Tennyson

ten'1-son, Alfred, an English poet. He was born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, August 6, 1809. He died at Aldworth, near Hazlemere, October 6, 1892. His father was a country pastor. Pictures of the old rectory in which Tennyson's childhood was passed show a rambling, comfortable, two-story house surrounded by trees and shrubbery. Alfred was the fourth of twelve children. The family was noted for character, courtesy, intelligence, poetry, and music. Young Alfred was a leader in storytelling, in imaginative games, and in juvenile dramas. He began to write rhymes when he was eight years old. He was a great reader, an admirer of his father's fine library. He was placed in school for a short time under a schoolmaster of the flogging type. It does not appear that young Alfred was treated harshly, yet in later life he wrote, "How I did hate that school!" His father then took charge of his education, undertaking to prepare him for college. In 1826 while still at home, Alfred and a younger brother, Charles, published a thin volume of verse entitled Poems by Two Brothers. It contained poems of some merit. Regarded as the effort of two lads, one of whom later became a great poet, it is an interesting performance.

In 1828 Tennyson entered Trinity College, Cambridge University, where he became one of a group of intellectual young men who formed a most enthusiastic friendship for each other. The central figure was Arthur Henry Hallam. One of the group writing later described Alfred Tennyson as follows: "Six feet high, broadchested, strong-limbed; his face Shakespearean, with deep eyelids; his forehead ample, crowned with dark, wavy hair; his head finely poised; his hand the admiration of sculptors,--long fingers, with square tips, soft as a child's, but of great size and strength. What struck one most about him was the union of strength with refinement." A year later, he won the University prize for a blank verse poem called Timbuctoo. Tennyson's young friends were enthusiastic in the belief that he was destined to become a great poet.

Keats, Shelley, Byron, and Scott were dead. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Moore were resting on their faded laurels. Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle, and Browning were still unknown. Matthew Arnold was a schoolboy at Rugby. In 1830, urged on by his coterie of friends, Tennyson published a little volume of verse, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, and two years later, another volume, Poems. His acquaintances were, of course, loud in his praise, but of the first volume, Christopher North wrote in Blackwood's "Drivel, and more dismal drivel, and even more dismal drivel," and, in speaking of a particular poem called The Owl, he added: "Alfred himself is the greatest owl. All he wants is to be shot, stuffed, and stuck in a glass case to be made immortal in a museum." Tennyson replied with the lines:

Lockhart, reviewing the second volume in the Quarterly, apologized to Mr. Tennyson for not having seen the first volume, and hailed him in mock adulation as "a new prodigy of genius, another and a brighter star of that galaxy or Milky Way of poetry of which the lamented Keats was the harbinger." Tennyson's friends were partial, his critics were harsh. He profited by both. He kept still for ten years. In the meantime the Reverend Charles Tennyson died, the family removed to a cottage in Epping Forest. Money was not plenty, yet the family was above want. Young Alfred left the university, but continued to pursue a literary life. In 1833 Arthur Hallam, his Cambridge friend, the accepted lover of his sister, died in Vienna. The friendship of the two young men was of an unusual nature. Hallam's death cast a sadness over Tennyson's whole life.

In 1842 Tennyson appeared in print again, this time in two small volumes. Among other poems were Locksley Hall, The Talking Oak, and Break, Break, Break. Tennyson's friends were triumphant; the critics were convinced. Tennyson's poems sprang at once into popularity. The reading public discovered that his older poems, such as The Lady of Shalott, The May Queen, The Miller's Daughter, The Lotus Eaters, and A Dream of Fair Women, possessed rare beauty.

From this time on Tennyson's literary career ran smoothly. He derived an income from his publisher. He purchased a beautiful residence. In 1850 he married Miss Emily Sellwood. In the same year he was appointed poet laureate to succeed Wordsworth. With abundant means at his command, he purchased a beautiful country-house at Farringford in the Isle of Wight, and later, a home at Aldworth, where he passed his old age. In 1883, at the suggestion of Gladstone, Queen Victoria made Tennyson a member of the House of Lords, giving him the title of Baron of Aldworth and Farringford.

Returning to his poetry, The Princess, his chief long poem, appeared in 1847. In this poem he treats the question of woman's place in society, showing that neither man nor woman can afford to be independent of the other. Many of the finest bits of his poetry are imbedded in this poem, illuminating the more sober portions "like flashes of lightning." In 1850 Tennyson published in Memoriam, a long poem in commemoration of his friend, Arthur Hallam. Henry Van Dyke, an appreciative student of Tennyson, says "In Memoriam is a dead march, but is a march into immortality." The key-note of the poem may be found in the lines,

Maud, the story in verse of a morbid man, was published in 1855. In 1859 Tennyson began the publication of a series of epics which he called Idylls of the King. In these he used the material of the old legend pertaining to King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

As a genius, Tennyson stands a little lower than Shakespeare and Milton. It would be difficult to fix his rank with respect to Chaucer, Spenser, Keats, and Shelley. He is better known than they are; he is more popular than Browning. His is without doubt the greatest name in the era of Queen Victoria. Many critics consider him the third poet who has written in the English language. Without doubt, he combined reason, reverence, and a love of beauty in a rare degree.

Tennyson has been called the poet of science. While Darwin, Tyndall, and Huxley were establishing the doctrine of evolution, and giving the scientific essay a new place in literature, Tennyson was their poetic counterpart. His verses are full of confidence that a better world is evolving out of the old.

Through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

Tennyson never scoffs. Burns, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Kipling, and other writers of genius lash out at times, but Tennyson is always reverent. Family training and familiarity with the Bible may be traced in word and thought from cover to cover of his volumes. The oft-repeated statement that the Bible is the fountain source of literature finds abundant illustration in his verses. Biblical allusions and quotations steal through his verse like golden threads in the woof of tapestry. The Queen of Sheba, Lot's wife, and Jonah's gourd appear in The Princess. Queen Esther appears in Enid. The last line of The May Queen is a quotation from Job. Allusions to Eden and to "gardener Adam," to Moses and Mount Sinai, to Ruth, to the Psalmist, to Job, to Bethlehem, and to the crucifixion, are everywhere.

Tennyson has been called a poet of nature. He was fond of the sea. He studied its different moods in storm and calm. He was an admirer of the English landscape, rolling sward, hawthorn hedgerows, and village spires. He was familiar with the birds, brooks, and flowers. Walking with a friend he suddenly fell on his knees in the grass and began to gather and smell, with "Man, get down on your marrowbones, here are violets." He was a man of quiet, scholarly habits. He never knew the pangs of poverty, but he was not unmindful of the destitution which prevailed among operatives in the manufacturing towns. In all social matters he was true to his early training. His private life was pure. He stood for truth, honor, marriage, home life, and all the sturdy virtues that have made England what it is.

His poems are very unequal in attractiveness. A good third of his poetry consists of drama, little read by anybody. The May Queen, The Goose, Break, Break, Break, Locksley Hall, Lady Clare, The Beggar Maid, The Eagle, The Brook, and The Charge of the Light Brigade, are the poems with which the young reader should begin. Sweet and Low and The Splendor Falls on Castle Walls are gems imbedded in The Princess. Lady Clara Vere de Vere and Enoch Arden should be read next. The Northern Farmer, The Northern Cobbler, and The Village Wife deal with peasant thought. In Memoriam is his greatest single poem. The Idylls of the King may be read one at a time as each is a complete story. They are, however, connected, and the theme of the whole cycle cannot be grasped unless they are read as a single poem.

At the close of his life, Tennyson's remains were laid at rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, near Robert Browning. One of his last poems was Crossing the Bar. It is, without comparison, the most exquisite farewell to the world, the greatest swan song, ever written. It was read at his funeral. We have refrained from quoting at length in order to save space for this poem complete:

See Browning; North; Huxley; Arthur; Round Table; Wight; Cambridge; Westminster Abbey; Idylls Of The King