THE name of Alfred Tennyson is pressing slowly, calmly, but surely-with certain recognition, but no loud shouts of greeting-from the lips of the discerning along the lips of the less informed public to its "own place" in the stony house of names. That it is the name of a true poet, begins to be everywhere acknowledged; and he now stands upon the firm ground of an universal recognition of his genius, after no worse persecution than is comprised in the charges of affectation, quaintness, and mannerism. But little is known of his personal history, more than that he is the son of a clergyman of Lincolnshire, England; that he went through the usual routine of a University education at Trinity College, Cambridge; that he is one of a large and gifted circle of brothers and sisters still living; that his chief social characteristic is a strong disposition to avoid general society, preferring to sit up all night talking with a friend, or else to sit and think alone. Beyond a very small circle he is never to be met. There is nothing eventful in his biography, and need not restrain us from the brief view of his qualities and excellences as a poet, which we now propose to give.

His

Perhaps the first spell cast by Tennyson, the master of so many spells, he casts upon the ear. power as a lyrical versifier is remarkable. The measures flow softly or roll nobly to his pen; as well one as the other. He can gather up his strength, like a serpent, in the gleaming coil of a line; or dart it out straight and free. Nay, he will write you a poem with nothing in it except music, and as if its music were everything, it shall charm your soul. Be this said, not in reproach, but in honor of him and of the English

language, for the learned sweetness of his numbers. The Italian lyrists may take counsel, or at once enjoy,

"Where Claribel low lieth."

But if sweetness of melody and richness of harmony be the most exquisitely sensuous of Tennyson's characteristics, he is no less able to "pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone," for certainly his works are equally characterized by their thoughtful grace, depth of sentiment, and ideal beauty. And he not only has the most musical words at his command, but he possesses the power of conveying a sense of color, and a precision of outline by means of words, to an extraordinary degree. In music and color he was equalled by Shelley, but in form, clearly defined, with no apparent effort, and no harsh shades or lines, Tennyson stands unrivalled.

Tennyson may be considered generally under four different aspects-developed separately or in collective harmony, according to the nature of his subject that is to say, as a poet of fairy-land and enchantment; as a poet of profound sentiment in the affections, (as Wordsworth is of the intellect and moral feelings;) as a painter of pastoral nature; and as the delineator and representer of tragic emotions, chiefly with reference to one particular passion.

With regard to the first of these aspects of his genius, it may be admitted at the outset that Tennyson is not the portrayer of individual, nor of active practical character. His characters, with few exceptions, are generalizations, or refined abstractions, clearly developing certain thoughts, feelings, and forms, and bringing them home to all competent sympathies. These critics who

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have seized upon the poet's early loves-his Claribels, Lilians, Adelines, Madelines-and comparing them with real women, and the ladyloves of the actual world, have declared that they were not natural beings of flesh and blood, have tried them by a false standard. They do not belong to the flesh-and-blood class. There is no such substance in them. They are creatures of the elements of poetry. And for that reason, they have a sensuous life of their own; as far removed from ordinary bodily condition as from pure spirit. Standing or seated, flying or floating, laughing or weeping, sighing or singing, pouting or kissing, they are lovely underbodies, which no German critic would for a moment hesitate to take to his visionary arms.

In the description of pastoral nature in England, no one has ever surpassed Tennyson. The union of fidelity to nature and extreme beauty is scarcely to be found in an equal degree in any other writer. He is generally as sweet, and fresh, and faithful in his drawing and coloring of a land scape, as the prose pastorals of Miss Mitford, which is saying the utmost we can for a possessor of those qualifications. But besides this Tennyson idealizes, as a poet should, wherever his subjects needs it-not so much as Shelley and Keats, but as much as the occasion will bear, without undue preponderance, or interfering with the harmony of his general design. His landscapes often have the truthful ideality of Claude, combined with the refined reality of Calcott, or the homely richness of Gainsborough. The landscape painting of Keats was more like the backgrounds of Titian and Annibal Carracci; as that of Shelley often resembled the pictures of Turner. We think the extraordinary power of language in Shelley sometimes even accomplished, not only the wild brilliancy of coloring, but the apparently impossible effect, by words, of the wonderful aerial perspective of Turner—as where he speaks of the loftiest star of heaven “pinnacled dim in the intense inane." But with Tennyson there is no tendency to inventiveness in his descriptions of scenery; he contents himself with the loveliness of the truth seen through the medium of such emotion as belongs to the subject he has in hand. But as these emotions are often of profound pas. sion, sentiment, reflection, or tenderness, it may well be conceived that his painting is of that kind which is least common in art. The opening of "Enone" is a good example, and is a fine prelude to love's delirium, which follows it.

"There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier

Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.

The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm and creeps from pine to pine,

And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand
The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars
The long brook falling through the clov'n ravine
In cataract after cataract to the sea."

The frequent tendency to the development or illustration of tragic emotion is illustrated in his "Dirge," the "Death of Love," the "Ballad of Oriana;" the "Supposed Confession;" and "Mariana;" all of which are full of the emotions and thoughts which lead directly, if they do not involve, tragic results. The same may be said of the following poems: the "Lady of Shalott;" "Eleanore;" "Enone;" the "New Year's Eve;" and the "Sisters."

This "Sisters" is a ballad poem of six stanzas, each of only four lines, with two lines of a chorus sung by the changeful roaring of the wind "in turret and tree"-which is made to appear conscious of the passions that are at work. In this brief space is comprised, fully told, and with many suggestions beyond, a deep tragedy.

The story is briefly this. A youthful earl of great personal attractions seduces a young lady of family, deserts her, and she dies. Her sister, probably an elder sister, and not of equal beauty, had, apparently, also loved the earl. When, therefore, she found that not only had her love been in vain, but her self-sacrifice in favor of her sister had only led to the misery and degradation of the latter, she resolved on the earl's destruction. She exerted herself to the utmost to attract his regard; she "hated him with the hate of hell," but, it is added, that she "loved his beauty passing well," for the earl "was fair to see." Abandoning herself in every way to the accomplishment of her purpose, she finally lulled him to sleep, with his head in her lap, and then stabbed him "through and through." She composed and smoothed the curls upon "his comely head," admiring to see that "he looked so grand when he was dead;" and wrapping him in a winding-sheet, she carried him to his proud ancestral hall, and "laid him at his mother's feet."

We have no space to enter into any psycholo gical examination of the peculiar character of this sister; with regard, however, to her actions, the view that seems most feasible, and the most poetical, if not equally tragic, is that she did not actually commit the self-abandonment and murder; but went mad on the death of her sister, and imagined in her delirium all that has been related. But "read the part" how we may, there never was a deeper thing told in briefer words. The later poems of Tennyson have exemplified more strikingly, his tendency to, and his power in, the treatment of tragic subjects. The

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one most penetrating to the heart, the most continuous, and most persevered in with passionate intensity, so that it becomes ineradicable from the sensibility and the memory, is "Locksley Hall." The story is very simple; not narrative, but told by the soliloquy of anguish poured out by a young man amid the hollow weed-grown courts of a ruined mansion. He loved passionately; his love was returned; and the girl married another—a dull, every-day sort of a husband. The story is a familiar one in the world-too familiar; but in Tennyson's hands it becomes invested with yet deeper life, a vitality of hopeless desolation. The sufferer invoking his betrayer, her beauty and her falsehood, by the memory of their former happiness, says that such a memory is the very crown of sorrow:

"Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,

In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Like a dog he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,

Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,

To thy widowed marriage-pillow, to the tears that thou shalt weep.

Thou shalt hear the "Never! never!" whispered by the phantom years,

And a song from out the distance, in the ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain."

Of similar character and depth of tone is the poem of "Lady Clara Vere de Vere," who impelled to suicide one of the victims of her heartless beauty. The long-drawn music of her very name is suggestive of the proud pedigree to which she was ready to offer up any sacrifice. For continuity of affectionate tenderness and deep pathos in the closing scene, we should mention "The Lord of Burleigh," and the idyl of "Dora," the style of both being studiously artless, the latter, indeed, having a scriptural simplicity which presents a curious contrast to the poet's early

manner.

We cannot pass by our especial favorite, The Lotos-Eaters. This is poetry of the very highest order-in every way charming-subject and treatment both. The state of mind described, is one which every cultivated mind will understand and enter into, and which a poet, in particular, must thoroughly sympathize with--that lassitude which is content to look upon the swift-flowing current of life, and let it flow, refusing to embark

thereon-a lassitude which is not wholly torpor, and which has mental energy enough to cull a justification for itself from all its stores of philosophy-a lassitude charming as the last thought, before sleep quite folds us in its safe and tried oblivion. No need to eat of the Lotos, or to be cast upon the enchanted island, to feel this gentle despondency, this resignation made up of resistless indolence and well-reasoned despair. Yet these are circumstances which add greatly to the poetry of our picture. To the band of weary navigators who had disembarked upon this land

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IV.

"Hateful is the dark-blue sky,

Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah! why
Should life all labor be?

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasures can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace

In ever climbing up the climbing wave?

All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave

In silence-ripen, fall, and cease:

Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease!"

VI.

"Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,

And dear the last embraces of our wives,

And their warm tears: but all hath suffered change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold

Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle ?
Let what is broken so remain.

The gods are hard to reconcile :
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labor unto aged breath."

VIII.

"We have had enough of action, and of motion, we Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined, On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind." There are no qualities in Tennyson more characteristic than those of delicacy and refinement. How very few are the poets who could equally well have dealt with the dangerous loveliness of the story of "Godiva."

"Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath
She lingered, looking like a summer moon
Half-dipt in cloud : anon she shook her head,
And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reached
The gateway," &c.

The mind which can force up a vital flower of ideality through the heavy fermenting earth of

human experiences, must have a deep intellectual root and active life. Among these experiences we must of course include those inner struggles of the soul with its own thoughts; dealings with the revelations that seem to come from other states of existence; difficult contests between the mortal promptings and resistances that breed so many doubts and hopes, and things inscrutable; and thoughts that often present themselves in appalling whispers, against the will and general tone and current of the mind. Tennyson's intellectual habit is of great strength; his thoughts can grow with large progressive purpose either up or down, and the peculiarity is that in him they commonly do so to a "haunting music." No argument was ever conducted in verse with more admirable power and clearness than that of the "Two Voices." The very poetry of it magnifies itself into a share of the demonstration: take away the poetry and the music, and you essentially diminish the logic.

Though Tennyson often writes, or rather sings apparently from his own personality, you generally find that he does not refer to himself, but to some imaginary person. He permits the reader to behold the workings of his individuality, only by its reflx action. He comes out of himself to sing a poem, and goes back again; or rather sends his song out from his shadow under the leaf, as other nightingales do; and refuses to be expansive to his public, opening his heart on the hinges of music, as other poets do. We know nothing of him except that he is a poet; and this, although it is something to be sure of, does not help us to pronounce distinctly upon what may be called the mental intention of his poetry. Tennyson gives one the idea of a poet who is not in a fixed attitude; not resolute as to means, not determined as to end-sure of his power, sure of his activity, but not sure of his objects. We seem to look on while a man stands in preparation for some loftier course-while he tries the edge of his various arms and examines the wheels of his chariots, and meditates, full of youth and capability, down the long slope of glory. He constantly gives us the impression of something greater than his works. And this must be his own soul. He may do greater things than he has yet done; but we do not expect it. If he do no more, he has already done enough to deserve the lasting love and admiration of posterity.