The forms of poetry which Mr. Tennyson adopts are not capable of interpreting the more complex moral phenomena. To show that evil natures and evil actions have their appointed work in the world, That somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt and taints of blood,— will, in most cases, require a more complex machinery of interacting events and characters than he puts in operation. Beautiful actions and beautiful characters are their own interpretation. We need ask no questions as to the motive and ground of their existence, as to the part they bear in the harmonies of the universe. But to throw the faintest light of hope upon the lives and destinies of men and women who seem to be born only to cause suffering to themselves and others, to grow worse as they grow older, and to harden under the discipline of the moral laws of the universe, the mind must look far back into the determining causes of character and action, far forward into their remote results, and far round upon the society in which they develop themselves, and upon which they are exerting a constant modifying power, through its interests and sympathies. Even the widest glance forward, backward, and around, will fail often to detect one clue to the mystery of evil; and faith can only throw herself Upon the great world's altar stairs, That slope through darkness up to God. So far, however, as the problem can be solved poetically-by exhibiting, that is, the real relations of good and evil in particular cases, and their actual connexion with each other as cause and effect, so as to vindicate at once the eternal law of right and the goodness of God with sufficient clearness to justify the expression of the poet's view of the world in a rhythmical form, the drama or the epic will alone satisfy the necessities of the case. The lyric poet may indeed assert in glowing strains his own conviction of the ultimate solution as a general truth, or he may present his view of the working of any great moral laws in lyric allegories, like The Palace of Art or The Vision of Sin: but no machinery short of the drama or epic will enable him to solve practically, and to the conviction of his readers, the darker problems of human life. And Mr. Tennyson abstains, as a rule, from touching any actions of human beings that are not, so to speak, their own vindication, and which do not at once commend themselves to the sympathy and conscience by their own gracefulness, beauty, or F nobility, the happiness, the gentleness, the vitality of mind and heart, the strength and courage of will they exhibit. This, however, in a world where suffering and sorrow are among the appointed means of discipline for the good as well as among the punishments of the bad, leaves still scope enough for poetry of a severer character than the exquisite and happy lovestory we have been commenting upon. In Dora and Love and Duty the problem the poet attempts to solve is not to show how the eternal law of right vindicates itself against man's self-will and self-indulgence, but how the goodness of God vindicates itself against man's self-sacrifice in behalf of the right. If such vindication were impossible in the typical instances selected, the subjects would be unfit for poetic treatment. Suffering, unredeemed by its effects, may be a proper subject for the awe-struck meditations of any man; but to represent it under rhythmical forms which are symbolical of emotion flowing musically forth from a heart rejoicing in its own thoughts about the objects present to it, would be just mockery. It is only Nero that fiddles when Rome is burning. The true poet must have seen the final issue in good of the struggle he portrays, even though but in a faint and hazy glimpse. And Mr. Tennyson habitually observes this law. Even poor, perverted Simeon Stylites has glimpses of his mistake; his wretched, addled brain is clouded, but the poem closes with a breaking up of the clouds. And scarcely any other of Mr. Tennyson's poems is open to the faintest suspicion of portraying emotion merely for its dramatic interest. In Dora and Love and Duty the suffering is felt through every nerve. The simple unconscious pathos of the one, and the highwrought reflective passion of the other, meet in this expression of a genuine grief. A three-volume novel could not impress the essential characteristics of each tale with more vividness than the brief poems, in which the incidents are boldly sketched in outline, and the crisis of the passion struck off with a rapid and masterly force of hand. But in both poems, when the battle has been fought, the sharp agony passed, and all pretence of conventional consolation abandoned, the peace that comes of victory over self shines clearly down upon the hearts of the victims, and the striking drama, the pathetic tale, points forward to a life purified, strengthened, and even softened by the conflict. As a mere tale, Dora might have ended with the reconciliation; it is the higher instinct of the moral teacher that leads Mr. Tennyson to add— So those four abode And it is not the love that Sits brooding on the ruins of a life, that prompts the speaker in Love and Duty to close his passionate recollections with a strain of exquisite sensibility to external beauty and softened visions of the future of his lost mistress : Live-yet live,— Shall sharpest pathos blight us, knowing all And leave thee freër, till thou wake refresh'd, In Locksley Hall we pass to a poem of a widely different strain. It is against the fickleness of a woman, not against circumstances which leave her |