ALFRED TENNYSON,

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CHAPTER XVI.

THE POETS-FROM 1830 TILL THE PRESENT DAY.

POETS.-Tennyson Elizabeth Barrett (Browning) - Robert Browning-Aytoun-Hood-Other Poets. DRAMATISTS.

THE period we are now entering is remarkable for great activity in all departments of literature. We cannot, it is true, boast of so many illustrious poets as those that rendered the past age so remarkable, but the poetry of Tennyson and the Brownings will ever occupy a high position in the national literature.

ALFRED TENNYSON (b. 1810), the greatest poet of our time, was born at Somersby, in Lincolnshire. His father was rector of the place, and had three sons, of whom Alfred was the youngest. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Tennyson won a medal for a poem called Timbuctoo; and about the same time, in conjunction with his brother Charles, also a poet, published Poems by Two Brothers. In 1830 appeared a volume entitled Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson. It contained many exquisite pieces, but the public did not seem to care for it. Three years afterwards, another volume made its appearance, and it, too, though rich in poetic thought, failed to awaken public interest, and received unkindly criticism at the hands of the reviewers. For nine years thereafter, the world heard nothing of Alfred Tennyson. In 1842, however, a third effort was made to win favour, by the publication of two volumes of poems. The effort was successful, the path to fame and fortune was open before him; and to the encouragement he then received we are largely indebted for the splendid poems which have since proceeded from his pen. On the death of Wordsworth, he was appointed Poet Laureate.

His life has been quiet, and, so far as is known, uneventful. In character he is modest and unassuming, and shrinks from publicity.

The despised poems of the volume published in 1833 have since become the idols of the public-witness the Miller's Daughter and the May Queen; and there are verses in the volumes of 1842, notably those of Locksley Hall, which rank as high as anything he has ever written. His longer poems are, in the order of publication, the Princess, In Memoriam, Maud, Idylls of the King, Enoch Arden, The Holy Grail, and Gareth and Lynette.

The Princess: a Medley, is a fanciful story, told in blank verse. Ida, the beautiful daughter of King Gama, monarch of the South, is, while yet a child, betrothed to a prince of the North. The time for marriage arrives; but the Princess .Ida thinks that women were made for something better than marriage; founds a university, where all the professors and students are of the female sex; and, of course, refuses to wed. The Prince, who has seen only the portrait of his betrothed, is enamoured of her beauty, and determines to win her. With this object he sets out for the university, accompanied by two friends, Cyril and Florian, all three disguised as females. They manage to get enrolled as students, and the Prince, on beholding "the Head," or Principal, is more enraptured than ever. All goes well, till, at a picnic, Cyril forgets his disguise, and sings a drinking song. Ida, burning with indignation at the deception which has been practised upon her, turns to leave; her foot slips, and she falls into the river. The Prince saves her; but instead of feeling grateful, she calls a council, and the Prince, with his companions, is turned out of doors. Next there is war between the North and the South; the Prince is wounded in battle. Ida turns her college into an hospital, and the ladies become the nurses of those who are suffering. The Princess undertakes the charge of the Prince, whom she could not bring herself to leave lying helpless on the battlefield. She thinks him dying; becomes tender and loving at

last; and, when the Prince recovers consciousness, he discovers in Ida a kind, warm-hearted woman, in place of the haughty principal of a university for women.

In Memoriam is a collection of elegies written in stanzas of four eight-syllabled lines, the rhymes occurring in the first and fourth lines, and in the second and third. As early as 1833, Tennyson had lost his dearest friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, son of the historian, who was to have been married to the sister of the poet. The elegies did not appear till 1850, showing how he had taken to heart the death of the man he had loved, and how long he had mourned his loss. Many portions of In Memoriam seem, at first sight, obscure, and difficult to understand; but when one has lost a dearly loved friend by death, he will have little difficulty in finding a key with which to open a way to the stores of sympathy and comfort which this beautiful poem contains.

Maud is a strange story, written in irregular rhyming stanzas. It tells us of a lover who is passionately attached to Maud, a squire's daughter, who returns his love, but without the knowledge or consent of her friends. One evening he is serenading his beloved, in her garden of roses, when her brother discovers and insults him. They fight a duel, in which Maud's brother is killed. She turns from her lover in horror, and will have no more of him. He then flees to France, but returns to London, his heart haunted by visions of Maud; and there he falls into a stupor, and dreams that he is dead, and buried beneath the streets; that the wheels of passing vehicles shake his bones; that the trampling of the horses' hoofs beat into his brain; and that the clatter of passing feet disturbs and annoys him. He prays that " some body, some kind heart, will come and bury him a little deeper. At last, however, he awakes, and, joining the army which is about to depart for the seat of the Russian war, forgets in the excitement of battle the wound which his love had received.

The Idylls of the King, the Holy Grail, and Gareth and Lynette all belong to the same series. They are

founded on stories connected with the renowned King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, whose adventures were originally written by Geoffrey of Monmouth. The various parts of Tennyson's Arthurian epic were not at first published in the order in which they ought to be read; but that defect has now been remedied. First we have the Coming of Arthur; then the stories of the Round Table-of Gareth, who served in the king's kitchen in order to have an opportunity of showing Arthur how fit he was to be one of the knights; of Geraint and the fair Enid; of the crafty Vivien and the old prophet Merlin; and of the luckless love of poor Elaine for Launcelot, the most renowned of all the knights. Next comes the story of the finding by Sir Galahad of the Grail, or communion cup used at our Saviour's Last Supper, and said to have been brought to this country by Joseph of Arimethea. It had disappeared on account of prevailing wickedness, and was seen once again at Caerleon, where the Knights of the Round Table were gathered together. It vanished, and every knight swore he would seek and seek till he found it. Sir Galahad, the pure hearted, found the cup, and was immediately afterwards carried to heaven. Many of the knights who started on this quest or search never returned again, and King Arthur had to make new knights to fill the gap. Among these was the brave Pelleas, the story of whose love for the haughty Ettarre forms the next of the idylls. Next we have the Last Tournament, the touching story of Queen Guinevere's repentance; and, finally, the Passing of Arthur, who falls in a battle caused by the attempt of his nephew Modred to usurp the crown.

Enoch Arden, another blank verse poem, is a very touching story; but the facts upon which it is founded are happily of rare occurrence.

Tennyson's poetry is pure, tender, ennobling. No blot, no stain, as in Byron, mars its beauty. His portraits and ideas of women are the most delicate in the whole range of English poetry. His language, although consisting for the most part of strong and pithy Saxon

words, is yet the very perfection of all that is elegant and musical in the art of versifying.

A LANDSCAPE.

"Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky
Shone out their crowning snows.

One willow over the river wept,

And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above, in the wind, was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will;

And far through the marish green and still,
The tangled water-courses slept,

Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow."
The Dying Swan.

FROM IN MEMORIAM."

"The path by which we twain did go,

Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
Through four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow:
"And we with singing cheered the way,

And crowned with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:
"But where the path we walked began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
As we descended following hope,
There sat the Shadow feared of man;
"Who broke our fair companionship,

And spread his mantle dark and cold;
And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
And dulled the murmur on thy lip;
"And bore thee where I could not see

Nor follow, though I walk in haste;
And think that, somewhere in the waste,
The Shadow sits and waits for me."

A RUIN.

"Then rode Geraint into the castle court,
His charger trampling many a prickly star
Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones.
He looked, and saw that all was ruinous.

Here stood a shattered archway, plumed with fern;
And here had fall'n a great part of a tower,

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