torrents at Cauteretz reminded him of an early visit with Hallam to the Pyrenees, we can trace little evidence in his poetry of the journeys which he made. But we can see from his letters that he was kindled by the beauty of Italian cities and their treasures. In every picture-gallery which he visited he showed his preference for Titian and the rich colour of the Venetian painters. He refused to be bound by the conventional English taste for Alpine scenery, and broke out into abuse of the discoloured water in the Grindelwald glacier—'a filthy thing, and looking as if a thousand London seasons had passed over it'. In all places, among all people, he said what he thought and felt, with independence and conviction.

One incident connecting him with Italy is worthy of mention as showing that the poet, who 'from out the northern island' came at times to visit them, was known and esteemed by the people of Italy. When the Mantuans celebrated in 1885 the nineteenth centenary of the death of Virgil, the classic poet to whom Tennyson owed most, they asked him to write an ode, and nobly he rose to the occasion, attaining a felicity of phrase which is hardly excelled in the choicest lines of Virgil himself. But it is as the laureate of his own country that he is of primary interest, and it is time to inquire how he fulfilled the functions of his office, and how he rendered that office of value to the State.

When he was first appointed, Queen Victoria had let him know that he was to be excused from the obligation of writing complimentary verse to celebrate the doings of the court. Of his own accord he composed occasional odes for the marriages of her sons, and showed some of his practised skill in dignifying such themes; but it is not here that he found his work as laureate. He achieved greater success in the poems which he wrote to honour the exploits of our army and navy, in the past or the present. In his ballad of 'The Revenge', in his Balaclava poems, in the 'Siege of Lucknow', he struck a heroic note which found a ready echo in the hearts of soldiers and sailors and those who love the services. Above all, in the great ode on the death of the Duke of Wellington he has stirred all the chords of national feeling as no other laureate before him, and has enriched our literature with a jewel which is beyond price.

The Arthurian epic failed to achieve its national aim, and the historical dramas, though inspired by great principles which have helped to shape our history, never touched those large circles to which as laureate he should appeal. Some might judge that his function was best fulfilled in the lyrics to be found scattered throughout his work which praise the slow, ordered progress of English liberties. Passages from Maud or In Memoriam will occur to many readers, still more the three lyrics generally printed together at the end of the 1842 poems, beginning with the well-known tines, 'Of old sat Freedom on the heights', 'Love thou thy land', and 'You ask me why though ill at ease'. Here we listen to the voice of English Liberalism uttered in very different tones from those of Byron and Shelley, expressing the mind of one who recoiled from French Revolutions and had little sympathy with their aims of universal equality. In this he represented very truly that Victorian movement which was guided by Cobden and Mill, by Peel and Gladstone, which conferred such practical benefits upon the England of their day; but it is hardly the temper that we expect of an ardent poet, at any rate in the days of his youth. The burning passion of Carlyle, Ruskin, or William Morris, however tempered by other feelings, called forth a heartier response in the breast of the toiling multitudes.

It may be that the claim of Tennyson to popular sovereignty will, in the end, rest chiefly on the pleasure which he gave to many thousands of his fellow-countrymen, a pleasure to be renewed and found again in English scenes, and in thoughts which coloured grey lives and warmed cold hearts, which shed the ray of faith on those who could accept no creeds and who yet yearned for some hope of an after-life to cheer their declining days. That he gave this pleasure is certain—to men and women of all classes from Samuel Bamford,[29] the Durham weaver, who saved his pence to buy the precious volumes of the 'thirties, to Queen Victoria on her throne, who in the reading of In Memoriam found one of her chief consolations in the hour of widowhood.

[Note 29: See Memoir, by Hallam, Lord Tennyson, vol. i, p. 283 (Macmillan).]

It was given to Tennyson to live a long life, and to know more joy than sorrow—to be gladdened by the homage of two hemispheres, to lament the loss of his old friends who went before him (Spedding in 1881, FitzGerald in 1883, Robert Browning in 1889), to write his most famous lyric 'Crossing the Bar' at the age of 80, and to be soothed and strengthened to the end by the presence of his wife. For some weeks in the autumn of 1892 he lay in growing weakness at Aldworth taking farewell of the sights and sounds that he had loved so long. To him now it had come to hear with dying ears 'the earliest pipe of half-awakened birds' and to see with dying eyes 'the casement slowly grow a glimmering square'. Early on October 5 he had an access of energy, and called to have the blinds drawn up—'I want', he said, 'to see the sky and the light'. The next day he died, and a week later a country wagon bore the coffin to Haslemere. Thence it passed to Westminster, where his dust was to be laid beside that of Browning, among the great men who had gone before. In what mood he faced death we can learn from his own words:

Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human state, Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great, Nor the myriad world, His shadow, nor the silent Opener of the Gate![30]

[Note 30: 'God and the Universe,' from Death of Oenone, &c. Macmillan, (1892.)]



CHARLES KINGSLEY

1819-75

1819. Born at Holne on Dartmoor, June 12. 1830-6. Father rector of Clovelly. 1832. Grammar School at Helston, Cornwall. 1836. Father rector of St. Luke's, Chelsea. C. K. to King's College, London. 1838-42. Magdalene College, Cambridge. 1842. Ordained at Farnham. Curate of Eversley. 1844. Marriage to Fanny Grenfell. Friendship with F. D. Maurice. 1844. Rector of Eversley. 1848. Chartist riots. 'Parson Lot' pamphlets. 1850. Alton Locke published. 1855. Westward Ho! published. 1857. Two Years Ago published. 1859. Chaplain to the Queen. 1860. Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. 1864. Tour in the south of France. 1869. Canon of Chester. 1870. Tour to the West Indies. 1873. Canon of Westminster. 1874. Tour to California. 1875. Death at Eversley, January 23.

CHARLES KINGSLEY

PARISH PRIEST

If Charles Kingsley had been born in Scandinavia a thousand years earlier, one more valiant Viking would have sailed westward from the deep fiords of his native home to risk his fortunes in a new world, one who by his courage, his foresight, and his leadership of men was well fitted to be captain of his bark. The lover of the open-air life, the searcher after knowledge, the fighter that he was, he would have been in his element, foremost in the fray, most eager in the quest. But it was given to him to live in quieter times, to graft on the old Norse stock the graces of modern culture and the virtues of a Christian; and in a peaceful parish of rural England he found full scope for his gifts. There he taught his own and succeeding generations how full and beneficent the life of a parish priest can be. Our villages and towns produced many notable types of rector in the nineteenth century, Keble, Hawker, Hook, Robertson, Dolling, and scores of others; but none touched life at more points, none became so truly national a figure as Charles Kingsley in his Eversley home.

His father was of an old squire family; like his son he was a clergyman, a naturalist, and a sportsman. His mother, a Miss Lucas, came from Barbados; and while she wrote poetry with feeling and skill, she had also a practical gift of management. His father's calling involved several changes of residence. Those which had most influence on his son were his removal in 1824 to Barnack, on the edge of the fens, still untamed and full of wild life, and in 1830 to Clovelly in North Devon. More than thirty years later, when asked to fill up the usual questions in a lady's album, he wrote that his favourite scenery was 'wide flats and open sea'. He was precocious as a child and perpetrated poems and sermons at the age of four; but very early he developed a habit of observation and a healthy interest in things outside himself. Such a nature could not be indifferent to the beauty of Clovelly, to the coming and going of its fishermen, and to the romance and danger of their lives. The steep village-street nestling among the woods, the little harbour sheltered by the sandstone cliffs, the wide view over the blue water, won his lifelong affection.

His parents talked of sending him to Eton or Rugby, but in the end they decided to put him with Derwent Coleridge, the poet's son, at the Grammar School of Helston. Here he had the scenery which he loved, and masters who developed his strong bent towards natural science; and here he laid the foundations of his knowledge of botany, which remained all his life his favourite recreation. He was an eager reader, but not a close student of books; fond of outdoor life, but not skilled in athletic games; capable of much effort and much endurance, but rather irregular in his spurts of energy. A more methodical training might have saved him some mistakes, but it might also have taken the edge off that fresh enthusiasm which made intercourse with him at all times seem like a breath of moorland air. Here he developed an independence of mind and a fearlessness of opinion which is rarely to be found in the atmosphere of a big public school.

At the age of seventeen, when his father was appointed to St. Luke's, Chelsea, he left Helston and spent two years attending lectures at King's College, London, and preparing for Cambridge. These were by no means among his happier years. He disliked London and he rebelled against the dullness of life in a vicarage overrun with district visitors and mothers' meetings. His father, a strong evangelical, objected to various forms of public amusement, and Charles, though loyal and affectionate to his parents, fretted to find no outlet for his energies. He made a few friends and devoured many books, but his chief delight was to get away from town to old west-country haunts. Nor was his life at Cambridge entirely happy. His excitability was great: his self-control was not yet developed. Rowing did not exhaust his physical energy, which broke out from time to time in midnight fishing raids and walks from Cambridge to London. He wasted so much of his time that he nearly imperilled his chance of taking a good degree, and might perhaps count himself lucky when, thanks to a heroic effort at the eleventh hour, his excellent abilities won him a first class in classics. At this time he was terribly shaken by religious doubts. But in one of his vacations in 1839 he met Fanny Grenfell, his future wife, and soon he was on such a footing that he could open to her his inmost thoughts. It was she who helped him in his wavering decision to take Holy Orders; and, when he went down in 1842, he set himself to read seriously and thoroughly for Ordination. Early in 1844 he was admitted to deacon's orders at Farnham.

His first office marked out his path through life. With a short interval between his holding the curacy and the rectory of Eversley,[31] he had his home for thirty-three years at this Hampshire village so intimately connected with his name. Eversley lies on the borders of Berkshire and Hampshire, in the diocese of Winchester, near the famous house of Bramshill, on the edge of the sandy fir-covered waste which stretches across Surrey. To understand the charm of its rough commons and self-sown woods one must read Kingsley's Prose Idylls, especially the sketch called 'My Winter Garden'. There he served for a year as curate, living in bachelor quarters on the green, learning to love the place and its people: there, when Sir John Cope offered him the living in 1844, he returned a married man to live in the Rectory House beside the church, which may still be seen little altered to-day. A breakdown from overwork, an illness of his wife's, a higher appointment in the Church, might be the cause of his passing a few weeks or even months away; but year in, year out, he gave of his very best to Eversley for thirty-three years, and to it he returned from his journeys with all the more ardour to resume his work among his own people. The church was dilapidated, the Rectory was badly drained, the parish had been neglected by an absentee rector. For long periods together Kingsley was too poor to afford a curate: when he had one, the luxury was paid for by extra labour in taking private pupils. He had disappointments and anxieties, but his courage never faltered. He concentrated his energies on steady progress in things material and moral, and whatever his hand found to do, he did it with his might.

[Note 31: For a few weeks in 1844 he was curate of Pimperne in Dorset.]

The church and its services called for instant attention. The Holy Communion had been celebrated only three times a year; the other services were few and irregular; on Sundays the church was empty and the alehouse was full. The building was badly kept, the churchyard let out for grazing, the whole place destitute of reverence. What the service came to be under the new Rector we can read on the testimony of many visitors. The intensity of his devotion at all times, the inspiration which the great festivals of the Church particularly roused in him, changed all this rapidly. He did all he could to draw his parishioners to church; but he had no rigid Puritanical views about the Sabbath. A Staff-College officer, who frequently visited him on Sundays, tells us of 'the genial, happy, unreserved intercourse of those Sunday afternoons spent at the Rectory, and how the villagers were free to play their cricket—"Paason he do'ant objec'—not 'e—as loik as not, 'e'll come and look on".' All his life he supported the movement for opening museums to the public on Sundays, and this at a time when few of the clergy were bold enough to speak on his side. The Church was not his only organ for teaching. He started schools and informal classes. In winter he would sometimes give up his leisure to such work every evening of the week. The Rectory, for all its books and bottles, its fishing-rods and curious specimens, was not a mere refuge for his own work and his own hobbies, but a centre of light and warmth where all his parishioners might come and find a welcome. He was one of the first to start 'Penny Readings' in his parish, to lighten the monotony of winter evenings with music, poetry, stories, and lectures; and though his parish was so wide and scattered, he tried to rally support for a village reading-room, and kept it alive for some years.

His afternoons were regularly given to parish visiting, except when there were other definite calls upon his time. He soon came to know every man, woman, and child in his parish. His sympathies were so wide that he could make himself at home with every one, with none more so than the gipsies and poachers, who shared his intimate knowledge of the neighbouring heaths and of the practices, lawful and unlawful, by which they could be made to supply food. He would listen to their stories, sympathize with their troubles and speak frankly in return. There was no condescension. One of his pupils speaks of 'the simple, delicate, deep respect for the poor', which could be seen in his manner and his talk among the cottagers. He could be severe enough when severity was needed, as when he compelled a cruel farmer to kill 'a miserable horse which was rotting alive in front of his house'; and he could deal no less drastically with hypocrisy. When a professional beggar fell on his knees at the Rectory gate and pretended to pray, he was at once ejected by the Rector with every mark of indignation and contumely. But the weak and suffering always made a special appeal to him. Though it was easy to vex and exasperate him, he could always put away his own troubles in presence of his own children or of any who needed his help. He had that intense power of sympathy which enabled him to understand and reach the heart.

From a letter to his greatest friend, Tom Hughes, written in 1851, we get a glimpse of a day in his life—'a sorter kinder sample day'. He was up at five to see a dying man and stayed with him till eight. He then went out for air and exercise, fished all the morning and killed eight fish. He went back to his invalid at three. Later he spent three hours attending a meeting convoked by his Archdeacon about Sunday schools, and at 10.30 he was back in his study writing to his friends.

But though he himself calls this a 'sample day', it does no justice to one form of his activities. Most days in the year he would put away all thought of fishing, shut himself up in his study morning and evening, and devote himself to reading and writing. Great care was taken over his weekly sermons. Monday was, if possible, given to rest; but from Tuesday till Friday evening they took up the chief share of his thoughts. And then there were the books that he wrote, novels, pamphlets, history lectures, scientific essays, on which he largely depended to support his wife and family. Besides this he kept up an extensive correspondence with friends and acquaintances. Many wrote to consult him about political and religious questions; from many he was himself trying to draw information on the phenomena of the science which he was trying to study at the time. Among the latter were Geikie, Lyell, Wallace, and Darwin himself, giants among scientific men, to whom he wrote with genuine humility, even when his name was a household word throughout England. His books can sometimes be associated with visits to definite places which supplied him with material. It is not difficult to connect Westward Ho! with his winter at Bideford in 1854, and Two Years Ago with his Pen-y-gwryd fishing in 1856. Memories of Hereward the Wake go back to his early childhood in the Fens, of Alton Locke to his undergraduate days at Cambridge. But he had not the time for the laborious search after 'local colour' with which we are familiar to-day. The bulk of the work was done in his study at Eversley, executed rapidly, some of it too rapidly; but the subjects were those of which his mind was full, and the thoughts must have been pursued in many a quiet hour on the heathery commons or beside the streams of his own neighbourhood.

About his books, his own judgement agreed with that of his friends. 'What you say about my "Ergon" being poetry is quite true. I could not write Uncle Tom's Cabin and I can write poetry:... there is no denying it: I do feel a different being when I get into metre: I feel like an otter in the water instead of an otter ashore.' The value of his novels is in their spirit rather than in their artistic form or truth; but it is foolish to disparage their worth, since they have exercised so marked an influence on the characters and lives of so many Englishmen, especially our soldiers and sailors, inspiring them to higher courage and more unselfish virtue. Perhaps the best example of his prose is the Prose Idylls, sketches of fen-land, trout streams, and moors, which combine his gifts so happily, his observation of natural objects, and the poetic imagination with which he transfuses these objects and brings them near to the heart of man. There were very few men who could draw such joy from familiar English landscapes, and could communicate it to others. The cult of sport, of science, and of beauty has here become one and has found its true high priest. In poetry his more ambitious efforts were The Saint's Tragedy, a drama in blank verse on the story of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and Andromeda, a revival of the old Greek legend in the old hexameter measure. But what are most sure to live are his lyrics, 'Airlie Beacon', 'The Three Fishers', 'The Sands of Dee', with their simplicity and true note of song.

The combination of this poetic gift with a strong interest in science and a wide knowledge of it is most unusual; but there can be no mistaking the genuine feeling which Charles Kingsley had for the latter. It took one very practical form in his zeal for sanitation. In 1854 when the public, so irrational in its moments of excitement, was calling for a national fast-day on account of the spread of cholera, he heartily supported Lord Palmerston, who refused to grant it. He held it impious and wrong to attribute to a special visitation from God what was due to the blindness, laziness, and selfishness of our governing classes. His article in Fraser's Magazine entitled 'Who causes pestilence?' roused much criticism: it said things that comfortable people did not like to hear, and said them frankly; it was far in advance of the public opinion of that time, but its truth no one would dispute to-day. And what his pen did for the nation, his example did for the parish. He drained unwholesome pools in his own garden, and he persuaded his neighbours to do the same. He taught them daily lessons about the value of fresh air and clean water: no details were too dull and wearisome in the cause. To many people his novels, like those of Dickens and Charles Reade, are spoilt by the advocacy of social reforms. The novel with a purpose was characteristic of the early Victorian Age, and both in Alton Locke and in Two Years Ago he makes little disguise of the zeal with which he preaches sanitary reform. Of the more attractive sciences, which he pursued with equal intensity, there is little room to speak. Botany was his first love and it remained first to the end. Zoology at times ran it close, and his letters from seaside places are full of the names of marine creatures which he stored in tanks and examined with his microscope. A dull day on the coast was inconceivable to him. Geology, too, thrilled him with its wonders, and was the subject of many letters.

Side by side with his hobby of natural history went his love of sport: it was impossible for him to separate the one from the other. Fishing was his chief delight; he pursued it with equal keenness in the chalk streams of Hampshire, in the salmon rivers of Ireland, in the desolate tarns on the Welsh mountains. In the visitors' book of the inn at Pen-y-gwryd, Tom Hughes, Tom Taylor, and he left alternate quatrains of doggerel to celebrate their stay, written currente calamo, as the spirit prompted them. This is Charles Kingsley's first quatrain:

I came to Pen-y-gwryd in frantic hopes of slaying Grilse, salmon, three-pound red-fleshed trout and what else there's no saying: But bitter cold and lashing rain and black nor'-eastern skies, sir, Drove me from fish to botany, a sadder man and wiser.

Each had his disappointment through the weather, which each expressed in verse; but it took more than bad weather to damp the spirits of three such ardent open-air enthusiasts. Hunting was another favourite sport, though he rarely indulged himself in this luxury, and only when he could do so without much expense. But whenever a friend gave him a mount, Kingsley was ready to follow the Berkshire hounds, and with his knowledge of the country he was able to hold his own with the best.