Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson | Page 5

see it
in 'The Palace of Art', in '‘none' and in the verses 'To J. S.' But in
intrinsic merit the poems were no advance on their predecessors, for the
execution was not equal to the design. The best, such as '‘none', 'A
Dream of Fair Women', 'The Palace of Art', 'The Lady of Shalott'--I am
speaking of course of these poems in their first form--were full of
extraordinary blemishes. The volume was degraded by pieces which
were very unworthy of him, such as 'O Darling Room' and the verses
'To Christopher North', and affectations of the worst kind deformed
many, nay, perhaps the majority of the poems. But the capital defect
lay in the workmanship. The diction is often languid and slipshod,
sometimes quaintly affected, and we can never go far without
encountering lines, stanzas, whole poems which cry aloud for the file.
The power and charm of Tennyson's poetry, even at its ripest, depend
very largely, often mainly, on expression, and the couplet which he
envied Browning,
The little more, and how much it is,
The little less, and what worlds
away,
is strangely applicable to his own art. On a single word, on a subtle
collocation, on a slight touch depend often his finest effects: "the little
less" reduces him to mediocrity, "the little more" and he is with the
masters. To no poetry would the application of Goethe's test be, as a
rule, more fatal--that the real poetic quality in poetry is that which
remains when it has been translated literally into prose.

Whoever will compare the poems of 1832 with the same poems as they
appeared in 1842 will see that the difference is not so much a difference
in degree, but almost a difference in kind. In the collection of 1832
there were three gems, 'The Sisters', the lines 'To J. S.' and 'The May
Queen'. Almost all the others which are of any value were, in the
edition of 1842, carefully revised, and in some cases practically
rewritten. If Tennyson's career had closed in 1833 he would hardly
have won a prominent place among the minor poets of the present
century. The nine years which intervened between the publication of
his second volume and the volumes of 1842 were the making of him,
and transformed a mere dilettante into a master. Much has been said
about the brutality of Lockhart's review in the 'Quarterly'. In some
respects it was stupid, in some respects it was unjust, but of one thing
there can be no doubt--it had a most salutary effect. It held up the
mirror to weaknesses and deficiencies which, if Tennyson did not care
to acknowledge to others, he must certainly have acknowledged to
himself. It roused him and put him on his mettle. It was a wholesome
antidote to the enervating flattery of coteries and "apostles" who were
certainly talking a great deal of nonsense about him, as Arthur Hallam's
essay in the 'Englishman' shows. During the next nine years he
published nothing, with the exception of two unimportant contributions
to certain minor periodicals.[1] But he was educating himself,
saturating himself with all that is best in the poetry of Ancient Greece
and Rome, of modern Italy, of Germany and of his own country,
studying theology, metaphysics, natural history, geology, astronomy
and travels, observing nature with the eye of a poet, a painter and a
naturalist. Nor was he a recluse. He threw himself heartily into the life
of his time, following with the keenest interest all the great political
and social movements, the progress and effects of the Reform Bill, the
troubles in Ireland, the troubles with the Colonies, the struggles
between the Protectionists and the Free Traders, Municipal Reform, the
advance of the democracy, Chartism, the popular education question.
He travelled on the Continent, he travelled in Wales and Scotland, he
visited most parts of England, not as an idle tourist, but as a student
with note-book in hand. And he had been submitted also to the
discipline which is of all disciplines the most necessary to the poet, and
without which, as Goethe says, "he knows not the heavenly powers": he

had "ate his bread in sorrow". The death of his father in 1831 had
already brought him face to face, as he has himself expressed it, with
the most solemn of all mysteries. In 1833 he had an awful shock in the
sudden death of his friend Arthur Hallam, "an overwhelming sorrow
which blotted out all joy from his life and made him long for death".
He had other minor troubles which contributed greatly to depress
him,--the breaking up of the old home at Somersby, his own poverty
and uncertain prospects, his being compelled in consequence to break
off all intercourse with Miss Emily Selwood. It is possible that 'Love