Manual Lord Tennyson, a Biographical Sketch

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Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson FRS (6 August – 6 October ) was a British Sketch of Alfred Tennyson published one year after his death in , seated in his favourite arbour at his Farringford House His son's biography confirms that Tennyson was an unorthodox Christian, noting that Tennyson praised.
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Who Was Alfred Tennyson?

This influence may be likened to the effect of the lapidary's operations on the rough diamond. Tennyson was brought into contact with vigorous, thought- ful minds, and the friction took off the edges of his crudeness and inexperience. He found himself, with a reputation for intellectual promise, in a centre of modern culture and mental activity, and the result could not but be stimulating in the highest degree.

Happily, it was his lot to fall among young men of his own age who were imbued with kindred tastes. A penetrating judgment of character enabled him to choose exactly the right sort of friends. These were days of keen bright wit, of eager disputation, of speculative thought, of bold fancy, of a sweet graciousness of life tinctured with the sentiments of chivalrous and noble manhood.

Brook- field, and Kinglake. But there is one figure that towers above all of them in the reach of his influence upon Tennyson's character, namely, that of Arthur Henry Hallam. It is indispensable that we should pause a moment in the narrative, to give a silhouette of the man who, dying when he was only in his twenty-third year, was yet deemed worthy of that long-pondered " In Memoriam " which, seventeen years afterwards, surprised the critical world with an altogether unsuspected depth of feeling.

Hallam, who entered at the same college as Tennyson in the same year, was born in London, in February, 1. The "Memoir" written by his father reveals to us a boy of rare quickness of perception and an affectionate sweetness of disposition. The studies in which he was interested became a veritable child's-play to him. French and Latin were mastered with ease, and his aptitude for modern tongues was encouraged by a visit to Italy and Switzerland when he was seven years old. A year or two later he was throwing all his little soul into the composition of tragedies, most remarkable in their range of feeling when his inexperienced age is remembered.

At Eton, where he was educated, his tastes led him to devote more time to Shakespeare, Byron, Words- worth, and Shelley than to the subjects by which scholarship is conservatively attested in the ancient foundations of learning.

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To the particular spell of each of these poets in turn he submitted his rapidly developing intelligence, saturating his mind with their spirit, and storing it with great thoughts and beautiful ideas. With such a training, Arthur Hallam, when he went to Cambridge in , although not eighteen years of age, was already ripe in culture, and sage for his time of life. Here, again, the same desul- tory methods, accentuated by a weak condition of health, hindered his progress in the direction most appreciated by college dons.

Mathematics found him a cold indifferent suitor, and Greek and Latin composition were neglected for French literature and studies in the history of thought. His chief distinctions at Cambridge were a prize for English declamation, highly spoken of, and bringing him into some academic prominence, and another for an essay on Cicero. But the measure of the young man's mind was not to be taken by these and similar regulation tests.

If one wants a true idea of his intellectual grasp, is it not furnished in Tennyson's monumental elegy? The blind hysterics of the Celt ; " And manhood fused with female grace In such a sort, the child would twine A trustful hand, unasked, in thine, And find his comfort in thy face.

The proud was half disarmed of pride. Nor cared the serpent at thy side To flicker with his double tongue. After some months of more or less casual acquaintanceship, these two minds of fine texture discovered the intellectual affinity which was to weave them together in a more than brotherly affection. Seldom in these modern days has friendship of such rare fidelity been encountered amidst the troop of sham senti- ments and insincere professions which do duty for the real thing.

Both these young men had the poetic nature, the inquiring mind, the aspiration after a higher rule of conduct. No doubt they criticised each other's work with a kindly and sympathetic interest. For Alfred Tennyson did not neglect the muse in a too arduous pursuit of academic distinction. Both he and his brother tried their wings pretty often in the empyrean of song.

Its style, and especially some of its modes of expression, show that he was then under the influence of Shelley. The poem is certainly a remarkable work for a youth not out of his teens.

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Despite its occasional laboriousness of phrasing, and the obscurities which betrayed the 'prentice- hand, it is distinguished by a free use of imagery and a lusciousness of diction which indicated the possession of very exceptional gifts, and gave, to those of his college friends who were permitted to see it, an earnest of the power of versification that he was later on to achieve. They must have been halcyon days when these fine young spirits made festival together in the rooms of old Trinity. There was Brookfield, " Old Brooks " as they called him, a "man of humorous melancholy," — a " kindlier, trustier Jacques," — who in later life became a fashionable London preacher.

Lord Tennyson has written of him in a sonnet which has all the sweet pathos of a cherished regret : — " How oft we two have heard St. Mary's chimes! How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest. Would echo helpless laughter to your jest! How oft with him we paced that walk of hmes.

Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times. Whewell, who in the days referred to was the tutor of Hallam and the Tennysons, has given us a vivid little glimpse of Brookfield's quality. Brookfield almost lived with Arthur Hallam and the Tennysons, and, of course, with those who could afford time for their nodes canizque! Tennyson, in one of his early sonnets, predicted of him that he would become " a latter Luther, and a soldier-priest to scare Church-harpies from the Master's feast," and said that he was " spurred at heart with fiercest energy to embattail and to wall about his cause with iron-worded proof" Kemble did not fulfil these high-strung expectations as regards the Church for being attracted by Anglo-Saxon studies, he D 34 LORD TENNYSON.

During the Spanish War of Independence, John Kemble was among the young men of generous impulse who went over to help the cause of liberty. Ritchie, "a rumour came to distant Somersby that he was to be tried for his life by the Spanish authorities. No one else knew much about him except Alfred Tennyson, who started before dawn to drive across the country in search of some person of authority who knew the consul at Cadiz, and who could send letters of pro- tection to the poor prisoner.

It was a false alarm. John Kemble came home to make a name in other fields. His friend Hallam was also one of the competitors. The latter'spoem, which was sub- sequently printed in his "Remains," was written in the terza rima of Dante ; that of Tennyson in blank verse. It was very likely the academic audacity of Tennyson's experiment that gave rise to an absurd story, long current, to the effect that the prize fell to him by a blunder, a mark intended to express wonder being taken to denote approval!

The following vision of the city will suffice, by way of extract, to indicate the general style : — " Then first within the South methought I saw A wilderness of spires, and crystal pile Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome. Illimitable range of battlement On battlement, and the Imperial height Of canopy o'ercanopied. Behind In diamond light up sprang the dazzling peaks Of Pyramids, as far surpassing earth's As heaven than earth is fairer. Each aloft Upon his narrow eminence bore globes Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances Of either, showering circular abyss Of radiance.

Or metal more ethereal, and, beneath. Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan, Through length of porch, and valve, and boundless hall. These pro- ductions have often been ingenious and elegant, but we have never before seen one of them which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have done honour to any man that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to affirm, is the little work before us ; and the examiners seem to have felt it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to its author, though the measure in which he writes was never before, we believe, thus selected for honour.

Maurice, both of whom had left Cambridge a year or two before, and were at this time joint editors of the A thenczum. It is not a little remarkable that the subject of "Timbuctoo" should have brought out the early powers, although in very different directions, of two of the literary giants of the century.

Thackeray — then a student in the same college as Tennyson, and on terms of intimacy which grew closer as the two men grew older, ripening at last into a friendship of the warmest kind — wrote some burlesque verses in a little periodical called The Snob, got up at Cambridge by the wags of the undergraduate world. He grimly asserts that they were " unluckily not finished on the day appointed for delivery of the several copies of verses on Timbuctoo," and, "as it would be a pity that such a poem should be lost to the world," they are submitted for insertion in the Snob, which is " the most widely circulated periodical in Europe.

The latter read some very exquisite poetry of his, entitled ' The Hesperides. Alfred Tennyson, Hallam, Trench, Spedding, Alford, and Milnes were all members, and in spite of the disfavour with which these secret meetings were regarded by the authorities of those days, we may be certain that there was no stint of speculation or of free inquiry. At this period, indeed, the bent of Tennyson's mind towards metaphysical problems took a stronger form from the encouragement and ex- ample of Arthur Hallam.

In , Alfred Tennyson prefixed his name to a thin duodecimo of 1 54 pages, published by Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, and entitled " Poems, chiefly Lyrical. The influence of Hal- lam's culture had already made itself felt on the poet's work, although not to the extent that became subsequently apparent, and his sympa- thetic criticism no doubt left its mark upon these acknowledged productions of his friend, before they were ushered into the colder atmosphere of public consideration.

The "Poems, chiefly Lyrical," were fifty-three in number ; twenty-three have entirely disappeared from the later editions of the Laureate's works, and most of those which have been retained have been touched and re- touched, and pruned, altered, or expanded, until they may be regarded almost as new pieces.

Of the withdrawn pieces, several present characteristics which at least appeal to the instincts of curiosity. Regarding as some- thing sacred the poet's right to bury the weaker productions of his youth, we shall not attempt, now or hereafter, to gratify that curiosity, or to disinter any of the suppressed works, except in the case of one or two detached passages, quoted for the purpose of illustrating contemporary criti- cisms. The longest, and in some respects the most important of these early efforts is the " Sup- posed Confessions of a Sensitive Mind riot in Unity with Itself," which has been buried in a determined obscurity for many years, and has only quite recently found a place in the com- plete edition of Lord Tennyson's " Poems.

Apart from the interest which in- variably seems to attach to anything that a great author has shown a marked desire to cancel, this poem possesses a still greater interest be- cause it is an attempt to handle those spiritual problems which, in " The Two Voices " and " In Memoriam," Tennyson has treated with such a deep knowledge of the soul's needs and yearnings. By the side of dainty little pieces like " Lilian " and " The Sea Fairies," the " Confessions " seem like the sea lashed into convulsive movement com- pared with the placid surface of a summer lake.

There are just a few lines which may be quoted, especially as they have only been recently disen- tombed, to give an idea both of the method of treatment and of the power with which the whole poem is written : — " Oh! With triple-mailed trust, and clear Delight, the infant's dawning year. And the clear spirit shining thro'.

Could not I Bow myself down, where thou hast knelt. To the earth — until the ice would melt Here, and I feel as thou hast felt! What Devil had the heart to scathe Flowers thou hadst rear'd — to brush the dew From thine own lily, when thy grave Was deep, my mother, in the clay?