"He was a man born with thy face and throat, and though he met many rebuffs, he flung at the world the scornful message, "Leave Now for dogs and apes! and continued his upward climb. Alfred Tennyson had no such years of weary waiting for recognition as Browning endured. His lyric sweetness and dulcet melody caught the ear of the world quickly, whereas the harsh dissonance of Browning's voice repelled all except those who sought for the thought beneath. the words. But Tennyson, after he had well proved the fact that he possessed some power other than the twanging of a tinkling lute, held the attention of thoughtful minds, even as Browning did, and thought and music were blended as one. Both men devoted their lives to poetry, hardly considering the possibility of any other course. Both were poor, but chose to live modestly, even sparingly, in order to follow the bent of their natures. Browning lived the greater part of his life on three hundred pounds a year, and Tennyson waited for twelve years before he could marry the woman of his choice, yet neither ever seemed to have any temptation to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage. The quick returns of literary notoriety were unknown in those days, and poets in particular were accustomed to have their books remain long on the bookseller's shelves. Even now, of course, their wares are less remunerative than those of their fellow-craftsmen, the writers of prose; yet now a poet who catches the popular ear does not need to starve in a garret, as Browning and Tennyson would have done had they been entirely dependent upon their own work. One wonders whether a poet like Longfellow, could he have been endowed, and relieved from the drudgery of teaching and lecturing to college boys, would really have achieved much finer results; or should we have had merely a greater quantity of poetry, with no corresponding difference in quality? One must give up many things in this world who determines to follow his dream; but happy is the land where many men are content to live humbly, that they may strive, unhampered by worldly cares, toward a high ideal. May our poets, at least, be free from too many corroding cares! May they be able to live, as Tennyson did, secluded lives amid beautiful surroundings, and free from the intrusion of that commonplace crowd which throttles genius by too close contact! For a high man with a great thing to pursue, the kingdom of heaven does not come with observation. Alfred Tennyson was born in the seclusion of a country parsonage, in that far away time, 1809, when men did not live and strive in the public eye to the extent they do in these later days. His father, a Lincolnshire clergyman, lived almost an ideal scholar's life in that beautiful country, where seldom the "chimney glowed in expectation of a guest." Alfred and his brothers passed their quiet years here, reading and studying, and trying their hands at poetry at a very early age. Two of his brothers seemed as promising as he, in childhood, and indeed were possessed of real poetic gifts. One is reminded of the Bronté sisters on the Yorkshire moors, with their early attempts at literary production, and their keen interest and sympathy in each other's labor. All had a true vocation, but time and circumstance permitted but one to attain to an excellence which the world acknowledged. So Charles and Frederick Tennyson remained as lesser lights in this constellation of genius; but each had the poetic temperament, to say the least, and that is a gift of exceeding great value. Samuel Longfellow is another case in point, with his rare poet's soul and exquisite touch within the limits to which he has confined himself. When Charles Tennyson was eighteen, and Alfred only seventeen, they published their first verses. A local bookseller paid them one hundred dollars for them, expecting, no doubt, to sell the book mostly in the parish, where the father was very influential, and the boys favorites. When Alfred went up to Cambridge at nineteen and entered Trinity College, his father was already in failing health, and the resources of the family quite meagre. At Cambridge the boy had been heralded as one of mark. If he had not written three books on the soul, proving absurd all written hitherto, like Cleon, he had at least written one book, and at seventeen that is some distinction. There were a number of youths there at that time, of commanding talent, nearly a dozen of whom became distinguished in after years in their chosen lines; so from his early years he mingled with men not only of great ability, but of the highest character and standing. His own early life was pitched conspicuously high, his religious feeling being innate, and well developed by his early training. Some of the companions of his college life met him on this ground, and his lofty attitude toward life was not lowered by the influence of companions who mocked at it. His habit of referring all questions of conduct to the higher elements of his nature was already established, and he never lost it throughout life. His scorn for low ideals was very genuine, and his delight in the "heart affluence of discursive talk" on noble themes was enduring. He met here for the first time Arthur Hallam, the friend whose name has been handed down to coming time in "In Memoriam." Here began that happy intercourse, "When each by turns was guide to each, And Fancy light from Fancy caught, And Thought leapt out to wed with thought "And all we met was fair and good, And all was good that Time could bring, "And many an old philosophy On Argive heights divinely sang, Though he made lifelong friends of many of the men he met at Cambridge, Arthur Hallam endeared himself to him above all others; and though it might have been the early death of the favored friend which made "former gladness loom so great," he never replaced him with another quite as near and dear. The acquaintance of Arthur Hallam with the Tennyson family, which consisted of twelve children of whom Alfred was the third, resulted in his engagement to Miss Tennyson, and in his being a very constant visitor at the home at Somersby. These days are commemorated by the poet: "While now we talk as once we talked Of men and minds, the dust of change, "Beside the river's wooded reach, The fortress, and the mountain ridge, The cataract flashing from the bridge, After his friend's too early death at Vienna, he writes thus of the sister who is bereaved: "Her eyes are homes of silent prayer, "All subtle thought, all curious fears, This poem has seemed sacred, seemed the supreme poem, to all who love and grieve, ever since in his young manhood he embalmed such love and grief in that imperishable verse. When but twenty-one years old he published the volume called "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical," and in 1832 another volume which contained some of his best-known poems, "The Lotos-Eaters," "The Lady of Shalott," "The Palace of Art," "The Dream of Fair Women," among them. |