of the immemorial fallacies by which men seek to divert attention from the real issue, culminating, of course, in the hypocritically evasive injunction, "Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."' The poet's aim, as I conceive it, was to avoid in this, as in other questions, the falsehood of extremes. He perceived the true office of woman, and plainly indicated where her duty lay and where her powers could be best directed. A more glorious-seeming but utterly impossible ideal would have won for him unstinted praise, but what was Tennyson if not a plain dealer? He abhorred woman's wrongs without subscribing fully to the modern programme of woman's rights. He had the candor to combat some of her claims and the courage to deny some of her pretensions. Less as a matter of principle than as a matter of propriety and expediency he showed where the impulsive Ida would fail. All men know and all women realize that there are inevitable limitations to the progress of the weaker sex in certain directions, and if the boundary line is overstepped, it is at the risk of losing certain womanly attributes and leaving certain womanly functions unfulfilled. It is not those who talk most fulsomely of women's destiny who treat women most kindly. Laon is seldom just to Cythna; but Ida was not the sport of a wanton or the slave of a libertine. Tennyson's love was pure and unimpassioned; his type and ideal of the good and perfect woman was an Edith Aylmer, a gentle Enid, a Lilia Vivian, and a Dora. These were gracious, tender, loving, the best to love and the best to wed — models of English wives and mothers who remain unexcelled. Those who have gazed long upon the gaudy foliage of the tropics may at length fail to appreciate the delicate perfection of a pale pink rose; and those who have been accustomed to the resplendent beauty and the ardors of Zuleika, Parisina, Cythna, Zelica, Haidée, and the other damsels ravishing as the houri and as remote as they from human nature, will be dissatisfied with a simple Letty meeting her lover by the lake, or with Maud who sends her swain a rose. Tennyson's women are a protest against the Oriental creatures who are deemed fit for a sultan's harem, and who, the early poets of the century would have us believe, exceed in charms and character our own English maids. But reaction has set in, and most of us are now prepared to echo the song of the Foresters: There is no land like England Where'er the light of day be; There are no wives like English wives There are no maids like English maids Let us remember also with gratitude and admiration that Tennyson was a woman's champion. He sought not only to save them from themselves by correcting distorted aims and subduing ambition that was akin to rebellion against law and their ordained lot; but he strove most earnestly to protect them from the awful wrongs of a corrupt age. How often was his voice raised against loveless marriages and against marriage forbidden when true love was inspired! No more terrible sermon against the paltry pride that would sacrifice happiness to selfish, seeking ambition is to be found than in Aylmer's Field, where the fury of the poet is so great that he spares not the parents who have broken the heart of their child, but makes them pay a penalty heavier than death. . . . So firm a believer was Tennyson in holy marriage that he could tell of the happiness of the leper's wife; he cherished women so much, felt so deeply for them in their feebleness, that he could rouse pity for the Magdalene;1 he hated so fiercely the cruelty of man that he did not scruple to defend the faithless wife of a vexing and loveless husband;2 and with all the burning scorn of a noble nature he denounced the iniquity of forcing a pure maiden to wed a rich and unscrupulous creditor of her needy father.3 Such a poet could have no debased and unworthy ideas of women; and, even if his heroines may half contemptuously be classed as 'quiet and domestic,' they are sweet and pure, faithful and true, and perfect in beauty because perfect in honor and virtue. 1 See Forlorn in the Demeter volume. 2 See The Wreck in the Tiresias volume. 8 See The Flight. As time goes on and the new light increases, it will be found that Tennyson's doctrines will bear the strongest of all tests. As in other matters, he spoke the plain and honest truth of women, their mission, and their future, heedless alike of praise and blame, but serenely confident of ultimate justification. [BAYARD TAYLOR, Critical Essays, pp. 14-19.] Tennyson's power of receiving strong and multiform impressions cannot be doubted; but one who possesses so consciously the rarest qualities of his art, and so deliberately devotes his life to the perfection thereof, is exposed to a danger which he can never entirely recognize, and thus overcome. The artistic sense, so constantly and exquisitely refined, acquires an insidious mastery over the free idea, and partly conceals it under the very perfection of illustration which is meant to present it in its full proportions. That higher sense which determines the relative value of such illustrations becomes dulled; each asserts its equal right, and receives equal attention, so it carry a tempting epithet with it; and the reader is constantly hurried back and forth, to and from the theme of the poem, by metaphors and descriptions so bright, keen, and true, that each must be separately enjoyed. We do not walk as in a path, towards some shining peak in the distance; but as over a lush meadow, where new, enchanting blossoms, to the right and left, entice our steps hither and thither. A poetical conception requires perspective, balance of tints, concentration of the highest light, no less than a picture; where, from beginning to end, every detail is presented with equal prominence and elaborated with equal skill, there is no resting-place for the mind, as, in a similar picture, there is none for the eye. I do not mean that this is a pervading fault of Tennyson; his instinct is too true to allow it to vitiate his most earnest work; but his methods of labor do not allow him wholly to escape it. There are few forms of knowledge which he has neglected, and few which he has not used in the service of poetry. He rarely mistakes through deficient perception, but very frequently through correct perception asserting itself without regard to its proper place and value. All objects present themselves to him with such distinctness of illustration that he forgets the unfamiliarity of the reader with their quali ties. ... The poem [The Princess], in fact, abounds with instances where the expression as a whole is weakened and confused by the author's tendency to make each particular complete, without reference to its relation to others. [DAWSON, A Study (1st ed.), pp. 54-57.] The poem of The Princess, as a work of art, is the most complete and satisfying of all Tennyson's works. It possesses a play of fancy, of humor, of pathos, and of passion which give it variety; while the feeling of unity is unbroken throughout. It is full of passages of the rarest beauty and most exquisite workmanship. The songs it contains are unsurpassed in English literature. The diction is drawn from the treasure-house of old English poetry,— from Chaucer, from Shakespeare and the poets of the Elizabethan age. The versification is remarkable for its variety; while the rhythm, in stateliness and expression, is modeled upon Milton. There are passages which, in power over language to match sound with sense, are not excelled by anything in Paradise Lost for strength, or in Milton's minor poems for sweetness. The poem abounds also in evidences of the prophetic insight which has already been referred to as the mark of a true poet. In the year 1847, long before Darwin had commenced the present great revolution in scientific thought, evolutionary theories were propounded by the poet in the imaginary halls of his female university. Huxley himself could not have sketched more vividly than the Lady Psyche the progressive development of the world from the primal cosmic vapor. The Princess, with the accuracy taught only recently by the spectroscope, calls the sun 'a nebulous star.' When she gets her mind off the brooch, she becomes really profound in her analysis of our notions of creation as stages of successive acts. Our minds, she teaches, are so constituted that we must of necessity apprehend everything in the form and aspect of successive time; but, in the Almighty fiat, 'Let there be light,' the whole of the complex potentialities of the universe were in fact hidden. Not only is the poem satisfying in these respects. It breathes throughout that faith and hope in the future which make Tennyson the poet of a progressive age. For many excellent persons this universe is moribund. They can take pleasure in thinking that the Creator, once more foiled, is on the eve of angrily breaking up this world and beginning it all over again. Such is not the philosophy of our poet. He speaks in his own person in the epilogue. He says: For me the genial day, the happy crowd, This faith runs through all his works nor is it anywhere more beautifully expressed than in his very latest volume, in the second and third stanzas of The Children's Hospital. Still the poem of The Princess is not an exhaustive solution of the question treated. All men cannot or do not marry. Millions of women pass unwedded through life. In many cases the sweetness of their nature overflows in general usefulness to others, in some cases it sours with disappointment. Millions of women have gone to dishonored graves—even God's providence seeming estranged ’. victims to an artificial state of society. Here are questions for more favored ones to consider of profounder import than sunflowers or china pigs. Of what avail is mere knowledge before these profound social and moral problems? The ultimate outcome of all knowledge is mystery. The sources of being are hidden behind an impenetrable veil. We juggle with words and play with them as children with counters, getting out of them such meanings only as we ourselves first put in. The intellect is finite, but the affections are infinite. We know in part, and we prophesy in part. Our prophecies shall fail and our knowledge vanish in a clearer dawn, but Love, of which woman is the priestess, abideth forever. |