 Section 24 of Beacon Lights of History, Volume 13, Great Writers by John Lord. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Kay Hand. Alfred Lord Tennyson, Part 1, 1809-1892, The Spirit of Modern Poetry by G. Mercer Adam. Of Tennyson, what can one write freshly today that will not seem but an echo of what has been said or written of England's noble singer? Who, on the death of Wordsworth, now over a half a century ago, assumes the official bays of the English laureate's ship. Personal homage, of course, one can pay to the illustrious name, so dear to the heart of the English-speaking race. But how freshly or vitally can any writer now speak of that magnificent body of his verse, which is the glory of his age? Of the nobility and knightly virtues of its author's character? Of the splendor of its genius, or of the breadth of intellectual and spiritual interests, which was so signally manifested in all that Tennyson thought and wrote? Among the Beacon Lights, in the present series of volumes, the laureate of the age has not hitherto been included, and to fill the gap the writer of this sketch has ventured, not of course to say all that might be said of the Great Poet, but to modestly deal with the man in his arch, so that neither his era nor his work shall go uncronicaled, or fail of some recognition, however inadequate in these pages. Tennyson's supreme excellence, it is admitted, lies not so much in his themes as in his transcendent art. It is this that has given him his hold upon a cultured age, and one for him immortality. His work is the perfection of literary form, and in his lyrical pieces especially, his melody is exquisite. Not less masterly is his power of construction, while his sensibility to beauty is phenomenal. His secluded life brought him close to nature's heart, and made him familiar with her every voice and mood. In interpreting these, much of the charm lies in the fidelity of his descriptions, and in the surpassing beauty of the word painting. In the Shakespearean sense, he lacked the dramatic faculty, but he had slender gifts of invention and creation. But broad, if not always strong, was his intelligence, and keen his interest in the problems of the time. Though living apart from the world he was yet of it, and in many of his poems may be traced not only the doings, but the thoughts and tendencies of his age. His Christianity, though undogmatic, was real and pervasive, and his love for nature was a devotion. In national affairs, as befitted the official singer of his country, witness his fine ode on the death of the Duke of Wellington, he showed himself the historic as well as the modern Englishman, and great was his reverence for law and freedom. Attractive also, if at times somewhat commonplace, is the quiet domestic sphere which Tennyson has hallowed in the many modern idols, which depict the joys and sorrows of humble life. No trait in the poet's many-sided character is more beautiful than the sympathy he has manifested in these poems with the world's toilers, while nothing could well be more touching than the pathos with which he invests their simple annals. Typical of the Victorian age in which he lived, Tennyson is also representative of its highest thought and culture. This is seen not only in the thought of his verse, but in its blended forms, and especially in the technical equipment of the poet. In his dialogues there is much movement and action, and he had consummate skill in handling of meters. Few poets have approached him in the successful writing of blank verse, which has a delightful cadence as well as calm strength. Above all his gifts, he was an artist in words, his ear being most sensitively attuned and his taste pure and refined for the delicate artistry of the poet's work. In this respect he is a matchless literary workman. Besides the music of his verse, his thought is ever high and in his serious moods consecrated to noble and reverent purposes. In the midst of the negations and convulsive movements of his day, his spirit is always serene and his thought, while at times dreamily melancholy, is conserving and full of faith's highest assurance. His sympathy with his fellow man was keen and wide-sold, and though he stood aloof from the conflict and struggle of his day, he was far from indifferent to its movements, and with high purpose strove, if not to direct, at least to reflect them. This was especially characteristic of the man, and in the conflict with doubt no poet has more keenly interpreted the mental struggles of the thoughtful soul and the deep underlying spirit of his time, or more beneficially given the age in assured ground of faith while conserving its highest and dearest hopes. Happily too, unlike many poets, his own character was lofty and blameless, and hence his message comes with more consistency, as well as with a higher inspiration and power. Nor is the message the less impressive for the note of honest doubt which finds utterance in many a poem, or for the intimation of a creed that is at once liberal and conservative. With the evidences before the reader that the poet himself had his own soul, wrestling, and periods of mental conflict, his counselings of courage and faith are all the more effective, as they are in unison with his belief in the upward progress of the race, and his unshaken trust in a higher power. Lacking in intensity of passion and dramatic force, Tennyson here again is but typical of his era, to him one of reposeful content and calm reasoning progress. Of permanent lasting value much of his verse undoubtedly is, but not all of it will escape the indifference of posterity or the measuring rod and censure, it may be, of the future critic. Yet not the stirring strains or the careless rapture of other and earlier poets of the motherland, his characteristic is more contemplative and brooding. Yet his range is unusually comprehensive and his power varied and sustained, as well as marked by the highest qualities of rhythmic beauty. In the idol, where he especially shines, we have much that is lovely and limpid, with the bounding instances of that felicitous word painting for which he was noted. This is especially seen in the simple pastoral idols such as Dora, the May Queen, and the Miller's Daughter, or in those tender lyrics such as Mariana, Sir Galahad, the Dying Swan, and the Talking Oak. In the ballads and songs, how felicitous again is the poet's work and how rich yet malefoulous is the strain. Had Tennyson written nothing else but these, with the verse included in the volumes issued by him in 1832 and 1842, how high would he have been placed in the choir of song and how supreme should we have deemed his art? In The Princess Alone, there are songs that would have made any poet's reputation, while for music and color, and especially for perfection of poetic workmanship, they are almost matchless in their beauty. Fortunately, however, the poet was to give us much even beyond these surpassingly beautiful things and make a more unique and distinctive contribution to the verse of his era. In the years that followed the production of his early writings, the poet matures and thought as his art ripens and reaches still higher qualities of craftsmanship. Ray Clues as he was, he more over had his experiences of life and drank deeply of sorrow's cup, as we see in Memoriam. That noble tribute to his youthful friend, Arthur Hallam, with its grand hymnal qualities and powerful and reverent lessons for an age shifting in its beliefs and unconfirmed in its faith. In later work from his pen, we see also the laureate, for he has now received official recognition from his nation, in his relations to the culture as well as to the thought of his time, keeping pace with the age and all its complex engrossments and problems. This is shown in much and varied work turned out with its author's loving interest in the poetic art and with the characteristic delicacy and finish. The most important labor of this later time includes the Princess, Maude and other poems, Enoch Arden, the dramas Beckett, Queen Mary and Harold, Tiresias, Demeter, the Foresters, but above all and most notably that grand epic of King Arthur's time, The Idols of the King. In the latter, the most characteristic and perhaps the most permanent of Tennyson's work, the poet manifests his historic sense and love for England's legendary past and achieves his design not only to glorify it, but to imbue it with a deep ethical motive and underlying purpose, the expression of his own chivalrous nightly soul and strenuous thoughtful and blameless life. In these splendid tales of night errant tree, we have the full flower of the poet's genius narrated in the true romantic spirit, but with an ideality and imagination quite Tennysonian and with a spiritualistic touch and harmony with the voice of the age that reminds us that our little systems have their day, they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of thee, and thou, O Lord, art more than they. It is with such themes and speculations that Tennyson has powerfully and impressively influenced his age. Beyond and above the mere artistry of the poet, we recognize his interest in man's higher spiritual being, his love for nature, and awe in contemplating the heights and depths of infinite time and space, ever looking upward and inward at the mysteries of the world behind the phenomena of sense. It is difficult to set in theological terms to define the poet's creed though we know that he was won by the broad church teachings of his friends, Frederick Robinson and Tennyson Maurice, and had himself many a battle to fight with honest doubts until, as his crossing the bar shows us, he is finally conquered and delayed them. But while there is an absence of definite doctrine in his work, there is no question about his religious convictions or of his belief in the eternal verities, the eminence of God in man and the universe. Throughout his poems he assumes the existence of a great spirit and recognizes that our souls are part of him, however faith at times seems to veil her face from the poet and all appears in mystery, though a mystery presided over by infinite power and love. The great problem of metaphysics and of men's origin and destiny we are told occupied much of his thought, and he dwelt upon them with eager and tense interest and touched upon them with great candor, earnestness, and truthfulness. No sophistry could shake his belief in man's immortality, for without belief in this doctrine the human race he was convinced had not incentive enough to virtue, while all man's inspirations were otherwise meaningless. For the doctrine of evolution in its materialistic aspect he had nothing but scorn, though he accepted it in the more spiritual guise with which Russell Wallace propounded it. If we come from the brutes we are nevertheless linked with the divine he believed, and it was the divine in man that was to conquer the brute within him, and in the upward struggle work out salvation. So in the realm of physical science, on the principles of which, as Huxley tells us, he had great grasp, the poet, while appalled by the mystery, accepts and indeed rejoices in its truths, though he cannot acquiesce in a godless world or in the denial of a life to come, in which the race, through infinite love, shall be brought into union with God. But leaving here Tennyson's speculations and beliefs, a most interesting part of the poet's analytical and reflective character, let us look for a little at the man personally and record briefly the chief incidents in his quiet, though ideal, home life. To those who know the memoir by his son, Hallam Tennyson, a memoir that, while paying honor to filial reverence and devotion, is at the same time and in all respects most worthy of its high theme, the events in the poet's life will hardly need dwelling upon, though they throw much light on and impart the distinction of a high dignity to the laureate's work. The life Hallam Tennyson describes was, we know, not lived in the public eye, and was wholly without sensational events or any of the vapid interests which usually attach to a man whose name is, in a special sense, public property, and about whom the world was eagerly and often officiously curious. The life the poet lived in a popular sense lacked all that usually attracts the masses, for he was personally little known to his generation, rarely seen among the large gatherings of the people, and great Englishman as he was, was almost a stranger, in his later years at least, in the English metropolis, or if we accept the seats of the universities in any of the chief towns of the kingdom. And yet, in another and higher sense, the century has hardly known among its many intellectual forces one that has been more influential in its effect upon literary art or in certain directions has more potently influenced the ideals and more profoundly given expression to the ethical and philosophic thought of the time. Secluded as his life was, it was not one of obscurity or of mere asceticism. On the contrary, it was rich in all the elements that make for a great reputation, and ever devoted to strenuous elevating purpose and to an ideal poetic career. So far as his tastes and opportunity offered Tennyson's life, moreover, was enriched by many wise and noble friendships, and by intimacy, with not a few of the best and most thoughtful minds of his age. It was spent, we rejoice to think also, in unceasing toil in and for his high art, with a resulting productiveness which proved the extent and varied range of his labours as well as the mastery of his craft. Until the appearance of the biography referred to, we had known the laureate almost wholly through his books. Now, thanks to the authoritative record of his accomplished surviving son, we know the poet as he lived and feel that behind his writings there is a personality of the most interesting and impressive kind. It is a personality such as consorts with the opinions which most thoughtful readers of Tennyson's writings must have had of one of the greatest and serenest minds of the age. A poet who, aside from the splendour of his workmanship and the beauty and melody of his verse, has greatly enriched the poetic literature of the century and has, we feel, given profound thought to the intellectual problems and spiritual aspirations of his era. Nor does the memoir, as a revelation of the poet's intellectual and personal life, fall away on any page of it from the high plain on which it has been prepared and written. There is no undue invasion which a son's pride might be apt to make of domestic privacy, and no dealing with irrelevant topics or elaboration of those set forth with becoming modesty and restraint. Far less is there the discussion of any subject for a trivial or vain purpose. Throughout the work we meet with no unnecessary lifting of veils or treatment of themes merely to satisfy morbid curiosity. Everywhere there is the evidence of sound judgment, unimpeachable taste, and a wholesome sanity. This is especially the case in the frank revelation of the poet's views on religion and his attitude towards scientific and theological thought, to which we have ourselves referred. In this respect a large debt is due to the biographer for setting before the reader, not only the high ethical purpose which Tennyson had in view in selecting the themes of his poems and in the mode of handling them, but, as we have said, in showing us what beyond, per adventure, were his religious opinions, and, despite a certain curting of gloom, how profoundly he was influenced by faith in the divine life. Nor is the least interest in the memoir to be found in the light the biographer throws on the poet's writings as a whole, how they were conceived and elaborated, and on the often hidden meaning that underlies some of the most thoughtful verse. This, to students of the laureate's writings, is of high value, in addition to the service rendered by the biographer in tracing his father's poetic work, the influences which fashioned it, and the pains he took to give its marvelous beauty and artistic finish of expression. It is this instructive as well as skilled and dignified treatment, with the vast literary and deep personal interest in the life that will commend the memoir to all who are proud of the laureate's fame, and wished to have nothing written that was unworthy of either the poet or the man, or that would in the least attract from his laurels. Nor does the restraint which the biographer imposes upon himself conceal from us the man in his human aspects, or lead him to set before the reader an imaginary rather than a veritable and real portraiture. We have a picture, it is true, of an almost ideal domestic life and of a man of rare gifts and fine culture, whose work and career have been and are the pride and glory of the English-speaking race. But we have also the story of an author not free from human weaknesses, and though endowed with manifold and great gifts, yet who had to labor long and earnestly to perfect himself in his art, and in his early years had much discouragement and not a little adversity to contend with. With all the toil and stress his early years had known, when success came to the poet no one was less unspoiled by it, and when sunshine fell upon and gilded his life, maturing years brought him serenity, happiness, and at length, peace. Alfred Tennyson was born at his father's rectory, Summersby Lincolnshire, August 6, 1809. He was the fourth of twelve children, seven of whom were sons, two of them, Frederick and Charles, being endowed like Alfred with poetic gifts. The poet's mother, a woman of sweet and tender disposition, had much to do in molding the future laureate's character, while from his father, a man of fine culture, he received not only much of his education, but his bent towards a recluse, bookish career. Alfred was from his earliest days a retired shy child fond of reading and given to rhyming, and with a characteristic love of nature, and of quiet, rural life. Later on he had a passion for the sea coast, and for those scenes of storm and stress about the sea-girt shores of Old England, which he was so feelingly, and with such poetic beauty to depict in sea-dreams, and in those incomparable songs embody mints at once of sorrow and of faith, break, break, break, and crossing the bar. Besides the education he received from his scholarly father, and at a school at Louth for four years, young Tennyson spent some years at Trinity College, Cambridge, where, though he did not take a degree, he won in 1829 the Chancellor's Medal for the best English poem of the year, the subject of which was Timbuktu. At college he had the good fortune to number among his friends several men who later in life were, like himself, to rise to eminence, such as Henry Alfred, afterwards Dean of Canterbury, R. C. Trench, later Archbishop of Dublin, C. Maraville, historian and Dean of E. Lee, Moncton Mills, Lord Houghton, James Spetting, editor of Lord Bacon's Works, Macaulay, Thackeray, and most endeared of all, Arthur Henry Hallam, son of the historian, whose memory Tennyson has immortalized in, in memoriam. With him at college was also his brother Charles, one year his senior, with whom he collaborated in the collection of verse, issued in 1827 under the title of Poems by Two Brothers. In 1830 Tennyson made a journey to the Pyrenees with Arthur Hallam, who was engaged to the poet's sister Amelia, and in the same year he published an independent volume entitled Poems Chiefly Lyrical. In this, his first venture alone in poetry, and in another issued in 1832, Tennyson was to manifest to the world his poetic powers and art, for they contained, besides much rhythmical and contemplative verse, such poems as Mariana, Clarabel, Lillian, Lady Claire, The Lotus Eaters, A Dream of Pair Women, The May Queen, and The Miller's Daughter. In spite of the great promise bodied forth in these works, the volumes were subject to not a little unfavorable criticism, which state his further publishing for a period of 10 years, though not the furtherance of his creative work, nor his enthusiastic efforts towards increasing the perfection of his art. It was not until 1842 that the poet again appeared in print, this time with a volume to which he appended his name, Poems by Alfred Tennyson, and which gave him high rank among the acknowledged singers of his day, Woodsworth, Southie, Landor, Campbell, Rogers, and Lee Hunt in England, and in the New World, Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Whittier, and Emerson. The poet to contemporaries of his youth, Byron, Scott, Colridge, Shelley, and Keats, had by this time all died, and in 1843, Southie died when Woodsworth, whom Tennyson referenced, became Poet Laureate. The gap occasioned by the death of these early English poets of the century was now to be filled in large measure by Tennyson, though among the writers of song to arise were the Brownings, Rosetti, Matthew Arnold, and Swinburne. Critical appreciation of the volume of 1842 was happily encouraging to the poet. Indeed, it was most gratifying for its many remarkable beauties were now justly and adequately appraised, particularly such fine new themes as the volume contained. Ulysses, Godiva, The Two Voices, The Talking Oak, Onan, Loxley Hall, The Vision of Sin, and Mort D'Arthur, the germ of the future idols of the king. Nor on this side the Atlantic did the new volume lack substantial recognition and from such competent critics as Emerson and Hawthorne, while among his English contemporaries Tennyson became, if we accept for the time Woodsworth, the acknowledged head of English song. At this period the poet resided in London or its neighborhood, his family home in Lincolnshire having been broken up in 1837, six years after the death of his father. Here, in spite of the secluded life he led, he became a notable figure in literary circles and greatly increased the range of his friends, correspondence, and admirers. Among the latter were the Carliles, Thomas, and his clever wife Jane being especially drawn to the poet, and to them we owe interesting sketches of the personal appearance of Tennyson at this time. Mrs. Carlile in one of her delightful letters gossiping about Dickens, Bulwer-Litton, and Tennyson, esteems the latter the greatest genus of the three, adding that, besides, he is a very handsome man and a noble-hearted one, with something of the gypsy in his appearance which for me is perfectly charming. This is the historian, her husband's piece of portraiture. A fine, large-featured dim-eyed, bronze-colored, shaggy-headed man, dusty, smoky, free and easy, who swims outwardly and inwardly with great composure in an articulate element as of tranquil chaos and tobacco smoke. Great now and then when he does emerge, a most restful, brotherly, solid-hearted man. Another portrait we have from the Chelsea philosopher and a scorner of Shams, which describes the poet very humanly as, one of the finest-looking men in the world, the great shock of rough, dusky, dark hair, bright, laughing hazel eyes, massive, alkaline 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 in between. Speech and speculation free and plenteous? I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe. We shall see what he will grow to. Besides the Carliles and other notable contemporaries, Tennyson numbered at this time among his intimates John Sterling, whose life was written by the author of Sartor Rosartus, James Spetting, Bacon's editor, who wrote a fine critique of the 1842 volume of poems for the Edinburgh Review, Aubrey Devere, Edmund Lushington, A.P. Stanley, afterwards Dean of Westminster, and Edward Fitzgerald, the future translator of the Rubayet, or Quot Trains of the Persian poet Omar Kayam. These were all enthusiastic admirers of Tennyson's work and art and his close personal friends who have left on record many interesting sketches of the poet in their published writings or in letters to him, and especially in reminiscences furnished for the memoir by the poet's son. Nine years before the appearance of the 1842 volume of Tennyson's verse, the poet's bosom friend Arthur Hallam died at an immature age at Vienna, and his death was the subject of much-brooding and noble, allegic verse written, as was Milton's Lycetus, to commemorate the loss of one very dear to the poet. In Immemorium, as all know, Tennyson sought to assuage his grief and give fine artistic expression to his profound sorrow at the loss of his companion and friend. But the work is more than a labored monument of woe, since it enshrines reflections of the most exalted and inspiring character on the internally momentous themes of life, death, and immortality. The work was published in 1850, and it at once challenged the admiration of the world for the perfection of its art, no less than for its high contemplative beauty. This was the year when Wordsworth passed to the grave, and Tennyson in his room was given the English laureate ship. And this year also we find him happily married to Emily S. Selwood, a lady of Berks, to whom the poet had been engaged since 1837, with his bridey took up house at Twickenham, near London, where his son Hallom Tennyson was born in 1852. In the following year, he removed to Farringford, on the Isle of Wight, which was to be his home for 40 years, and where, as his son tells us, some of his best known works were written. Here in 1854, his second son Lionel was born, whose young life of promise was terminated by Jungle Fever 32 years later on a return voyage from India, all that was mortal of him finding repose in the depths of the Red Sea. To complete the chief incidents in the poet's personal career, we may hear record that while Tennyson acquired another home at Aldworth Surrey, where he died October 6, 1892, followed some four years later by his wife, his happiest days were spent at Farringford, the pilgrimage place of many eminent worshippers of the poet's muse, where it was dispensed in an ostentatious but open-handed and genial British hospitality. It should be added that besides the perquisites which attached to the office of the poet laureate, Tennyson was given from 1845 a pension of 200 pounds, $1,000, and that while in 1865 he refused a barren sea, in 1884 he accepted a peerage, and had the honor of burial, October 12, 1892, in Westminster Abbey, end of section 24. Section 25 of Beacon Lights of History, volume 13, Great Writers by John Lorde. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hand. Alfred Lord Tennyson, part two. We now revert to the poet's early, or rather to his middle-age creative years, into a resume of his principal writings with a brief running comment on his message and art. In 1847, three years before he became a laureate, he published The Princess, a charming narrative poem in blank verse which though it abounds in fine descriptions and has an obvious moral in the treatment of the theme, the woman question of today, is inherently lacking in unity and strength as well as weak in the depicting of the characters. In later editions the poem was amended in several faulty respects and was especially enriched by the insertion between the cantos of many lovely and now familiar songs, which serve not only to bind together the whole structure of the poem, but to enhance and enforce its high moral meaning. And the analysis of The Princess is here deemed unnecessary, since it must not only be familiar to most readers of the poet's works, but familiar also in the varied annotated editions of such editors as Rolf, Woodbury, and Wilson Farrand. Familiar it is believed also that it will be to Tennysonian students in The Study of the Princess, with critical and explanatory notes by Dr. S. E. Dawson of Montréal, now of Ottawa, Canada, an able commentary which received the approval of Lord Tennyson himself and elicited from him a highly interesting letter to the author on points in the poem either misunderstood or not discerningly apprehended by other critics and reviewers. The purport of the poem it may be said, however, is to frown upon revolutionary attempts to alter the position of women of scholastically be-gowned and college-capped dames who would seek by other than nature's ways to put the sex upon an equality with man, while repressing their own individuality, doing violence to their maternal instincts and trampling upon their gracious household ways. In the handling of The Medley, Tennyson brings into exercise not only his far-seeing powers, which were greatly in advance of his time, but his gifts of railery and humor, especially in the early divisions of the poem, as well as his high series of motives in the moral lessons to which he points in the later cantos, where he aims at the elevation of women in correspondence with the diversity of their natures, for as he himself says, woman is not undeveloped man, but diverse. His ideal of perfect womanhood he would attain through the awakening power of the affections and the transforming power of love, rather than by ignoring the difference of physique, founding women's universities, and becoming blue-stocking high priestesses of learning. Of The Medley of Characters in the poem, Poet Princes in Disguise at the College, Violet Hooded Lady Principles, with Prudes for Proctors, Dowagers for Deans, and Sweet Girl Graduates in Their Golden Hair. It is Lady Psyche's child that is the true effective heroine of the story, as Dr. Dawson aptly points out. Ridiculous in the lecture room, the babe in the poem, as in the songs, is made the central point upon which the plot turns, for the unconscious child is the concrete embodiment of nature herself, clearing away all merely intellectual theories by her silent influence. This is the explanation then of the appearance of the babe, symbol of the power and tenderness of nature, in critical passages of the poem, as well as in the unsurpassably beautiful intercalary songs, for it is the child that enables the poet to soften the prince's nature towards the prince, and to affect the reconciliation between the princess and Lady Psyche, while imparting beauty as well as high meaning in the recital of the incidence and development of the tale. In Memoriam, as we have stated, appeared in 1850 and was unique in its appeal to the mind of the era as a stately meditative poem on a single theme, the death of the poet's friend Arthur Hallam. The English language, if we accept Milton's Lysidas and hymn to the nativity, and Wordsworth's grand ode on intimations of immortality, has no poem so noble or sole faultless in its art as this magnificent series of detached elegies. The high thought, philosophic reflection and passionate religious sentiment that marked the whole work added to the exquisiteness of the versification, place it well nigh supreme in the literature of elegiac poetry. Its grave majestic hymnal measure adds to its solemn beauty and statelyness, while the varied phases of spiritualized thought and emotional grief, which find expression in the poem, seem to elevate it in its harmonies to the rank of a profound solemn chant from the choir of heaven. In the sumptuously embellished edition of the elegi, embodying Mr. Harry Fenn's drawings with the sympathetic preface by the reverend Dr. Henry Van Dyke, there is a brief but luminous analysis of the nine divisions of the poem, or commentary on the great classic. To those whose desire to read the great elegi understandably, the value of Dr. Van Dyke's work is earnestly commended, since without this commentary, or such as to be obtained in other critical sources, there is much of poetic beauty, of sorrow brooding thought, and especially of emotional reflection on life, death, and immortality, in the 130 lyrics of which the poem consists, which will be lost to even the thoughtful reader. The poem, as a critic truthfully observes, has done much to express and to consolidate all that is best in the life of England, its domestic affection, its patriotic feeling, its healthful morality, its rational and earnest religion. The sentimental metrical romance Maud appeared in 1855, the year of the Crimean War, with some additional poems including The Charge of the Light Brigade, written after Raglan's repulse of the Russians at Balaklava, and the fine Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. The lyrical love drama Maud, we are told, was one of Tennyson's favorite productions, of which he was once to read parts to his guests. As the poet himself has said of the monodrama, it is a little hamlet, the history of a morbid poetic soul under the blighting influence of a recklessly speculative age. He is the air of madness and egotist with the makings of a cynic, raised to sanity by a pure and holy love which elevates his whole nature, passing from the heights of triumph to the lowest depths of misery, driven into madness by the loss of her whom he has loved, and when he has at length passed through the fiery furnace and has recovered his reason, giving himself up to work for the good of mankind through the unselfishness born of his great passion. The poem, when it appeared, was reviled by some critics as an allegory of the war with Russia, and they did it thought they were the injustice of supposing that he lauded war for the war's sake, instead of, as is the case, applauding war only in the defense of liberty. Apart from this misunderstanding, due to abhorrence of the war frenzy of the period, the poem has outlived the mistaken objections to it when it appeared, and is now admired in its vindicated light, and especially for the rich and copious beauty manifest throughout the work, and for the magnificent lyric art with which it is composed. We now come to Tennyson's masterpiece The Idols of the King, an epic of chivalry interpreted as personifying in its various characters the soul at war with the senses. These appeared during the years 1859 and 1872. Each of the Idols, which has a connecting thread binding it to its fellow allegory, takes its plot or fable from the legendary lore that has clustered round the name of Arthur, mythical king of the Britons, about the era of the first invasion by the English. Out of the massive material which was gathered by Sir Thomas Mallory for his prose history of Arthur and his knights, Tennyson takes the chief incidents and noblest heroic traits of character in the legends and blends them in a fashion of his own, steeping them in an atmosphere which his imagination creates, and lighting up all with a passion and glory of nightly adventure, as well as with a chasteness, purity, and high fervor of ethical thought that must perpetuate the romance as he has given it to us until all time. The sections of the work as it now stands, in addition to its introductory dedication to the late Prince Consort and the closing poem to the late Queen Victoria are as follows. The coming of Arthur, which relates the mystery of the birth of the king, his marriage to Guinevere, daughter of Leo Drogen, king of Camillard, and the wonders attending his crowning and establishment on the throne. Next comes Gareth and Lynette, a tale of love and scorn, and of the conflict between a false pride and a true ambition. So this is appended the marriage of Guiraint, of Arthur's court, and a member of the Great Order of the Round Table. Next follows Guiraint and Enid, Enid, the gentle and timid, whom Guiraint has married after wooing the haughty Lynette. A tale of pure and loyal womanhood darkened for a while by the clouds of jealousy and suspicion, yet closing happily long after the spiteful whispers had died down. And Guiraint, assured of Enid's fealty, had ruled his kingdom well, and gone forth to crown a happy life with a fair death against the heathen of the Northern Sea, fighting for the blameless king. The next idol relates how the venerable magician Merlin succumbs to the thrall of the wily harlot Vivian, decked in her rare robe of samites and yields to her the charm which was his secret. Lancelot and Elaine follows with its conflict between the virgin innocence of Elaine, the lily maid of Astelot, and the guilty passion of the noble though airing Lancelot. To this, in order, succeeds the holy grail, telling of the vain quest of Arthur's knights for the sacred relic. Despite its mystic character, this is admittedly one of the finest of the series of idols, and rich in its spiritual teaching, that the heavenly vision is to be seen only by the eyes of purity and grace. Pelius and Atar is a tale of dull, showing the evil at work at the court and the wrecking effect of another woman's perfidy. The last tournament has for its hero the court fool, who amid the treason of Arthur's knights is firm in his loyal allegiance to the king. In contrast to him is Sir Tristam, who, despite his prowess in jousts on the tilting field, is, one to whom faith is foolishness and the higher life in idle delusion. The climax is reached in Guinevere, whom, in spite of her faithlessness and guilty intrigue with Lancelot, Arthur with his great high soul pittingly loves and forgives. The end comes with the sad though shadowy passing of Arthur, the royal barge mysteriously carrying him out into the beyond, whence issues sounds of hail and greeting to the victor hero, as if some fair city were one voice around a king returning from his wars. In 1864, Tennyson published Enoch Arden, an idol of hearth, depicting a pathetic incident in a seafarer's career of much simple idyllic beauty. The poem has some fine descriptive passages and many examples of the poet's rich word painting in treating of the splendid tropic scenery among which the mariner is for the time cast. The volume contained also some minor pieces including the dialect poem The Northern Farmer with its humorous rendering of Yolkel's speech. This was followed, 1875 to 84, by three dramas on English historical themes which, as the poet had not, as we have already hinted, the gifts of a Shakespeare were somewhat unsuccessful, though written despite Tennyson's advanced years with much fine force and vividness of character delineation. These dramas, to enumerate to them in their historic order, were Harold, Beckett, and Queen Mary. Beckett is the best and most ambitious of them, though not, as Queen Mary is, a play designed for the stage. It is a vigorous Englishman's closet study of a prolonged and bitter struggle, the conflict in Henry II's time between the church and the crown, as exhibited in the person and dominant ecclesiastical attitude of the audacious prelate, who met his tragic end by Canterbury's altar. Harold strikingly realizes to the modern reader the stirring activities of a strenuous time, that of the English conquest by Norman William, opposed to the death by Harold at Sennlach in 1066. The drama is as rich in character as it is swift and energetic in action. Queen Mary deals with the religious and political dissensions, the struggle between the papacy and the reformation, of Mary Tudor's era, with her love for and marriage with Philip of Spain, and her hopeless yearning for an heir to the double crown of England and Spain. An important and prized addition to our English literature the drama undoubtedly is, but it is not more than a careful, accurate, and elaborate historical study. It lacks, both in spirit and movement, the characteristics of the Shakespearean drama. Its characters, however, are vividly brought out, and its situations are often picturesque and telling. The personages, moreover, are wanting in the play of creative effect, and the incidents lack the stir of inventive resource. Further, though the story of Mary's life is essentially dramatic, and the incidents of her reign are tragic in the extreme, the poet does not seem to have extracted from either that which goes to the making of a great drama. This evidently is the result of following too faithfully the events of history and the records of the time, as well as, in some degree, from the want of sympathy, which Tennyson could not impart with the leading characters and their action. Still, much is made of the materials, and though the personages and incidents appear in the narrative in the neutral tense of history, yet the period is made to reappear with a freshness and distinctness which, while it satisfies the scholar, gives a true charm to every lover of the drama. Again and again, as we read, are we reminded of the laureate's rare political fancy and find literary instinct, and the dialogues contain many passages of striking thought and noble utterance. But the work is overcast by the great gloom of its central figure, the gloom of bigotry, passion, jealousy, disappointment, and despair, whichever environs the miserable queen. And much, though the poet has striven to brighten the picture and awaken sympathy for the weakness of the woman, who royal mistress though she was, could not command her love to be requited, the poetic measure of his lines roughens and hardens to the close when the curtain falls on what is felt to be a tragic and unlovely life. We can only briefly refer to the other dramatic personae introduced to us, who are among the noble historical characters that figure during Mary Tudor's reign. They are those who take part in the incidents, religious, civil, and political, of the period, and are for the most part, both in speech and bearing, the portraits familiar to us in Mr. Fraud's history. Of these, the most pleasing is the princess Elizabeth, whose portrait is drawn with masterly skill, and engages our interest as the fortunes of its original oscillates. Twixed axe and crown. A Tudor schooled by the shadow of death, a bowl into glancing across the Tudor. But aside from the interest and the safety of her person, which is in constant jeopardy from the jealousy of her half-sister, Elizabeth wins upon the reader by her modest, maidenly bearing, her frankness of manner, and by a playfulness of disposition, which readily adapts itself to the restraints which the queen is ever placing upon her person, and which endears her to the people, who could the hated Mary be got rid of would feign become her subjects. The civil strife of the period furnishes material for some powerful passages, which are wrought up with excellent effect, and in this connection, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Thomas Stafford, the Earl of Devon, Sir William Cecil, and other historical personages appear upon the stage. The other incidents introduced are those which attached themselves to the religious persecutions of the time, and which brought Cranmer to the stake, and give play to the papal intrigues of pole, gardener, and the emissaries of the Spanish court. The second and third scenes in the fourth act devoted to Cranmer, which detail his martyrdom, are hardly so satisfactory as we think they might have been, though the poet here again follows closely the historical accounts. The scenes, however, give occasion for the introduction of a couple of local gossips whose provincial dialect and keen interest in the national and religious policy of the time, here, as in occasional street scenes, are cleverly portrayed. This sapient reflection in the mouth of one of these gossips, Tib, is a specimen at hand. A burnin' and a burnin' in a makin' old voc matter and matter, but take my word, vort, Joan, and I beent wrong not twice a ten year. The burnin' of the old archbishop ill burn the poep out of this earland forever and ever. Philip we have not spoken of, but he feels such a hateful niche in the historical gallery of the time, and the poet introduces him but to act his pitiful role that we pass him by, though many of the grandest passages in the drama are those which give expression to Mary's passionate love for him, and her longing desire for an issue of their marriage, which afterwards culminates in her madness and death. We have to speak of but one other character in the drama whose death, it has been said, was sufficient to honor and to dishonor an age. The beautiful Lady Jane Gray appears for a little among the shadows of the poem and moves to her tragic fate. Seventeen a rose of grace, girl never breathed to rival such a rose, rose never blue that equalled such a bud. A few songs of genuine tenisonian harmony, pitched in the keys that most fittingly suit the singer's mood, are interspersed through the drama and serve to relieve the narratives of their gloom and plaint. Their presence, we cannot help thinking, recalls work better done and more within the limitations of the poet's genius than this drama of Queen Mary. As a dramatic representation, the drama had the advantage of being produced at the Lyceum Theater London with all the historic art and sumptuous stage setting with which Sir Henry Irving could well give it. Irving himself, personating Philip, when Miss Bateman took the part of Queen Mary. Beckett, we should hear add, was also given on the stage and with much dramatic effectiveness by Irving, over fifty performances of it being called for. None of the dramas, however, as we have said, was a success, though each has its merit, while all are distinguished by many passages of noble and strenuous thought. Other dramatic compositions the poet attempted, though of minor importance to the trilogy just spoken of. These were the Falcon, the groundwork of which is to be found in the Decameron, the Cup, a tragedy rich in action with an incisive dialogue borrowed from Plutarch. The former was staged by Mr. and Mrs. Kendall and had a run of sixty-seven nights. The latter was also staged with liberal magnificence by Irving and met with considerable success. The promise of May is another play which was staged in 1882 by Mrs. Bernard Beer, but met with failure by the critics owing in some degree to its supposed caricature of modern agnostics, and to the repellent portrayal of one of the eight characters in the piece, the sensualist Philip Edgar. Later, in 1892, appeared The Foresters, a pretty pastoral play on the theme of Robinhood and made Marian, which was produced on the boards in New York by Mr. Daley and his company with a charming woodland setting. The later publications of The Laureate and his own distinctive field of verse embrace The Lover's Tale, 1879, ballads and other poems, 1880, Thierry Siaz and other poems, 1885, Loxley Hall Sixty Years After, 1886, Demeter and other poems, 1889, and The Death of O'None, Ackbar's Dream and other poems in the Year of the Poets Death, 1892. In these various volumes there is much admirable work and many tuneful lyrics in the old charming lilting strain, without a few serious thoughtful stately pieces of verse. The afterglow, as Stedman praises it, of a still radiant genius. His after song, continues this fine critic, does not wreck itself upon the master passions of love and ambition, and hence fastens less strongly on the thoughts of the young. Nor does it come with the unused rhythm, the fresh and novel cadence, that stamped the now hackneyed measure with a lyric's name. Yet as to a dart and imagery the same effects are there, differing only in a more vigorous method and intentional roughness from the individual early verse. The new berthin is termed pessimistic, but for all its impatient summary of ills it ends with a cry of faith. We must now hasten to close, delightful as it would be to linger over so attractive a theme and to dwell upon the personality of one who so uniquely represents the mind, as he has so remarkably influenced the thought of his age. But considering the length of the present paper this cannot be. Happily, however, the frutage is ever with us of the poet's full four-score years of splendid achievement with the hallowing memory of a forceful, opulent, and blameless life. Too few men of the past century can the reflecting mind of a coming time more interestingly or more instructively turn than to this profound thinker and mighty musical singer, steeped as he was in the varied culture of the ages, endowed with the great prophetic powers, with phenomenal gifts of poetic expression, and with a soul so attuned to the harmonies of heaven as to make him at once the counselor and the inspiring teacher of his time. Who, in comparison with him, has so felt the subtle charm or so interpreted to us the infinite beauty of the world in which we live, or more impressively deepened in the mind and conscience of the age, belief in the verities of religion, while quelling its doubts and quickening its highest hopes and faith. Tennyson was a passionate believer in the immortal life. This was so real to him that he had no patience with skepticism on the subject. To question it in his presence was to bring upon one's head a torrent of denunciation and wrath. His great soul was intuitively conscious of spiritual realities, and he could not understand how little, soulless microbes of men and women were destitute of his deep perception. Prayer was to him a living fact in power, and some of his words about it are among the noblest ever written. When someone asked him about Christ, he pointed to a flower and said, What the sun is to that flower, Christ is to my soul. Apart as he stood from the tumult and the frivolities of his age, he was yet of it, insensibly and beneficently influenced it for its higher and nobler wheel. In politics, as we know, he was a liberal conservative, a conserver of what was best in the present in the past, and an advance of all that tended to true and harmonious progress. His knowledge of men and things was wide and deep. In the philosophic thought and even in the science of his time, he was deeply read. While he was lovingly interested in all nature and especially in the common people whom he often wrote of and touchingly depicted in their humble ways of toil, as well as of joy and sorrow. Above all, he was a man of high and real faith who believed that good was the final goal of ill. And in the dumb hour clothed in black, that at last came to him, as it comes to all. He confidingly put his trust in loving, omnipotence and reverently and beautifully expressed the hope of seeing the guiding pilot of his life, when with the outflow of its river current into the ocean of the divine unseen, he crossed the bar. For humanity's sake in the wheel of the world in a coming time, this was his joyous cry. Ring in the nobler modes of life with sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring in the love of truth and right. Ring in the common love of good. Ring in the valiant man and free, the larger heart, the kindlier hand. Ring out to the darkness of the land. Ring in the Christ that is to be. What our formative high wrought English literature has suffered in Tennyson's passing from the age on which he has shed so much glory, those can best say who are of his era and have been intimate as each appeared with every successive issue of his works. To the latter, as to all thoughtful students of his writings, he has been the supreme interpreting voice of the past century, while his influence on the literary thought of his time has been of the highest and most potent kind. Especially influential has Tennyson been in carrying forward with new impulses and inspiration the poetic traditions of that grand old motherland of English song to which our own poets in the new world as well as the younger bards of the British Isles owe so much. If we accept the Laureate, there have been few who have worn the singing robe of the poet, who in these later years at least have spoken so impressively to cultured minds on either side of the ocean, or have more effectively expressed to his age the high and hallowing spirit of modern poetry. It is this that has given the Laureate his exalted place among the great literary influences of the century and made him the one indubitable representative of English song with all its tuneful music and rare and delicate art. To a few of the great choir of singers of the past, Tennyson admittedly owed something, both in tradition and in art. For each new impulse has caught and embodied not a little of the spirit and temper as well as the culture and inspiration of the old, but his it was to impart new and fresher thought and a wider range of harmony and emotion that had been reached by almost any of his predecessors, and to speak to the mind and soul of his time as none other has spoken or could well speak. From the era of Shakespeare and Milton and their chief successors, it is to Tennyson's honor and fame that he has given continuity as well as high perfection to the great coursing stream of noble British verse. Authorities. Brooke, stop for a day. Tennyson, his art in relation to modern life. Van Dyke, Henry, the poetry of Tennyson. Bain, Peter, Tennyson and his teachings. Brimling George, essays on Tennyson. Tange, Ed, C, study of the works of Tennyson. Wa, Arthur, Tennyson, a study of his life and work. Stedman, E, C, Victorian poets. Buchanan, our master spirits. Foreman, our living poets. Dowden, Ed, Tennyson and Browning. Tennyson, Hallam, memoir of the poet by his son. Kingsley, C, Miscellanies. Thackery, Richie, Ann, records of Tennyson and others. Robertson, F, W, in memoriam. Dawson, Dr. S, E, study of the princess, annotated. Geynung, J, F, in memoriam, its purpose and structure. Woodbury, G, E, the princess with notes and introduction. Farron, Wilson, the princess with notes and introduction. Gaddy, Alfred, key to in memoriam. Harrison, Frederick, Tennyson, Ruskin and Mill. End of section 25. End of Beacon Lights of History, volume 13, Great Writers by John Lord.