of tempest at Spezzia, to the close of this life in fortune, fame, and peerage! How different the plain life and simple house from which came to us the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" to the cultured life of artistic ease in which the "Idylls of the King" have been slowly fashioned and perfected in fastidious patience! Doubt it as we may, resent it as we do, nevertheless the truth remains that those whose words live longest in the hearts of men have "learned in suffering what they taught in song." In them the heart has most maintained a childlike simplicity and sympathy and to them it has been given to survey life with the largest charity of hope. Is it this lack of vicissitude in the life of the poet himself which has dulled the larger sympathies of his nature, and narrowed the range and spirit of his poetry? Has he too long, like his own Maud, : Fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life? It is hard to judge: but no one can be unconscious of the fact of this limitation. Its causes lie partly in the order of the poet's life, but mainly in the character of his own mind, which is dispassionate rather than ardent, philosophic rather than sympathetic, and better fitted to touch with subtle delicacy the fringe of a great problem than to penetrate its gloom with true imaginative insight. The final impression which we take, then, from the modern poems of Tennyson is that his view of life and society is dull and conventional. The greater portion of his poetry consists of reproductions: reproductions from the antique, from the mediaval, from the romantic. And this is in itself significant, because it shows how largely he has turned his mind away from the vision of the present. When he touches the medieval and antique world he is at his best. All the graceful qualities of his mind then come into play, and he clothes the past with a glamour of words which soothes the mind and kindles the imagination with a keen delight. But in spite of all his attempts, laborious and partially successful as they are, to seize the modern spirit, he has failed in the main. He has nothing new to say all that he can do is to take old and well-worn ideas, and clothe them with a novelty of phrase which gives them fresh currency. He has little faculty of piercing through the husk of the conventional to the living thoughts and passions of man which throb beneath. He passes by, as a careless tourist might pass over a volcanic district, admiring the flowers and colour, but not suspecting the angry fire which boils below his feet. He finds everywhere just what conventional opinion says you ought to find: he has no strength to tear aside the thin crust, and discover the passionate possibilities and sad realities which are decorously hidden from the thoughtless eye. the surface he does not probe the depth. figures of the garb of musical speech in which they move, and there is nothing left but commonplace thought and sentiment. Like the "passon" in the "Northern Farmer," they say what they "ow't to 'a said," and we come away with a convincing sense of their entire respectability. They talk, in fact, very much like Anthony Trollope's deans and churchmen, who look out upon life with a curious mixture of sedate thoughtfulness and decorous conservatism. The general effect they produce upon the mind is dulness. But if Tennyson's view of life is dull, and his opinions commonplace, we cannot but admit that all that the art of the most He skims Divest his perfect phrasing can do to cover dulness Tennyson has done. He has, indeed, so dexterously concealed the comparative poverty of his thought in all his modern poems with the eloquence and beauty of his language, that many people have not yet discovered the deception. Nevertheless it is there. The fact that so few are aware of it is sufficient testimony to the perfection of the artistic illusion. J CHAPTER XXII. TENNYSON AND POLITICS. UST as we look through the completed works of a poet in order to get some clue to his general view of society, so also, with many poets at least, it becomes necessary to ascertain their view of the larger movements of life which go under the name of politics. With some poets only; because some of the greatest poets have worked so purely in the region of imagination that no outlook upon the common world has been possible or permitted to them. Keats was one of those who lived in a world apart, and to whom poetry was a divine seclusion, which Still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. But Tennyson belongs to another school of thought. Very early in his career he was attracted by the great political movements of Europe, and the fascination of politics has never left him. We have, therefore, in his writings a cluster of poems, and many touches of allusion and sentiment, which reveal a general attitude toward politics. It will be interesting to examine these poems. In the first place no reader of Tennyson can miss the note of patriotism which he perpetually sounds. He has a deep and genuine love of country, a pride in the achievements of the past, a confidence in the greatness of the future. And, as we have already seen, this sense of patriotism almost reaches insularity of view. He looks out upon the larger world with a gentle commiseration, and surveys its un-English habits and constitution with sympathetic contempt. The patriotism of Tennyson is sober rather than glowing: it is meditative rather than enthusiastic. Occasionally, indeed, his words catch fire, and the verse leaps onward with a sound of triumph, as in such a poem as the "Charge of the Light Brigade," or in such a glorious ballad as the story of the "Revenge." Neither of these poems is likely to perish until the glory of the nation perishes, and her deeds of a splendid and chivalrous past sink into an oblivion which only shameful cowardice can bring upon her. But as a rule Tennyson's patriotism is not a contagious and inspiring patriotism. It is meditative, philosophic, self-complacent. It rejoices in the infallibility of the English judgment, the eternal security of English institutions, the perfection of English forms of government. This is his description of England: It is the land that freemen till, That sober-suited Freedom chose The land where, girt with friends or foes, A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom slowly broadens down Where faction seldom gathers head, |