# Tennysoniana/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III.
POEMS WRITTEN PRIOR TO THE DEATH OF ARTHUR HALLAM.
The period comprised under the above title is one of three years; from 1830 to 1833.
There is nothing artificial in this arrangement of the early productions of our poet; for, as will be seen, he continued silent for nearly ten years after the death of his friend. It is also indispensable to the right understanding of "In Memoriam" that we should see what ​Tennyson had actually accomplished during the lifetime of Hallam. There can be no doubt that the judgment of his friend on these early productions was more acceptable and valuable to him than that of any less sympathetic reviewer.
Hitherto we have been examining the anonymous productions of a school-boy of eighteen, and the prize poem of a Cambridge undergraduate. On neither of these, notwithstanding the high praise which the "Athenæum" bestowed on the latter, could a poetical reputation be built.
The first volume of poems to which Alfred Tennyson affixed his name—a thin duodecimo of 154 pages—appeared with the following title:
"Poems, chiefly Lyrical. By Alfred Tennyson. London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, Cornhill. 1830."
The following is a list of the poems: the titles of those that have been suppressed are printed in italics: ​
​In January, 1831, a notice of this volume appeared in the "Westminster Review." After ten pages devoted to a minute criticism of the poems, it concludes thus:
​"That these poems will have a very rapid and extensive popularity we do not anticipate. Their very originality will prevent their being generally appreciated for a time. But that time will come, we hope, to a not far distant end. They demonstrate the possession of powers, to the future direction of which we look with some anxiety. A genuine poet has deep responsibilities to his country and the world, to the present and future generations, to earth and heaven. He, of all men, should have distinct and worthy objects before him, and consecrate himself to their promotion. It is thus that he best consults the glory of his art, and his own lasting fame. Mr. Tennyson has a dangerous quality in that facility of impersonation on which we have remarked, and by which he enters so thoroughly into the most strange and wayward idiosyncrasies of other men. It must not degrade him into a poetical harlequin. He has higher work to do than that of disporting himself amongst 'mystics' and 'flowing philosophers.' He knows that 'the poet's mind is holy ground;' he knows that the poet's portion is to be
​he has shown, in the lines from which we quote, his own just conception of the grandeur of a poet's destiny; and we look to him for its fulfilment. It is not for such men to sink into mere verse-makers for the amusement of themselves or others. They can influence the associations of unnumbered minds; they can command the sympathies of unnumbered hearts; they can disseminate principles; they can give those principles power over men's imaginations; they can excite in a good cause the sustained enthusiasm that is sure to conquer; they can blast the laurels of the tyrants, and hallow the memories of the martyrs of patriotism; they can act with a force, the extent of which it is difficult to estimate, upon national feelings and character, and consequently upon national happiness. If our estimate of Mr. Tennyson be correct, he too is a poet; and many years hence may be read his juvenile description of that character with the proud consciousness that it has become the description and history of his own work."
Almost simultaneously with the publication of "Poems, ​chiefly Lyrical," there appeared a small volume of poems by Charles Tennyson, who had been associated with his brother in the volume of 1827. This little book contains a sonnet to Arthur Hallam, and a Dedicatory Sonnet "To my sister Mary."
These two volumes were reviewed together by Leigh Hunt in the "Tatler," where he entered into a somewhat lengthy disquisition on the respective merits of the two brothers, finally awarding the palm to Alfred.
By a careful comparison of Charles Tennyson's little volume with the "Poems by Two Brothers," the reader who is fortunate enough to possess both will find much additional help in appropriating the pieces ​in the earlier work with some certainty to their respective authors. Charles Tennyson became vicar of Grasby, in Lincolnshire, in 1835, about which time, in consequence of his succeeding, by the death of his grandfather, to property which had come into the family through his grandmother, he assumed the name of Turner, under which he published in 1864 a small volume of sonnets dedicated to the Poet Laureate.
Perhaps the most interesting criticism on the "Poems, chiefly Lyrical," was that contributed by Arthur Hallam, in August, 1831, to a short-lived periodical entitled "The Englishman's Magazine." Under the thin disguise of the editorial "we," it is easy to recognize the warmth and enthusiasm of a dear friend. The article is entitled, "On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry, and on the Lyrical Poems of Alfred Tennyson." The latter portion of it, devoted to an analysis and criticism of some of the principal pieces, has unfortunately not been reprinted in Hallam's Remains.
​Hitherto the young poet's critics had been friendly, nay, almost reverential in their tone; but in May, 1832, came a review from Professor Wilson—the Christopher North of "Blackwood's Magazine"—treating the young poet and his worshippers in a very off-hand manner: speaking of the former with mingled praise and blame, and overwhelming the latter with ridicule. This review contains copious extracts from ​the suppressed poems, and is notable as having called forth the lines, "To Christopher North," printed a few months afterwards in Alfred Tennyson's second volume.
Here is the proper place for mentioning some half-dozen pieces contributed about this time to various miscellanies by Alfred Tennyson, and for some unaccountable reason not reprinted in his second volume, to which I shall come presently. First, there are three poems printed in an annual entitled "The Gem" for 1831. The first of these is entitled "No More":
in which may, I think, be traced the germ of Violet's "mournful song" in "The Princess," with the refrain:
The second piece is entitled "Anacreontics." It will ​have been noticed by the attentive reader that there are some stanzas with a similar title in the "Poems by Two Brothers."
The third piece, "A Fragment," in blank verse, and much in the style of "Timbuctoo," has been already referred to in our first chapter.
There is a sonnet by Alfred Tennyson in the same number of "The Englishman's Magazine," which contains Arthur Hallam's review of the "Poems, chiefly Lyrical." The opening lines,
are partly reproduced in the "Choric Song of the Lotos-Eaters":
Another sonnet commencing,
'There are three things which fill my heart with ighs,"
​will be found in "The Yorkshire Literary Annual" for 1832; and a third, commencing,
"Me my own Fate to lasting sorrow doometh,"
in "Friendship's Offering" for the same year.
In the winter of 1832 Alfred Tennyson published a second volume of Poems, of which the contents are as follows (the titles of the suppressed pieces are printed in italics):
​This second volume was reviewed in a strain of ironical praise in the "Quarterly Review," July, 1833.
​But encouragement and sound advice from a high quarter were not wanting. On the 24th of April, 1833, Samuel Taylor Coleridge thus expressed himself:
"I have not read through all Mr. Tennyson's poems, which have been sent to me, but I think there are some things of a good deal of beauty in that I have seen. The misfortune is, that he has begun to write verses without very well understanding what metre is. Even if you write in a known and approved metre, the odds are, if you are not a metrist yourself, that you will not write harmonious verses; but to deal in new metres without considering what metre means and requires, is preposterous. What I would, with many wishes of success, prescribe to Tennyson—indeed without it he can never be a poet in art—is to write for the next two or three years in none but one or two well-known and strictly defined metres; such as the heroic couplet, the octave stanza, or the octosyllabic measure of the Allegro and Penseroso. He would probably thus get imbued with a sensation, if not a sense of metre without knowing it, just as Eton boys get to write such good Latin verses by conning Ovid ​and Tibullus. As it is I can scarcely scan his verses."
To the poems included under this heading may be added some half-dozen printed for the first time in the re-issue of 1842: "Lady Clara Vere de Vere;" the Conclusion of "The May Queen;" "The Blackbird;" "You ask me why, though ill at ease;" "Of old sat Freedom on the heights;" "Love thou thy land;" and "The Goose;" which, with one exception, were written in 1833, and all of which were probably seen by Arthur Hallam. I am inclined to think that "The Two Voices," as it is dated 1833, was also written before his death in that year.
We have already had occasion to allude to Richard Monckton Milnes as a co-temporary fellow-collegian of Hallam and Tennyson. A few months after Arthur Hallam's death, Milnes published a small volume of poems in the dedication of which "To Henry Hallam, Esq.," we find the following tribute to Arthur's memory: "If I have ever entertained plea​surable anticipations connected with the publication of any production of my mind, they have owed not a little to the thought that I should thus be enabled to give, in my humble way, an open testimony to the affectionate admiration with which I regarded one whom I loved with the truth of early friendship, and you with a parent's passion. It has pleased that high Will, to which we must submit everything, even our loves, to take him away, in whom the world has lost so much, and they who knew him so much more. We are deprived, not only of a beloved friend, of a delightful companion, but of a most wise and influential counsellor in all the serious concerns of existence, of an incomparable critic in all our literary efforts, and of the example of one who was as much before us in everything else, as he is now in the way of life.
"I hold his kind words and earnest admonitions in the best part of my heart, I have his noble and tender letters by my side, and I feel secure from any charge of presumption in thus addressing you, under the shield of his sacred memory." This is dated "London, Nov. 1833." ​This little volume of Milnes's has, however, a still greater interest in connexion with Tennyson. For, besides a quotation from Charles Tennyson's sonnets in the Preface, and another from "The Lotos-Eaters" in the introduction to "Ithaca" (p. 28), there is, at page 50, the following extract from a poem never published:
The poem from which these lines are taken is entitled "The Lover's Tale." It was printed in 1833, but withdrawn before publication, and apparently only a few copies were given away among the writer's personal friends. "Shortly after the publication of his second volume," says Mr. Powell, "Alfred Tennyson printed a poem called 'The Lover's Tale:' this, however, he suppressed, contenting himself with giving a few copies away. It is," he adds, "decidedly unworthy his reputation." Respecting the justice of ​this rather summary verdict our readers shall have some opportunity of judging for themselves.
"The Lover's Tale" extends to sixty pages, divided into two parts, and is entirely in blank verse. It was written apparently in 1828, though not printed till five years later; but it doubtless received many aftertouches and corrections during the interval. It must have been well known to Arthur Hallam, the period of whose friendship with Tennyson embraced precisely the years between the composition and the printing of it.
The whole poem is a monologue, and the lover is himself the speaker. He narrates the sad and tragical history of his past life to some of his dearest friends. The argument cannot better be set forth than in the poet's own words as they stand in the little prose introduction to "The Golden Supper," which is a sequel to "The Lover's Tale." Even the names are the same, or almost the same; Lionel is the successful ​rival, but the Cadrilla of the earlier poem is changed to Camilla in the later for the sake of euphony. The "Lover's Bay," and "the house among the pines" are described in both poems, and the dark eyes of the heroine—"Oh! such dark eyes"—are mentioned in "The Golden Supper" in the same identical terms as in the poem to which it forms a sequel.
It is singular that "The Lover's Tale" contains a line which had been already used in the prize poem of "Timbuctoo":
We might quote many passages of great beauty from "The Lover's Tale;" we must, however, content ourselves with two very short quotations. We select the following to begin with, on account of the fine simile of the camel. It opens with the lines quoted by Milnes:
We reluctantly close our scanty extracts with another fine simile:
With all the blemishes arising from immaturity, "The Lover's Tale" is a work of indubitable genius and promise. In its wealth and exuberance of imagery, in the intensity of the speaker's emotion, as well as in those defects of which the author seems at a very early age to have become sensible, it reminds us forcibly of Robert Browning's first poem, "Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession," a blank-verse poem of about similar length, written at about the same age, and published, by a curious coincidence, in the same year.
In the copy of Tennyson's "Poems, chiefly Lyrical" (1830), in the Dyce Collection at the South Kensington Museum, is written on the title, "Robert Southey, 27 July, 1830, Keswick, from James Spedding."
In the copy of Tennyson's "Poems," 1833, in the ​same collection, the following lines are written in pencil on the fly-leaf:
* ↑ It had been originally intended that this volume should be a joint publication, containing the poems of Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam—a memorial of friendship similar to the "Lyrical Ballads" of Wordsworth and Coleridge. This idea was abandoned at the suggestion of Hallam's father.
* ↑ In the 'Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind not in unity with itself" there is an extraordinary combination of deep reflection, metaphysical analysis, picturesque description, dramatic transition, and strong emotion. The author personates a timid sceptic, but who must evidently always remain such, and yet be miserable in his scepticism; whose early associations, and whose sympathies, make religion a necessity to his heart; yet who has not lost his pride in the prowess of his youthful infidelity; who is tossed hither and thither on the conflicting currents of feeling and doubt, without that vigorous intellectual decision which alone could 'ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm,' until at last he disappears with an exclamation which remains on the ear like 'The bubbling cry Of some strong swimmer in his agony.' "Such topics are more in accordance with the spirit and intellect of the age than those about which poetry has been accustomed to be conversant; their adoption will effectually redeem it from the reproach of being frivolous and enervating; and of their affinity with the best pictorial qualities of poetry we have conclusive evidence in this very composition. The delineations of the trustful infant, the praying mother, the dying lamb, are as good as anything of the kind can be; while those of the supposed author's emotions as he gazes on 'Christians with happy countenances,' or stands by the Christian grave, or realizes again, with a mixture of self-admiration and self-reproach, the 'unsunned freshness of his strength,' when he 'went forth in quest of truth,' are of a higher order, and are more powerfully, though no less gracefully finished."—Westminster Review, January, 1831. "The 'Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind' are full of deep insight into human nature, and into those particular trials which are sure to beset men who think and feel for themselves at this epoch of social development. The title is perhaps ill chosen; not only has it an appearance of quaintness, which has no sufficient reason, but it seems to us incorrect. The mood pourtrayed in this poem, unless the admirable skill of delineation has deceived us, is rather the clouded season of a strong mind, than the habitual condition of one feeble and 'second rate.'"—Arthur Hallam, August, 1831. "It is such as Crashaw might have written in a moment of scepticism, had he possessed vigour enough."—Leigh Hunt, February, 1831.
* ↑ "Addressed to John Mitchell Kemble, a fellow-collegian of the author's, whose purpose of entering the Church was relinquished in favour of Anglo-Saxon researches and learned labours in the northern literature of the earliest ages."—New York Democratic Review, January, 1844, p. 65. Richard Monckton Milnes, now Lord Houghton, was also a fellow-collegian of Alfred Tennyson. He it was who managed the private theatricals in which Hallam and Kemble sometimes took a part, and at which the poet was doubtless present. On Friday, March 19, 1830, we find them performing "Much Ado about Nothing," with Monckton Milnes as Beatrice, Kemble as Dogberry, and Hallam as Verges. Two other fellow-collegians at Trinity were William Henry Brookfield, whose recent death in 1874 evoked, as we shall see later on, a touching memorial sonnet from the poet; and the late Dean of Canterbury, Henry Alford, from whose published journal we make the following extracts, affording a pleasant glimpse of college life and early verse-writing: "July 19, 1830. Tennyson says: 'To search the secret is beyond our lore, And man must rest till God doth furnish more.' "October 12, 1830. Looked over both the Tennysons' poems at night: exquisite fellows. I know no two books of poetry which have given me so much pure pleasure as their works." Later in the same October he writes: "Met Tennant, Hallam, Merivale, and the three Tennysons at Alfred Tennyson's rooms. The latter read some very exquisite poetry of his, entitled 'Anacaona' and 'The Hesperides.'"—Life, Journals, and Letters of Henry Alford, D. D., late Dean of Canterbury, London, 1873. William Makepeace Thackeray was also a contemporary of Tennyson's at Trinity.
* ↑ "Westminster Review," No. 27, January, 1831, pp. 223, 224.
* ↑ "Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces," by Charles Tennyson, Trin. Coll. Cambridge: published by B. Bridges, Market Hill, 1830, pp. 83.
* ↑ Sonnet 45. To A. H. H.
* ↑ "The Tatler," Nos. 149-155,from Thursday, February 23, to Thursday, March 3, 1831.
* ↑ "There is a tiny volume of sonnets published by his brother Charles between thirty and forty years ago, which shows plainly that, however the poetical gift may have come to its head in Alfred, he is not the only poet of the family. In this volume—it was published, I think, when he was still at college—there are some sonnets of rare and excellent workmanship."—Archbishop Trench, Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art (London, 1867), p. 163.
* ↑ "The Englishman's Magazine" (London: Edward Moxon, 64, New Bond Street, 1831), pp. 616-628.
* ↑ "Remains in Verse and Prose of Arthur Henry Hallam." Printed by W. Nicol, 51, Pall Mall, MDCCCXXXIV., pp. xl. 365. One hundred copies printed. New edition, privately printed, 1853. Third edition (published) with portrait, London, 1863, pp. Ix. 305.
* ↑ "'The Englishman's Magazine' ought not to have died; "for it threatened to be a very pleasant periodical. An essay 'On the Genius of Alfred Tennyson' sent it to the grave. The superhuman—nay, supernatural—pomposity of that one paper incapacitated the whole work for living one day longer in this unceremonious world. The solemnity with which the critic approached the object of his adoration, and the sanctity with which he laid his offerings on the shrine, were too much for our irreligious age. The 'Essay on the Genius of Alfred Tennyson' awoke a general guffaw, and it expired in convulsions. Yet the essay was exceedingly well written, as well as if it had been 'On the Genius of Sir Isaac Newton.' Therein lay the mistake. Sir Isaac discovered the law of gravitation; Alfred had but written some pretty verses, and mankind were not prepared to set him among the stars. But that he has genius is proved by his being at this moment alive; for had he not, he must have breathed his last under that critique. The spirit of life must indeed be strong within him; for he has outlived a narcotic dose administered to him by a crazy charlatan in the 'Westminster,' and after that he may sleep in safety with a pan of charcoal."—Blackwood's Magazine (May, 1832).
* ↑ "The Literary Gazette," which reviewed this little book in November, 1830, could find nothing better to say of Mr. Tennyson's contributions than that they were 'silly sooth.'"
* ↑ "Anacreontic, p.195.
* ↑ "Poems by Alfred Tennyson" (London: Edward Moxon, 64, New Bond Street, MDCCCXXXIII.), pp. 163.
* ↑ The first two stanzas only of this poem were reproduced in the volume of Selections in 1865.
* ↑ Some lines of this poem were quoted by Arthur Helps (who was at Cambridge shortly after Tennyson left it), in his earliest book, "Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd" (1835).
* ↑ Two very remarkable lines in "The Palace of Art,""God, before whom ever lie bare The abysmal deeps of Personality," were borrowed from an essay by Arthur Hallam, entitled "Theodicæa Novissima": "I believe that Redemption is universal in so far as it left no obstacle between man and God, but man's own will: that indeed is in the power of God's election, with whom alone rest the abysmal secrets of personality."—Remains of Arthur Hallam (ed. 1834), p. 363.
* ↑ This poem seems to have obtained some degree of popularity before the name of Tennyson was known to the general public. It is printed entire in a selection of "Poems principally designed for the Use of Schools and Young Persons. Chelmsford, 1836."
* ↑ Probably suppressed from its bearing too close a resemblance to the verses which Orlando hung up to a tree in the forest of Arden:"Her worth being mounted on the wind Through all the world bears Rosalind," &c.; of which Touchstone says: "I'll rhyme you so, eight years together; dinners, and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted. This is the very false gallop of verses."—As You Like It (act iii. sc. 2).
* ↑ "The volume ends with a sweet and melancholy address to James Spedding on the death of his brother. This gentleman, who was Lord Ashburton's private secretary during his late embassy to this country, was one of Alfred Tennyson's college mates, and except by death Tennyson has lost none of his early friends. This poem closes, with infinite propriety, this series of beautiful writings. It is like the prelude to the solemn harmonies that follow, the sublimest parts of which have been stricken from the soul of the poet by the hand of the Angel of Death, who, in bearing from this earth one of the purest spirits and brightest intelligences that ever visited it, deprived Tennyson of a friend who was to have become his brother. Of this most admirable youth, the eldest son of the historian Hallam, it is perhaps departing from our prescribed limits to speak; yet, as his memory has been the sacred muse of our poet since the intercourse of the living with the living has become to them the more intimate spiritual intercourse of the living with the dead, it may be pardoned if we here offer this tribute of homage to virtue and genius, which, united in a most uncommon degree with all the loveliest graces of youth, seemed almost to account for the early departure of such a being to a higher sphere of existence. His going hence, indeed, was cause of infinite grief, but his abiding here would have been a greater cause of wonder. To the solemn and tender spirit-union which still subsists between Tennyson and this his brother we attribute the inspiration whence emanates the sublime poetry and philosophy of 'Locksley Hall' and 'The Two Voices.'—New York Democratic Review (January, 1844, p. 76).
* ↑ Vol. xlix pp. 81-96.
* ↑ "Specimens of the Table-Talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge" (1835), vol. ii. pp. 164, 165.
* ↑ See Tennyson's note in the volume of collected "Poems." It may be found in all the editions from 1842 downwards.
* ↑ "Memorials of a Tour in some parts of Greece: chiefly Poetical," by Richard Monckton Milnes (London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, MDCCCXXXIV.), pp. 167.
* ↑ "The Living Authors of England," by Thomas Powell (New York, 1849), p. 41. The writer in the "Fortnightly Review" (October, 1865, p. 393) makes a passing allusion to this poem, and says that only a few copies were issued; but he appears never to have seen it, and indeed to be unacquainted with its correct title.
* ↑ See "The Holy Grail and other Poems" (1869).
* ↑ The whole poem contains about eleven hundred lines.
* ↑ This word is illegible.
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