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STUDIES OF TENNYSON.

II. TENNYSON AS A NATIONAL POET.

By J. MURRAY MOORE, M.D., F.R.G.S.

FROM the earliest dawn of Aryan history, when "Homer sang how hapless Troy was lost," very seldom has a nation possessing a written language lacked a succession of poets who from age to age of its career have sung of the great deeds of its heroes, of the beauties of its land, of its episodes of war and of peace; singers who have created its popular songs, or who have embalmed its folk-lore in fiery or pathetic, rugged or melodious verse. As civilisation becomes more complex and more elaborate, the poetry of past ages sems to us mere school-learning; yet we owe to ancient Greece, and to the Augustan age of Rome, the classical models upon which all later verse is framed, and the standard by which we measure the merit of our modern poets.

Let us inquire what we mean exactly by the term "national" as applied to a poet, for every poet must belong to some nationality or other.

For the purposes of this essay, I limit the adjective "national" to a poet whose compositions have these four characteristics:-1. They are sung, written, or printed in the vernacular language of his country; 2. They reflect the contemporary life and current ideas of the period when the poet wrote; 3. They were known and esteemed by his fellow countrymen during his lifetime; 4. They are of such intrinsic merit as to have survived the author,

and to have become an essential part of the national literature of his country.

Truly national poets have indeed a noble function to perform. As their Greek name (ToTs) signifies, they are creators. They create for their readers word-pictures of all that is beautiful, true, pure, and noble, alluring the idle to industry, the vicious to virtue, the rich to charity, and the honest toiler to higher ideals of life. They throw the halo of romance around the commonplace events of life; they denounce tyranny, oppression, and moral wrong in every form; they widen the conception of the rights of the individual; and they arouse in a down-trodden nation an irresistible demand for freedom.

National poets of even limited powers have written songs such as the Marseillaise and the Wacht am Rhein, which have run like lightning through the people, and have been worth more than thousands of warriors to a popular cause. Some poets-Tyrtæus, Uhland, and Körner, for example-have fought and bled for their country on the battlefield. Freedom-loving poets have even passed their own frontiers, and fanned into flame the dying spark of patriotism in foreign countries. Who can doubt that the independence of modern Greece was greatly hastened on by the personal efforts and soul-stirring poetry of our own Byron and Shelley?

And here the singer for his Art

Not all in vain may plead,

The song that nerves a nation's heart
Is in itself a deed.

Our own island-kingdom is fortunate in its records of native-born national poets. Taking "Piers Plowman ”— that is, probably, William Langland (1350)—as our first truly "national" poet, the Sacred Fire of Apollo has been handed down through five centuries to our own time by an

illustrious procession of men of genius, the latest of whom were Wordsworth, Browning, and Tennyson.

Let us rejoice that our national poets have, on the whole, had an influence for good. Very rarely has any of them taught sedition, immorality, or atheism. As a rule, they have preached loyalty to the crown; public and private morality; civil and religious liberty; belief in God; trust in honest statesmen; and adherence to the grand old constitutional principles of the Magna Charta. Poets have helped, not hindered, Britain's development into what she is at present,-the freest country in the world:

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A land of settled government,

A land of just and old renown,

Where freedom slowly broadens down

From precedent to precedent.

Where faction seldom gathers head,

But by degrees to fulness wrought.
The strength of some diffusive thought
Hath time and space to work and spread.

The three great Hierarchs of English poetry are Shakspere, Milton, and Tennyson. Each of these great poets saw, with prophetic vision, far beyond his own age. But each of them also gathered together, as it were, in his works, the spirit, life, manners, and sayings of his time; each constructed dramas out of history (in Milton's case sacred history) which contained moral teaching for all time; and each created pure and lofty ideals for both citizen and state. In the sacredness of his principal theme, and in the unsurpassable stateliness and point of his blank verse, Milton ranks next to Shakspere, while Tennyson, though inferior to both in dramatic power, yet surpasses both in his lyric poetry, and in the more com

plete portrayal of his age,-this complex nineteenth century.

Though we almost instinctively regard Shakspere as facile princeps of all English poets, I am inclined to go further, and place him alone, on a pedestal by himself. It seems to me no exaggeration to say that none but himself can be his parallel."

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His wondrous knowledge of Man, and his all-powerful dramatic presentment of every phase and emotion of human life, cause the creatures of his imagination to be regarded as historic personalities; and their impressive phrases have become rooted in the speech of humanity. The fruits of our Shakspere's colossal genius are by this time shared with us by every nation which possesses a literature. Already, his works are studied in more languages than any others, except the Bible. Even oriental nations are appropriating him; for Shakspere can now be enjoyed by the Armenian and the Japanese, each in his own language.

Whether a fame of like duration awaits Tennyson's works in this restless, ever changing age, it is not for me to say, but it is certain that the Laureate, in his friend Gladstone's words, "has written his own song in the hearts of his countrymen that can never die," and it is probable that, for centuries to come, "Time will be powerless against him" (Life, vol. ii, p. 281).

In this, my second "Study of Tennyson," I wish to present him in the threefold aspect of a typical Englishman; a thoughtful and far-sighted patriot; and as perhaps the representative national poet of the Victorian era. I am the better enabled to do this by the help of the admirable and long-desired Biography of Tennyson written by his son, assisted by his widow, and published on the fifth anniversary of his death, October

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