dogmatic spirit in practical affairs, its curious learning and social enthusiasms and military reactions, its ethical earnestness, and its ever deepening and broadening human sympathy, may be read in the poetry of Tennyson. Other poets may reflect some particular feature of the century more fully, but it is because they reflect it more exclusively. Thus Byron stands for the spirit of revolt against tyranny, Shelley for the dream of universal brotherhood, Keats for the passionate love of pure beauty, Matthew Arnold for the sadness of parting with ancient faiths, Robert Browning for the spirit of scientific curiosity and the restless impulse of action, and Rudyard Kipling expresses the last phase of the century, the revival of militant imperialism, perhaps as well as it can be uttered in verse. Wordsworth, indeed, has a more general range, at least of meditative sympathy, and his work has therefore a broader significance. But his range of imaginative sympathy, the sphere within which he feels intensely and speaks vividly, is limited by his own individuality, deep, strong, unyielding, and by his secluded life among the mountains of Westmoreland. When he moves along his own line his work shines with a singular and unclouded lustre; at other times his genius fails to penetrate his material with the light of poesy. Much of his verse, serious and sincere, represents Wordsworth's reflections upon life, rather than the reflection of life in Wordsworth's poetry. In the art of poetry, too, perfect as he is in certain forms, such as the sonnet, the simple lyric, the stately ode, his mastery is far from wide. In narrative poetry he seldom moves with swiftness or certainty; in the use of dramatic motives to intensify a lyric, a ballad, an idyl, he has little skill. But Tennyson, at least in the maturity of his powers, has not only a singularly receptive and responsive mind, open on all sides to impressions from nature, from books, and from human life around him, and an imaginative sympathy which makes itself at home and works dramatically in an extraordinary range of characters: he has also a wonderful mastery of the technics of the poetic art, which enables him to give back in a fitting form of beauty the subject which his genius has taken into itself. No other English poet since the Elizabethan age has used so many kinds of verse so well. None other has shown in his work a sensitiveness to the movements of his own time at once so delicate and so broad. To none other has it been given to write with undimmed eye and undiminished strength for so long a period of time, and thus to translate into poetry so many of the thoughts and feelings of the century in which he lived. Whether a temperament so receptive, and an art so versatile, as Tennyson's, are characteristic of the highest order of genius, is an open question, which it is not necessary to decide nor even to discuss here. Certainly it would be absurd to maintain that his success in dealing with all subjects and in all forms of verse is equal. His dramas, for instance, do not stand in the first rank. His two epics, The Princess and Idylls of the King, have serious defects, the one in structure, the other in substance. But, on the other hand, the broad scope of his poetic interest and the variety as well as the general felicity of his art, helped to make him the most popular poet of his time and race. Tennyson has something for everybody. He is easy to read. He has charm. Thus he has found a wide audience, and his poetry has not only reflected, but powerfully influenced, the movements of his age. The poet whose words are quoted is a constant, secret guide of sentiment and conduct. The man who says a thing first may be more original; he who says it best is more potent. The characters which Tennyson embodied in his verse became memorable. The ideals which he expressed in music grew more clear and beautiful and familiar to the hearts of men, leading them insensibly forward. The main current of thought and feeling in the Nineteenth Century, at least among the English-speaking peoples, the slow, steady, onward current of admiration, desire, hope, aspiration, and endeavour, - follows the line which is traced in the poetry of Tennyson. Now it is just this broad scope, this rich variety, this complex character of Tennyson's work which make it representative; and precisely this is what a book of selections cannot be expected to show completely. For this, one must read all the twenty-six volumes which he published, — lyrical poems, ballads, English idyls, elegiac poems, war-songs, lovesongs, dramas, poems of art, classical imitations, dramatic monologues, patriotic poems, idylls of chivalry, fairy tales, character studies, odes, religious meditations, and rhapsodies of faith. After such a reading it is natural to ask: How much of this large body of verse, so representative in its total effect, is permanent in its poetic value? How much of it, apart from the interest which it has for the student of literary history, has a direct and intimate charm, a charm which is likely to be lasting, for the simple lover of poetry, the reader who turns to verse not chiefly for an increase of knowledge, but for a gift of pure pleasure and vital power? How much of it is characterized by those qualities which distinguish Tennyson at his best, signed, as we may say, not merely with his name but with the mark of his individuality as an artist, and so entitled to a place in his personal contribution to the art of poetry? A volume of selections from Tennyson such as I have attempted here, must be made along the general lines to which these questions point. I do not suppose that it would be possible to make a book of this kind which should include all that every admirer of Tennyson would like to find in it. There are fine passages in the dramas, for instance, which cannot well be taken out of their contexts. In choosing a few of the connected lyrics which are woven together in the symphony of In Memoriam, one feels a sense of regret at the necessity of leaving out other lyrics almost as rich in melody and meaning, almost as essential to the full harmony of the poem. The underlying unity, the epical interest, of Idylls of the King cannot be shown by giving two of them, even though those two be the strongest in substance and the noblest in style. But after all, making due allowance for the necessary limitations, the inevitable omissions, which every educated person understands, I venture to hope that the selections in this volume fairly present the material for a study of Tennyson's method and manner as a poet, and an appreciation of that which is best in the central body of his poetic work. Here, if I am not mistaken, the reader will find those of his poems which best endure the test of comparison with classic and permanent standards. Here, also, is a book of verse which is pervaded, as a whole, by a certain real charm of feeling and expression, and which may be confidently offered to those gentle persons who like to read poetry for its own sake. And here, I am quite sure, is a selection from the mass of Tennyson's writings which includes at least enough of his most characteristic work to illustrate the growth of his mind, to disclose the development of his art, and to make every reader feel the vital and personal qualities which distinguish his poetry. II AN OUTLINE OF TENNYSON'S LIFE "Brother of the greatest poets, true to nature, true to art; Lover of Immortal Love, uplifter of the human heart! Parentage and Birth.-Alfred Tennyson was born on the 6th of August, 1809, at Somersby, a little village in Lincolnshire. He was the fourth child in a family of twelve, eight boys and four girls, all of whom but two lived to pass the limit of three score years and ten. The stock was a strong one, probably of Danish origin, but with a mingled strain of Norman blood through the old family of d'Eyncourt, both branches of which, according to Burke's Peerage, are represented by the Tennysons. The poet's father, the Rev. Dr. George Clayton Tennyson, was rector of Somersby and Wood Enderby. His wife, Elizabeth Fytche, was the daughter of the vicar of Louth, a neighbouring town. Dr. Tennyson was the eldest son of a lawyer of considerable wealth, but was disinherited, by some caprice of his father, in favour of a younger brother. The rector of Somersby was a man of large frame, vigourous mind, and variable temper. He had considerable learning, of a broad kind, and his scholarship, if not profound, was practical, for he taught his sons the best of what they knew before they entered the university. A great lover of music and architecture, fond of writing verse, genial and brilliant in social intercourse, excitable, warm-hearted, stern in discipline, generous in sympathy, he was a personality of overflowing power; but at times he was subject to fits of profound depression and gloom, in which the memory of his father's unkindness darkened |