The Press. — London, England, 1855-08-11 00:00:00

Wittraturt. Maud, and Other Poems. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet Laureate. London : Moxon. 11i a. TiNNYSON has bad no reason to complain of the neglect which so often afflicts living poets. At the end of this volume we see advertised a tenth edition of his " Poems," a sixth edition of, the " Princess," and a sixth edition of "In Memoriam." His success must be the more gratifying to him as his works are not of the character for which one would anti cipate popularity. They are so dreamy as at times t 9 pass out of the range, not of sympathy only, but of comprehension; and plain readers are obliged to pore over his lines with painful labour to pierce the mist which envelops his meaning. So successful a writer must of course have his reasons for writing unin telligibl3 , more especially as he can be per fectly distinct when he chooses. But he is in this danger at present, that as his worst peculiarities have found most admirers, he t4ickens in obscurity as he proceeds, and is likely to end—like that school of fatiaties of which Edward Irving, himself a man of genius, was the head—y speaking a language as unintelligible to himself as to the rest of mankind. The production of " Maud" is a sufficient proof that there must be people in the world who admire poetry more as they understand it less. It is the sign of a sickly age when such mere vapouring as " Maud " is made up of meets with favour. Taken at the best, it is a strain of puling, incoherent sentiment and disordered fantasy such as mighi flit through the brain of a love-sick youth in the measles : the fever of typhus would conjure up more vivid images. The whining lamentation of the verse has no resemblance to the vehement outcry of passionate grief. In all languages that will appeal to the heart. It speaks an universal tongue, and will make itself heard in whatever syllables it shapes itself. Mr. Tennyson elaborates his agony with great eon, but there is nothing human about it. The artifice and affectation ace apparent. We see him shedding his costive tears one by one, and carefully hoarding them up in a bottle to be publicly exhibited. The poem opens with a hint of the fearful death of the narrator's father. He had made an unlucky speculation, and he fell, or threw himself, from a cliff. Who knows ? Therefore " the dreadful hollow behind the little wood" is hated. After this tragic prelude there follow some stanzas on the vices of the age, the disclosures of Dr. Hassall's analytical in quiry furnishing the poet with a text for his verse : ♦nd the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruthan's head, Till the filthy by-lane rings W the yell of the trampled wife, While chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life. And Sleep must lie down arm'd, for the villainous centre- bits Grini on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights, While another is cheating the sink of a few last gasps, as he sits To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimson lights. Mr. Tennyson concludes that peace is the cause of ourspcial disorders, yid he supposes that we should be all the better if an enemy's Beet came yonder round by the hill. We beg leave to say a word here on Ur. Tennyson's philosoPhy before we proceed ihrther. Be has a most comical manner of in tiOducing into his verse the fag-ends of . all sorts of gossip of the day. lie casts his net tor the w,ctifi and stray s_ of superficia ldiscourse. No thing comes arrusS to him. Sometimes,,a,s ii the above extract, ha seizes hold of the full of.food and drugs ; then he is full of war like ardour, and thanks God that " the large canker of peace is over and done." By-and bye he droops swoop down on the peace party, and represents Mr. Bright as 4 broad brimmed hawker of holy things, Whose ear is stuft with his cotton. And who plays The game of the despot kings. Anon, ho treats us to some metaphysical and geological speculations after this fashion : THE PRESS. We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower ; 1)o we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game That pushes us off from the board, and others ever succeed ? Ah yet, we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour; We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother's shame; However we brave it out, we men are a little breed. A monstrous eft was of old the Lord and Master of Earth, For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran, And be felt himself in his force to be Nature's crowning race. As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth, So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man : He now is first, but is he the last ? is he not too base ? • • • • For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil. Who knows the ways of the world, how God will bring them about? Our planet is one, the suns are many, the world is wide. Shall I weep if a Poland fall? shall I shriek if a Hungary fail? Or an infant civilisation be ruled with rod or with knout? I have not made the world, and He that made it will guide. Reading this, we feel much in the case of Dr. Primrose when he heard from a fellow-pri soner who seemed to have " a thorough know " ledge of human nature on the wrong side," the words solemnly delivered, " the worl,l is in its dotage." We suspect, with the good vicar, that " we have heard all this before," and that our poet has been pilfering from the stalest and dullest of all writers—the sceptical re vivalists of his day. What astonishes us is, that Mr. Tennyson should put forth this thou sand-times repeated drivel with the air of a man who gives utterance toprofoundly-original reflection : Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game? So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man. The drift of the Maker is dark. Our planet is one, the suns are many. How do these sentences read when nakedly set forth? Are we to receive them as poetry merely because we find them in a new work by the Poet Laureate ? There is no rational being in the kingdom—not even excepting Mr. " Marvels-of-Creation " Fullom—but might be ashamed of setting forth such pompous platitudes ; and if Mr. Tennyson were not absolutely blinded by vanity, or if criticism were not at so low an ebb as to nourish in him a belief that whatever appears with his name must instantly, and as a matter of course, be cried up as a miracle of genius, he would surely never have ventured to publish the " bald, disjointed chat " of which a specimen is given above. But who is Maud? She is the daughter of the old " millionaire" who owns " the Hall," and at first she is introduced to us as a kind of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, with a style of beauty, Faultily faultless—icily regular._ The narrator has played with her in her childhood ; first they bow—then speak--and all the rest may be foreseen Her brother, who appears to have been a well-dressed, gen tlemanly person, described with poetic license as an Oil'd and curl'd Assyrian Bull, surprises the lovers in one of their meetings. There are high words first, then a blow, then a duel, in the red-ribb'd hollow behind the wood. The Assyrian bull falls; and after ttis, there is—to use one of the most tersely-expressive lines in the book— Nothing but idiot gabble. That we may not. be accused of misrepre sentation, we must give an extract which may be.t.a.Ren as a fair example of the greater por tion of the poem : • Virretchedest age, since Time began, They cannot even bury a man ; And tho' we paid our tithes in the days that are gone, Not a hell was rung, not a prayer was read ; It is that which makes us loud in the world of the dead; There is none that does his work, not one ; A touch of their office might have sufficed, But the churchmen fain would kill their church, As the churches have kill'd their Christ, See, there is one of us sobbing, No limit to his distress ; And another, a lord of all things, praying To his own great self, as I guess • And another, a statesman there. betraying His party-secret, fool, to the press; SATURDAY, And yonder a vile physician, blabbing The case of his patient—all for what? To tickle the maggot born in an empty head, And wheedle a world that loves him not, For it is but a world of the dead. Nothing but idiot gabble ! For the prophecy given of old And then not understood, Has oome to pass as foretold ; Not let any man think for the public good, But babble, merely for babble. For I never whisper'd a private affair Within the hearing of cat or mouse, No, not to myself in the closet alone, But I heard it shouted at once front the top of the house Everything came to be known ; Who told him we were there ? Not that grey old wolf, for he came not back From the wilderness, full of wolves, where he used to lie; He has gather'd the bones for his o'ergrown whelp to crack ; Crack them now for yourself, and howl, and die. Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip, And curse me the British verwin, the rat ; I know not whether he came in the Hanover ship, But I know that he lies and listens mute In an ancient mansion's crannies and holes : Arsenic, arsenic, sir, would do it, Except that now we poison our babes, poor souls ! It is all used up for that. Possibly this is meant for the raving of a madman. If so, it is tolerably successful. It is as void of sense as anything in the pamphlet of that gentleman who signs himself " Elijah," and who commands us, by an authority higher than human, not only to review his work, but to advertise it gratis. Has Mr Tennyson such a defence to plead as may be urged on behalf of the unfortunate pamphleteer? And if not, is it quite fair in him to inflict on us such a mass of mere deceptions Bedlamite jargon ? Even in the comparatively coherent part of the poeni there are passages of which we can make no thing. The stanzas at pp. 80.31, for example, seem to have no kind of relation with what goes before or follows after. For all the sense there is in them, one might as well listen to poker and tongs being rung against each other Perhaps some of Mr. Tennyson's admirers will urge that we are very unreasonable in expecting to meet with sense in poetry—that we should be satisfied with sound, and with such scattered gleims of meaning as may float to us now and then when the poet chooses to be intelligible. To this argument we demur. We say that no writer, whether in prose or verse, has a right to take shelter in " no meaning," and, further, that the minds which Rio so, though they may possess great occa sional cleverness, cannot be ranked among the highest class, but use their mystery as a cloak for their weakness. It is an ill-office to flatter them that they are sublime when they are merely incomprehensible. That there are flashes of true poetry in " Maud " we readily recognise, but they are rare and detached. The lines expressive of Maud's yielding when she hears her lover's avowal are exquisitely conceived : Go not, happy day, From the shining fields, Go not, happy day, Till the maiden yields. Rcey is the West, Rosy is the South, Roses are her cheeks, And a rose her month. When the happy Xes Falters from her lips, Pass and blush the news O'er the blowing ships. Over blowing seas, Over seas at rest, Pass the happy news, Blush it thro' the West; Till the red man dance By his red cedar tree, And the red mat's babe Leap, beyond the sea. Blush from West to East, Blush from East to West, Till the West is East, Blush it thro' the West. Rosy is the West, Rosy is the South, Roses are her cheeks, And a rose her mouth. The melody of some of these lines is deli cious, but they are marred by extravagance. " Blowing ships" is unpardonable—we might as well use sailing seas, or travelling railways; the impulse communicatel to the red man's babe is not poetic, but ludicrous; and the jingle of East and West perplexes ear and sense alike, and refusea to dwell on Ole Intia