In her essay on "The Great Christian Poets" she has said: "We want the touch of Christ's hand upon our literature as it touched other dead things; we want the sense of the saturation of Christ's blood upon the souls of our poets, that it may cry through them in answer to the ceaseless wail of the Sphinx of our humanity, expounding agony into renovation. Something of this has always been perceived in art when its glory was at the fullest." Something of this—a hopefulness in the final triumph of humanity-is always to be perceived in Mrs. Browning's poetry. The agony of the world weighs heavily upon her. The wail of its pain and desolation vibrates incessantly upon her heart. She not merely hears it and feels it, but actually shares it. By force of exquisite sensitiveness, she seems to appropriate the sum of the world's agony to herself, till it is the agony of one who not only sees and sympathises with sorrow, but whose own heart is literally pierced and bleeding with the rankling barbs. There are poems of Mrs. Browning's which could only have been written in a flood of tears, and which cannot be read without tears. The intensity of her yearning, her tenderness, her compassion, is almost painful. But she always knows how to expound agony into renovation. She sees the brightness of a great hope falling across the world like the slanting beams of a growing sunrise, and she ever points to the dawn. And although Hood's work in humanitarian poetry is limited to two powerful poems, and he has nothing of Mrs. Browning's prophetic force and vision, yet it is clear also that while he attacks society he is not unhopeful of it. The Christian faith which enabled him to bear his hard lot without murmur, and to say when he was dying, "Lord, say, Arise, take up thy Cross and follow Me," enabled him also to believe that through the charity and sacrifice of which the Cross is a type, and through that alone, the healing of society would come. For in the true social gospel there must always be something more than vehemence, and something better than violence: there must be the message and counsel of reconstruction, and the hope of final triumph and millennium. Perhaps it is a large claim to make for the writer of the "Song of the Shirt" that he was unconsciously a great voice in inaugurating a new movement in poetry; but we have to remember that single poems have more than once proved epoch-making in literature. But it is certainly a valid contention in any case, that the poet is frequently the secret force from which national tendencies and purposes are born. It takes a soul To move a body; it takes a high-souled man To move the masses even to a cleaner stye; It takes the ideal to blow an inch aside The dust of the actual; and your Fouriers failed, That life develops from within. It is the humanitarian passion of poets like Hood and Mrs. Browning that do far more than we think to soften life with charity, and inspire it with sacrifice and compassion. Of course both Hood and Mrs. Browning were not humanitarian poets alone. Mrs. Browning is the uncontested queen of English song, and her work is various and wonderful. The strength of her affections, the ardour of her thought, the devoutness of her spirit, are qualities quite as marked as the tenderness and breadth of her sympathies. But when we come to estimate the most enduring force in her poetry, we find it to be its humanitarian passion. It was that which inspired not only her "Cry of the Children" and the "Song for Ragged Schools," but the greatest, if the most unequal, of all her poems, "Aurora Leigh." Had Hood not written the "Song of the Shirt," he could have claimed no place among the chief literary forces of our time. As it is, we have to estimate the rare quality of his genius as much by its intimations as its accomplishments. But if Mrs. Browning had never written "Aurora Leigh" she would still have been a great poet; she would not have been so great a poet, however, and she would certainly have missed the greater portion of her fame. For it is in the power of sympathy that Mrs. Browning stands supreme, and the noblest outbursts of her sympathy were caused by social inequalities, sorrows, and martyrdoms. It is for this reason that, passing over a hundred other things which might be said about her genius and her poetry, we fix on this dominant aspect of her lifework, nor perhaps would she have wished it otherwise. The simple and sufficient epitaph which covers the dust of Hood is, "He sang the 'Song of the Shirt,'" and to have written the "Cry of the Children" and "Aurora Leigh" is praise sufficient even for one of the most rarely-gifted writers who has ever enriched the world of English poetry. CHAPTER XVIII. LORD TENNYSON. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. [Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, August 5th, 1809. "Poems by Two Brothers," published by J. Jackson, Louth, 1827. "Poems," chiefly lyrical, published 1830. "Poems," in two volumes (Moxon), 1842. The "Princess," 1847. "In Memoriam," 1850. Became Poet-Laureate in the same year. "Maud," 1855. The "Idylls of the King," 1859: completed 1885. "Enoch Arden," 1864. Offered and accepted a Peerage, 1883]. WHEN HEN we come to the name of Tennyson we do well to pause, for in his many-sidedness he represents more fully than any other poet of our day the complex thought and activities of the century in which his lot has been cast. Seldom has a poet's fame grown more slowly or securely, and never has a poet's career been crowned with a larger degree of worldly success. It is now more than half a century since his first slender volume of poems appeared. At that date Christopher North, otherwise Professor Wilson, and the Edinburgh reviewers were in the full heyday of their power, and exercised a dominance in criticism which it is difficult for us to understand to-day. A new poet in those days had to fear ridicule more than indifference, a position which may now be said to be entirely reversed. By turning to that section of the complete works of Tennyson headed Juvenilia, we can ourselves judge what was the character of the claim which the young poet in 1830 made upon the public attention. The volume is not merely slender in bulk, but equally slight in quality. The influence of Keats is apparent everywhere. There is a femininity of tone and a sensuousness of word-painting which are in the exact manner of Keats. The triviality of Keats' worst style is as apparent as the magic phrasing of his best. Take, for instance, this stanza from "Claribel" The slumbrous wave outwelleth, Where Claribel low-lieth. This is weak with the peculiar weakness of Keats; the straining after effect by the use of uncommon and affected forms of speech. Nor do the other poems in the little volume rise to anything like a high average. There are, however, splendid indications of true and genuine power amid much that is weak and imitative. "Mariana" is a piece of powerful painting, done with excellent artistic taste, intention, and finish. Finer still is the "Recollections of the Arabian Nights." It is rich, almost too rich indeed, in its colouring, but no one can fail to feel the charm of words in such lines as these: At night my shallop rustling thro' In sooth it was a goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid. But in fineness of workmanship and depth of feeling |