matics: therefore, however limited the field of a mind's researches be, it includes universal data; that is, facts spread over the whole region of time and space. Again, if the ant were a philosopher, it might evolve the ideas of existence, of nothingness, and all the materials of metaphysics; for any phenomenon, interior or exterior, suffices to present these materials: therefore, however limited the field of a mind be, it contains absolute truths; that is, such that there is no object from which they could be absent. And this must necessarily be so; for the more general a fact is, the fewer objects need we examine to meet with it. If it is universal, we meet with it everywhere; if it is absolute, we cannot escape meeting it. This is why, in spite of the narrowness of our experience, metaphysics, I mean the search for first causes, is possible, but on condition that we remain at a great height, that we do not descend into details, that we consider only the most simple elements of existence, and the most general tendencies of nature. If any one were to collect the three or four great ideas in which our sciences result, and the three or four kinds of existence which make up our universe; if he were to compare those two strange quantities which we call duration and extension, those principal forms or determinations of quantity which we call physical laws, chemical types, and living species, and that marvellous representative power, the Mind, which, without falling into quantity, reproduces the other two and itself; if he discovered among these three terms-the pure quantity, the determined quantity, and the suppressed quantity such an order that the first must require the second, and the second the third; if he thus established that the pure quantity is the necessary commencement of Nature, and that Thought is the extreme term at which Nature is wholly suspended; it, again, isolating the elements of these data, he showed that they must be combined just as they are combined, and not otherwise if he proved, moreover, that there are no other elements, and that there can be no other, he would have sketched out a system of metaphysics without encroaching on the positive sciences, and have attained the source without being obliged to descend to trace the various streams. - In my opinion, these two great operations, Experience as you have described it, and Abstraction, as I have tried to define it, comprise in themselves all the resources of the human mind, the one in its practical, the other in its speculative direction. The first leads us to consider nature as an assemblage of facts, the second as a system of laws: the exclusive employment of the first is English; that of the second, German. If there is a place between these two nations, it is ours. We have extended the English ideas in the eighteenth century; and now we can, in the nineteenth, add precision to German ideas. Our business is to restrain, to correct, to complete the two types of mind, 1 Die aufgehobene Quantität. one by the other, to combine them together, to express their ideas in a style generally understood, and thus to produce from them the universal mind. IX. We went out. As it ever happens in similar circumstances, each had caused the other to reflect, and neither had convinced the other. But our reflections were short: in the presence of a lovely August morning, all arguments fall to the ground. The old walls, the rainworn stones, smiled in the rising sun. A fresh light rested on their embrasures, on the keystones of the cloisters, on the glossy ivy leaves. Roses and honeysuckles climbed the walls, and their flowers quivered and sparkled in the light breeze. The fountains murmured in the large lonely courts. The beautiful town stood out from the morning's mist, as adorned and tranquil as a fairy palace, and its robe of soft rosy vapour was indented, as an embroidery of the Renaissance, by a border of towers, cloisters, and palaces, each enclosed in verdure and decked with flowers. The architecture of all ages had mingled their ogives, trefoils, statues, and columns; time had softened their tints; the sun united them in its light, and the old city seemed a shrine to which every age and every genius had successively added a jewel. Beyond this, the river rolled its broad sheets of silver; the mowers stood up to the knee in the high grass of the meadows. Myriads of buttercups and meadow-sweet grasses, bending under the weight of their grey heads, plants sated with the dew of the night, swarmed in the rich soil. Words cannot express this freshness of tints, and their luxuriance of vegetation. The more the long line of shade receded, the more brilliant and full of life the flowers appeared. On seeing them, virgin and timid in their gilded veil, I thought of the blushing cheeks and modest eyes of a young girl who puts on for the first time her necklace of jewels. Around, as though to guard them, enormous trees, four centuries old, extended in regular lines; and I found in them a new trace of that practical good sense which has effected revolutions without committing ravages; which, while reforming in all directions, has destroyed nothing; which has preserved both its trees and its constitution, which has lopped off the dead branches without levelling the trunk; which alone, in our days, among all nations, is in the enjoyment not only of the present, but of the past. CHAPTER VI. Poetry.-Tennyson. I. Talent and work-First attempts-Wherein he was opposed to preceding poets-Wherein he carried on their spirit. II. First period- Female characters-Delicacy and refinement of sentiment and style-Variety of his emotions and of his subjects-Literary curiosity and poetic dilettantism-The Dying Swan-The Lotos-Eaters. III. Second period-Popularity, good fortune, and life-Permanent sensibility and virgin freshness of the poetic temperament - Wherein he is at one with nature-Locksley Hall-Change of subject and style-Violent outbreak and personal feeling-Maud. IV. Return of Tennyson to his first style-In Memoriam-Elegance, coldness, and lengthiness of this poem-The subject and the talent must harmoniseWhat subjects agree with the dilettante artist-The Princess-Comparison with As You Like It-Fanciful and picturesque world-How Tennyson repeats the dreams and the style of the Renaissance. V. How Tennyson repeats the freshness and simplicity of the old epic-The Idylls of the King-Why he has restored the epic of the Round TablePurity and elevation of his models and his poetry-Elaine—Morte d'Arthur -Want of individual and absorbing passion-Flexibility and disinterestedness of his mind-Talent for metamorphosis, embellishment, and refinement. VI. His public-Society in England-Country comfort-Elegance-Education— Habits-Wherein Tennyson suits such a society-Society in FranceParisian life-Pleasures- Representation-Conversation-Boldness of mind -Wherein Alfred de Musset suits such a society-Comparison of the two societies and of the two poets. W I. HEN Tennyson published his first poems, the critics found fault with them. He held his peace; for ten years no one saw his name in a review, nor even in a publisher's catalogue. But when he appeared again before the public, his books had made their way alone and under the surface, and he passed at once for the greatest poet of his country and his time. Men were surprised, and with a pleasing surprise. The potent generation of poets who had just died out, had passed like a whirlwind. Like their forerunners of the sixteenth century, they had carried away and hurried everything to its extremes. Some had culled the gigan tic legends, piled up dreams, ransacked the East, Greece, Arabia, the Middle Ages, and overloaded the human imagination with tones and fancies from every clime. Others had buried themselves in metaphysics and morality, had mused indefatigably on the human condition, and spent their lives in the sublime and the monotonous. Others, making a medley of crime and heroism, had conducted, through darkness and flashes of lightning, a train of contorted and terrible figures, desperate with remorse, relieved by their grandeur. Men wanted to rest after so many efforts and so much excess. Quitting the imaginative sentimental and Satanic school, Tennyson appeared exquisite. All the forms and ideas which had pleased them were found in him, but purified, modulated, set in a splendid style. He completed an age; he enjoyed that which had agitated others; his poetry was like the lovely evenings in summer: the outlines of the landscape are then the same as in the day-time; but the splendour of the dazzling dome is dulled; the re-invigorated flowers lift themselves up, and the calm sun, on the horizon, harmoniously blends in a network of crimson rays the woods and meadows which it just before burned by its brightness. II. What first attracted people were Tennyson's portraits of women. Adeline, Eleanore, Lilian, the May Queen, were keepsake characters, from the hand of a lover and an artist. The keepsake is gilt-edged, embossed with flowers and decorations, richly got up, soft, full of delicate figures, always elegant and always correct, which we might take to be sketched at random, and which are yet drawn carefully, on white vellum, slightly touched by their outline, all selected to rest and occupy the tender, white hands of a young bride or a girl. I have translated many ideas and many styles, but I shall not attempt to translate one of these portraits. Each word of them is like a tint, curiously deepened or shaded by the neighbouring tint, with all the boldness and success of the happiest refinement. The least alteration would obscure all. there could not be too much of an art so just, so consummate, in painting the charming prettinesses, the sudden hauteurs, the half blushes, the imperceptible and fleeting caprices of feminine beauty. He opposes, harmonises them, makes them, as it were, into a gallery. Here is the frolicsome child, the little flirting fairy, who claps her tiny hands, who, 'So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple, From beneath her gather'd wimple 1 Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851; Lilian, 5. And Then the thoughtful fair, who thinks, with staring large blue eyes: 'Whence that aery bloom of thine, Like a lily which the sun Looks thro' in his sad decline, And a rose-bush leans upon, Thou that faintly smilest still, As a Naiad in a well, Looking at the set of day.'1 Anew the ever varying Madeline,' now smiling, then frowning, then joyful again, then angry, then uncertain between the two: 'Frowns perfect-sweet along the brow Like little clouds sun-fringed.'' The poet returned well pleased to all things, refined and exquisite. He caressed them so carefully, that his verses appeared at times far-fetched, affected, almost euphuistic. He gave them too much adornment and polishing; he seemed like an epicurean in style, as well as in beauty. He looked for pretty rustic scenes, touching remembrances, curious or pure sentiments. He made them into elegies, pastorals, and idyls. He wrote in every accent, and delighted in entering into the feelings of all ages. He wrote of St. Agnes, St. Simeon Stylites, Ulysses, Enone, Sir Galahad, Lady Clare, Fatima, the Sleeping Beauty. He imitated alternately Homer and Chaucer, Theocritus and Spenser, the old English poets and the old Arabian poets. He gave life successively to the little real events of English life, and the great fantastic adventures of extinguished chivalry. He was like those musicians who use their bow in the service of all masters. He strayed through nature and history, with no preoccupation, without fierce passion, bent on feeling, relishing, culling from all parts, in the flower-stand of the drawing-room and in the rustic hedgerows, the rare or wild flowers whose scent or beauty could charm or amuse him. Men entered into his pleasure; smelt the graceful bouquets which he knew so well how to put together; preferred those which he took from the country; found that his talent was nowhere more easy. They admired the minute observation and refined sentiment which knew how to grasp and interpret the fleeting aspects. In the Dying Swan they forgot that the subject was almost threadbare, and the interest somewhat slight, that they might appreciate such verses as this: 'Some blue peaks in the distance rose, And white against the cold-white sky, One willow over the river wept, And shook the wave as the wind did sigh; 1 Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851; Adeline, 33. 2 Ibid. Madeline, 15. |