lark-like songs-not the less happy for her rags-by the villa which harbours squalid adultery and murder, with remorse as squalid ! Nowhere in the society of his verse is there room for tedium. We feel his meditations to be better company than talk. One whose friendship I have prized for more than forty years, as I hope and believe he has mine, long since observed to me that 'reading Browning is like dramdrinking'. It enslaves; and I am willing to believe that it might scarcely be for the good either of poets or of their readers that many sources of similar intoxicants should be set running. Whether fortunately or not, however, the danger of temptation at any rate is remote. Such a poetsoul as Browning's is reared not often or easily. We may well apply to himself his own account of a poet's birth: Rock's the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare; The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. Six vols. Smith, Elder & Co., 1868 :-Balaustion's Adventure, 1871. Prince HohenstielSchwangau, 1871. Fifine at the Fair, 1872. Red Cotton Night-cap Country, 1873. The Inn Album, 1875. Aristophanes' Apology, 1875. Pacchiarotto, &c., 1876. The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, 1877. La Saisiaz, 1878. The Two Poets of Croisic, 1878. Dramatic Idyls, 1879. Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, 1880. Jocoseria, 1883. Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884. Parleyings with Certain People, 1887. Asolando, 1890. Parleyings with Certain People, iii, With Christopher Smart, pp. 1 79-95. 2 The Two Poets of Croisic, Prelude. 3 The Lost Leader (Dramatic Lyrics), Poet. Works. Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, ibid, st. 7. 5 The Guardian Angels; a Picture at Fano, ibid. ' The Flower's Name, stanzas 3 and 5 (Garden Fancies, Dramatic Lyrics), Poet. Works. • Hervé Riel (Pacchiarotto, &c.), st. 10. • Parting at Morning (Dramatic Lyrics), Poet. Works. 10 Evelyn Hope, st. 7 (Dramatic Lyrics), ibid. 11 By the Fireside, st. 39 (Dramatic Lyrics), ibid. 12 Ibid., st. 25 (Dramatic Lyrics), ibid. 13 Abt Vogler (After he has been playing upon the Instrument of his Invention), stanzas 7, 8, and 12 (Dramatis Personae), Poet. Works. 14 A Grammarian's Funeral, Shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe (Dramatic Romances), Poet. Works. 15 Martin Relph (Dramatic Idyls, 1879). 16 Muléykeh (Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, 1880). 17 Clive (ibid.). 18 The Pied Piper of Hamelin, st. 13 (Dramatic Romances), Poet. Works. 19 De Gustibus, st. 2 (Dramatic Lyrics), Poet. Works. 20 Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, Epilogue. ALFRED TENNYSON 1809-1892 THE poets-not only the great, but all the true-how each stands alone! Search the whole Calendar of Inspiration; no pair will be found for him with whom the register for the nineteenth century closes; no real fellow for Alfred Tennyson! The character of his genius was so unexpected that the general public took long to appreciate it. The delay was a tribute to its originality. To a few elect it was certain and heavenly. I envy their joyous and surprised recognition. Mighty Wordsworth, in the opinion of a younger generation, had declined to prosing, however wisely. Hellenic Landor raved. Rogers was antediluvian; and poor Leigh Hunt had never counted. The giants of the past were buried in their past, when a chant as exquisite as theirs, and at least as new and strange, rose into the dead air. To a brilliant, youthful brotherhood it must have been as when Christabel or Childe Harold soared above the stagnant mists half a century earlier. The initiated were enraptured with all. The present generation discriminates. To a certain extent it has lost touch with much of the philosophy of The Two Voices, The Palace of Art, The Vision of Sin. It has outgrown the gladness, the sweet limpid sorrow, of the May Queen and its sequels, the Early Victorian elegance of the Miller's and Gardener's Daughters; even Locksley Hall the First, with its play of panoramic heart-flutterings. Though scarcely one discarded favourite but has lines, words, to set even this twentieth-century pulse beating faster, the Lilians, Isabels, Madelines, Adelines, Margarets, and Eleanores, Mermen and Mermaidens, Orianas, Lords of Burleigh, and Ladies Clare and Clara, elicit smiles now instead of emotion. A large part, however, is fully as fresh as when first it danced into daylight. Custom cannot stale the radiant humours of Recollections of the Arabian Nights: When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free In the silken sail of infancy, The tide of time flow'd back with me, The wild swan's death-hymn may be music only; but such music! At first to the ear The warble was low, and full, and clear; As when a mighty people rejoice With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold, Thro' the open gates of the city afar, To the shepherd who watcheth the evening star. And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds, And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank, And the silvery marish-flowers that throng Were flooded over with eddying song.2 The land of the Lotos-eaters basks still in abiding mellow afternoon sunshine: How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem Falling asleep in a half-dream! To dream and dream, like yonder amber light, Eating the Lotos day by day, To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, To the influence of mild-minded melancholy; Heap'd over with a mound of grass, Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass! 3 We have not ceased to wander around the spell-bound sleeping palace-spell-bound ourselves—and its gardens : Where rests the sap within the leaf, Where stays the blood along the veins. Faint murmurs from the meadows come, Like hints and echoes of the world To spirits folded in the womb; waiting till the fairy prince has kissed back to life his destined bride : And o'er the hills, and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, Thro' all the world she follow'd him." |