XVIII. — ALFRED TENNYSON.

LIFE AND WORKS.

WHEN the generation of singers represented by such divergent types of genius as Scott, Byron, and Wordsworth had died out,- we may loosely mark the period by making it coincide with the beginning of Victoria's reign (1838), there arose a new school of poets differing widely from the potent race of bards who had stirred the souls of men during the first third of our century. These "Victorian poets," as they have been named, though unlike in many respects, have one common characteristic, the exquisite refinement of art which they carry into their poetic treatment.

The earliest of this modern school of singers, and still in many regards its head master, is Alfred Tennyson, the most musical of what Leigh Hunt calls a nest of nightingales."

Alfred, the third son of the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, D.D., was born in the parsonage of Somersby (in Lincolnshire), England, in the year 1810. His early education was received at the school of his native town, and he passed a happy boyhood.

Like Pope, Tennyson "lisped in numbers." His first verses were written upon slate which his brother Charles put into his hand, also giving him a subject, the flowers in the garden. The slate was brought to the elder brother all covered with blank-verse. "Yes, you can write," said Charles, giving Alfred back the slate.

Later on, his grandfather asked him to write an elegy on his grandmother, who had recently died. When it was written, the old gentleman put ten shillings into the boy's hand, and said,—

"There, that is the first money you have ever earned by your poetry, and, take my word for it, it will be the last." The grandfather was neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, for the poet has earned many thousands of pounds by his poetry.

For his higher education young Tennyson was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, where, in 1829, he gained the chancellor's medal for a prize poem in blank-verse, on "Timbuctoo." Two years before this, Alfred and his elder brother Charles had given out anonymously a small volume entitled Poems by Two Brothers. In the opinion of Coleridge, those signed "C. T." gave promise of a rising poet, while those signed "A. T.” did not.

In 1830 Tennyson published his own first volume. It was full of promise, but was received by the critics with coldness or censure: so that Tennyson could not say with Byron that he "awoke one morning and found himself famous." "He held his peace," says Taine; "for ten years no one saw his name in a review: but when he appeared again before the public, his books had made their way alone and under the surface, and he passed at once for the greatest poet of his country."

Taine in this statement has reference to the volume which Tennyson published in 1842. It contained such poems as Ulysses, Morte d'Arthur, Godiva, and Locksley Hall; and it certainly raised him above all other living

His fame was

English poets except Wordsworth. further heightened by his next two poems,- The Princess (1847) and In Memoriam (1850). The latter was a tribute to the memory of his college chum, Arthur Henry Hallam, son of the historian, and betrothed to the poet's sister Emily. It has been pronounced the most memorable of Tennyson's works, and the bestsustained poem of the kind in all literature.

In the following year (1851) he was raised to the dignity of poet-laureate, succeeding Wordsworth in that office. Yet it is an evidence of the slow growth of our poet's fame, that when in 1850 Queen Victoria told her prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, that she desired Tennyson to be made poet-laureate, the minister confessed that he had never read a line of this poet's works. However, he read Ulysses, and then acknowledged that the new poet had the right to be England's laureate.

It is related, that, after his appointment to the office of laureate, Tennyson, before his presentation to the Queen, secured the same court suit-clothes, buckles, stockings, and sword-which his predecessor Wordsworth had worn when similarly honored. It had been a hard squeeze to get Wordsworth into “smallclothes," but by pulling and hauling it had been done; and Tennyson, himself not a small man, was fortunate in having had his suit well stretched by the author of The Excursion.

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In 1855 Tennyson published Maud, a sort of parlor Hamlet;" and four years later, The Idyls of the King. The Idyls are based on the legends of the Celtic King

Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which were collected by Sir Thomas Malory in the fifteenth century. Tennyson closely follows Malory's footsteps in his incidents, but wholly changes the morals of his characters. This work greatly increased the laureate's fame, and those who do not esteem In Memoriam the loftiest expression of his genius give the palm to the Idyls.

Since the publication of Enoch Arden (1864), the writings of Tennyson have shown a falling-off in his poetic powers; and his dramas - Queen Mary (1875) and Harold (1876) — are considered failures.

But if Tennyson's laurels have shown signs of withering in later years, he has gained what our British friends regard as proud pre-eminence in worldly station. In the last month of 1883, Queen Victoria elevated Tennyson to the peerage, with the title of baron, and a seat in the House of Lords. This is a unique distinction; for, while there have been poet peers before Tennyson, no other poet has ever been made a peer solely as a recognition of his literary work.

About the time of his appointment to the laureateship, Tennyson married, and soon after fixed his residence at Farringford, in the Isle of Wight. Here he remained till 1869, when he removed to Petersfield, Hampshire.

Tennyson is a man of large stature, dark in complexion, with a full beard and abundant hair. His habits are simple and independent. Like many poets, he loves nature and books more than human nature, and shuns the eye of the public. Carlyle, writing to Emer

son, draws the following interesting and characteristic portrait of Tennyson when about forty years of age:

"Alfred is one of the few British or Foreign figures who are and remain beautiful to me, a true human soul, to whom your own soul can say brother! One of the finestlooking men in the world. A great shock of rough, dustydark hair, bright-laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free and easy. His voice is musical metallic, - fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous. I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe."

In the subjects adapted to his genius, Tennyson shows himself as true a poet as ever lived. He is master of all the secrets of poetic art. In his intercourse with nature he has caught, as have few painters or musicians, its varied colors and its plaintive key. The words, thoughts, and music in which he clothes the softer passions of the heart have a delicacy and subtilty that have often been imitated but never equaled. The palaces framed in beauty, the picturesque landscapes, the portraits of fair women and gentle heroes, which stand out like cameos from his long canvas, are the flower of centuries of aristocratic English life, and breathe the luxury of an exquisite though artificial civilization.

Tennyson's place in the literature of the English language, whatever may be its relation to that of the acknowledged masters of song, is sure to be high and permanent.