Letters on Literature | Page 4

has been much in courts. The old Greek tyrants loved her;
great Rhamses seated her at his right hand; every prince had his singers.
Now we dwell in an age of democracy, and Poetry wins but a feigned
respect, more out of courtesy, and for old friendship's sake, than for
liking. Though so many write verse, as in Juvenal's time, I doubt if
many read it. "None but minstrels list of sonneting." The purchasing
public, for poetry, must now consist chiefly of poets, and they are
usually poor.
Can anything speak more clearly of the decadence of the art than the
birth of so many poetical "societies"? We have the Browning Society,
the Shelley Society, the Shakespeare Society, the Wordsworth
Society--lately dead. They all demonstrate that people have not the
courage to study verse in solitude, and for their proper pleasure; men
and women need confederates in this adventure. There is safety in
numbers, and, by dint of tea-parties, recitations, discussions, quarrels
and the like, Dr. Furnivall and his friends keep blowing the faint
embers on the altar of Apollo. They cannot raise a flame!
In England we are in the odd position of having several undeniable
poets, and very little new poetry worthy of the name. The chief singers

have outlived, if not their genius, at all events its flowering time. Hard
it is to estimate poetry, so apt we are, by our very nature, to prefer "the
newest songs," as Odysseus says men did even during the war of Troy.
Or, following another ancient example, we say, like the rich niggards
who neglected Theocritus, "Homer is enough for all."
Let us attempt to get rid of every bias, and, thinking as dispassionately
as we can, we still seem to read the name of Tennyson in the golden
book of English poetry. I cannot think that he will ever fall to a lower
place, or be among those whom only curious students pore over, like
Gower, Drayton, Donne, and the rest. Lovers of poetry will always read
him as they will read Wordsworth, Keats, Milton, Coleridge, and
Chaucer. Look his defects in the face, throw them into the balance, and
how they disappear before his merits! He is the last and youngest of the
mighty race, born, as it were, out of due time, late, and into a feebler
generation.
Let it be admitted that the gold is not without alloy, that he has a touch
of voluntary affectation, of obscurity, even an occasional perversity, a
mannerism, a set of favourite epithets ("windy" and "happy"). There is
a momentary echo of Donne, of Crashaw, nay, in his earliest pieces,
even a touch of Leigh Hunt. You detect it in pieces like "Lilian" and
"Eleanore," and the others of that kind and of that date.
Let it be admitted that "In Memoriam" has certain lapses in all that
meed of melodious tears; that there are trivialities which might deserve
(here is an example) "to line a box," or to curl some maiden's locks,
that there are weaknesses of thought, that the poet now speaks of
himself as a linnet, singing "because it must," now dares to approach
questions insoluble, and again declines their solution. What is all this
but the changeful mood of grief? The singing linnet, like the bird in the
old English heathen apologue, dashes its light wings painfully against
the walls of the chamber into which it has flown out of the blind night
that shall again receive it.
I do not care to dwell on the imperfections in that immortal strain of
sympathy and consolation, that enchanted book of consecrated regrets.
It is an easier if not more grateful task to note a certain peevish egotism
of tone in the heroes of "Locksley Hall," of "Maud," of "Lady Clara
Vere de Vere." "You can't think how poor a figure you make when you
tell that story, sir," said Dr. Johnson to some unlucky gentleman whose

"figure" must certainly have been more respectable than that which is
cut by these whining and peevish lovers of Maud and Cousin Amy.
Let it be admitted, too, that King Arthur, of the "Idylls," is like an
Albert in blank verse, an Albert cursed with a Guinevere for a wife, and
a Lancelot for friend. The "Idylls," with all their beauties, are full of a
Victorian respectability, and love of talking with Vivien about what is
not so respectable. One wishes, at times, that the "Morte d'Arthur" had
remained a lonely and flawless fragment, as noble as Homer, as
polished as Sophocles. But then we must have missed, with many other
admirable things, the "Last Battle in the West."
People who come after us will be more impressed than we are by the
Laureate's versatility. He has touched so many strings, from "Will