Tennyson's outward life was uneventful. He entered Cambridge in 1828, with Hallam (son of the historian), Trench and Houghton; was compelled by his slender income to defer his marriage until 1850, when he was forty-one; was raised to the laureate-ship of England in the same year, and accepted a peerage in 1884. He was no traveler, rarely leaving England, and never realizing the hope of his youth, "To see, before I die, the palms and temples of the south." He died in 1892, well past the age of fourscore, but with the fineness of his genius unabated. His history is that of his mind and heart, which is shadowed forth in his writings, yet ever veiled beneath the reticences of pure art. He was great enough to eschew the individual and singular in the published expression of his thought, and to offer only those ideas and feelings which are catholic in the race. All who have loved and lost have experienced the emotions of "In Memoriam;" no one who has meditated deeply on the problems of the age can fail to find his best conclusions in "Locksley Hall;" scepticism may find its utterance and its answer in "The Two Voices;" the refusal of the soul to stay in mortal limitations resounds in "Ulysses;" the passion, purity and exaltation of love are portrayed in "Enone," "Maude," "Love and Duty," "Tears, Idle Tears," "The Gardener's Daughter," and many other lovely poems; the mockery of beauty without God is shown in "The Palace of Art;" the grandeur of patriotism, civil and military, is expressed in the "Ode on the Death of Wellington" and in "England;" and so we might continue. In a word, the life of his age flowed through Tennyson, and found in him its broadest utterance. Philosophy, science, history and art were elemental spirits employed by this Prospero to give body, color and pertinence to his harmonious creations; his brain was balanced by his heart, and the first was as lofty as the last was deep. The beginnings of the poet's career were not ambitious. Before he was twenty, he and his brother published a small volume of "Poems by Two Brothers," which showed faculty, but no definite aim. His "Poems Chiefly Lyrical," appearing when he was twenty-one, were studies in form, sentiment and beauty, but only his more sagacious critics were able to foretell from it his future eminence. In 1842 another volume was brought out; and in this we find the first specimen of a work destined to be the most voluminous and one of the most important of his life-the fragment called "Morte d'Arthur." The plan of the "Epic of Arthur" had then been for some time in his mind; but he had not satisfied himself with his treatment of it. The fragment, however, was so generally praised that he was encouraged to take up the subject with renewed vigor; and, at intervals during the fifty years that followed, he gradually elaborated the whole stately series of poems bearing upon the story of Uther's mystic Son. The work as a whole is sufficient basis for a great reputation; but the merit of the various parts is not equal; there is poetry in all of them, but some of the earlier ones-"Enid," "Guinevere," "Elaine," and the "Morte d'Arthur" itself, seem to touch a higher level than the rest. The material was derived chiefly from the prose narrative of Malory; as an individual effort to put in homogeneous metrical form the legends of the beginnings of a nation, perhaps nothing since Homer's Iliad and Odyssey has been done to compare with it. But it is somewhat too long for the taste of the present day, and the general sameness of treatment and tone militate against its cumulative effect. The most important fact of Tennyson's young manhood, in its influence upon his mind, was the death of his friend Arthur Hallam. The sad event took place in 1833, when Tennyson was twenty-four years old; "In Memoriam," the poem which commemorates it, was not published till 1850. During these seventeen years he had been enabled to pass through the acuter stages of grief into a calmer and deeper state, in which became visible to him the mercy of the God who giveth and who taketh away. The poem, therefore, shows the balance and symmetry of high art; it shows pain compensated by spiritual growth and the consolations of religion and philosophy. It has probably been more widely read than any other of Tennyson's productions; and the wonderful perfection of its form, and the truth and insight of its expression, its passion, its reverence and its sincerity, make it worthy of its reputation. The personal lineaments of Arthur Hallam, lovable as these were, disappear in the deeper beauty and significance of that for which he stands-the human love and companionship which death interrupts, but does not destroy. Tennyson, in his poem, made his private suffering the means of comfort to his race; and no poet can perform a loftier service. "The Princess," published in 1847, embodies a discussion of various modern social topics, prominent among them that of woman's position in the community. It is presented in unique form, the exponents of the ideas of the day being attired in mediæval costume, and the scenery being that of the Age of Chivalry. It would indeed have been difficult if not impossible to treat the subject poetically on any other plan. The poem is in blank verse, every line packed with meaning, to such an extent as sometimes to render the thought obscure. Its progress is relieved by the introduction of several exquisite songs, one at least of which-"Tears, idle Tears,"-is one of the most delicious lyrics ever written. "The Princess" holds a noble argument; but the main problem which it attacks cannot be finally solved by any individual; only in the lapse of ages will the divine purpose be revealed. The concluding twenty years of Tennyson's life, from 1870 onwards, were largely occupied with essays in dramatic literature. He produced six or seven plays, in the Shakespearian form, based on historic or quasi-historic subjects; and all of them were acted on the stage by competent performers, with measurable success. Worthy and admirable productions they certainly are; but the challenge to the great Elizabethan dramatist was too obvious; and the lack of humor in the nineteenth century poet, as well as the habit of fifty years in other forms of poetic art, prevents these plays from ranking with his most satisfactory work. We are disposed to regret that the force and genius which went to their making had not been applied in other directions. They contain many splendid lines. and stirring passages, many fine situations, and masterly delineations of character; but they do not show Tennyson at his best; and the greater a writer is, the more stringent is our demand that he maintain his highest level. To many, Tennyson's shorter pieces will remain the favorites. Some of them seem the very flower of human speech. "Recollections of the Arabian Nights," "The Lady of Shallott," "The Lotus Eaters," "Love and Death," "A Dream of Fair Women," "The Sleeping Beauty," and that last noble message "Crossing the Bar;" these and many another as we read them, seem to attain the limits of beauty in measure, rhyme and thought. But it is still too early to decide what of Tennyson is most nearly immortal. He lies in Westminster Abbey; and it is enough for us to know that so long as that historic church stands, his fame is likely to endure. Or we might say that the English language which he has dignified and enriched will not outlast the noble creations which he has incarnated in it. TEARS, IDLE TEARS. TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; Dear as remembered kisses after death, |