fluence no less than Burke's plea for the American colonists. Mr. Roosevelt's call to the strenuous life, or his historical work on the "Winning of the West," awakes echoes of sympathy far beyond Columbia's borders. Both these fearless and generous opponents have strengthened the belief, that the precepts, the examples, the results of American citizenship and statecraft are of unrivaled importance for the future of all men.

What form that greater future shall take may not even be surmised. As Lowell sings, with Pindaric sententiousness,

Only children rend the bud half-blown

To forestall nature in her calm intent:
Time hath a quiver full of purposes
Which miss not of their aim, to us unknown,

And bring about the impossible with ease.

But it seems certain that, for many a century at least, the efforts toward human happiness and larger freedom must centre in our land. The memories of Franklin, Webster, Garrison, Lincoln, Longfellow, may yet be overshadowed by lives even more beneficent. The most patriotic, philosophic, far-sighted citizen of the republic is also, as yet, the truest cosmopolitan.

Adelphi College, Brooklyn, N. Y.

WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON.

FITZGERALD ON TENNYSON;

OR, TENNYSON BEFORE AND AFTER 1842

It is in the nature of things that great Poets, like all men who, by transcendent genius, tower above their fellow-mortals, should become the subject of endless discussion and varied speculation; that their works should be analyzed and dissected, and dissected and analyzed again; that their principles should be elucidated in a slight, and distorted in a much larger, degree; and that the perfections as well as the faults of their style should be majestically arrayed in formidable, tabulated lists. Like the vast majority of his peers, Lord Tennyson, pre-eminently the great poet of the Victorian era, has been tossed through the Scylla and Charybdis of hostile depreciation, and hurled upon the equally perilous quicksand of excessive praise; while sharptongued Criticism, with ever-changing sentiment, has now exalted him to a most resplendent throne in the Temple of the Muses, and has again debased him to a commonplace seat in the Hall of Mediocrity. To enter into a detailed study of the analyses which have influenced Tennysonian critics in arriving at one conclusion or another, would doubtless prove an interesting undertaking and might lead to startling revelations. The present purpose, however, is a much humbler one. It is to consider Fitzgerald's critical estimate of Tennyson's earlier poems as opposed to his later compositions, and to endeavor to ascertain, both the foundations, if any, upon which that estimate rests and the value which may be set upon it.

Of all opinions which have been uttered upon the merits or demerits of Tennyson's poetry, those emanating from contemporary men may fairly be said to be most interesting, at least, from an historical point of view. Now, of contemporary criticism, Edward Fitzgerald's is, if not the most instructive, certainly the most curious. For he first propounded the theory, which has since found numerous supporters, that Tennyson's muse had reached its highest flights by 1842, and that, in all his later efforts, the Poet failed to surpass, to attain or even to approach,

the excellence of his earlier successes. This dictum of Fitzgerald's demands our attention, not only because of its author's own high rank as a poet, or because of his scholarly attainments, or even because of his reputation for fair-minded criticism; but because of his close personal relations with Tennyson, and especially because of his intimate acquaintance with the methods and products of Tennyson's genius.

The author of Omar Khayyam was one of Tennyson's earliest admirers. Like so many of the young poet's champions, he was imbued with the conviction that upon his favorite the gifts of the gods had been showered with unusually lavish hands and that no other modern poet was or had been endowed with such possibilities for the perfect mastery of his art. This sentiment took strongest hold of Fitzgerald when Tennyson's 1842 volume made its appearance, and he looked forward with ill-concealed impatience to the time when his young friend should produce a masterpiece which would assign him an enviable place among the chosen poets of the world. For Fitzgerald, however, this masterpiece never had being; and from 1842 onwards, we can discern an unmistakable change of tone in his very frank expressions of opinion. After the publication of In Memoriam, he says: "In Memoriam is full of the finest things, but it is monotonous, and has the air of being evolved by a poetical machine of the highest order. So it seems to be with him now, at least to me, the Impetus, the lyrical Estrus, is gone.

When "The Princess" appeared, Fitzgerald remarked: "It seems to me a wretched waste of power at a time of life when a man ought to be doing his best; and I almost feel hopeless about Alfred now. I mean about his doing what he was born to do."

With the flight of time Fitzgerald became more and more convinced that Tennyson's vigor of language and felicity of style were undergoing marked deterioration, and he began to indulge in gloomy prognostications. For instance, in 1864 he declared : "Perhaps you will see another ruin the author of 'Enoch Arden.' Compare that with the spontaneous go of 'The Palace of Art,' 'Morte D'Arthur,' 'Gardener's Daughter,' 'Locksley Hall,' 'Will Waterproof,' 'Sleeping Palace,' 'Talking Oak,' and indeed, one may say, all the two volumes of 1842."

When the "Idylls of the King" were first published, Fitzgerald voiced his growing disappointment in no ambiguous terms. "I certainly wish," he said, "that Alfred had devoted his diminishing powers to translating Eschylus or Sophocles."

Finally, in 1876, Fitzgerald expressed his conviction that "He [Tennyson] should rest on his oars, or ship them for good now; I think he might have stopped after 1842, leaving Princesses, Ardens, Idylls, etc., all unborn."

Does it not seem incredible that a man of Fitzgerald's intellectual capabilities should veritably have believed what these statements declare him to have believed, namely, that Tennyson's poetry after 1842 was a distinct fall, in merit, from the excellence of his work before that period? It seems incredible, because Fitzgerald himself was unable to adduce decisive substantiation for his sweeping assertions. Nor must it be forgotten that an utterance of this nature, tacitly admitted to be an "impression," rather than a conclusion arrived at after a period of prolonged thought and continued study, justly incurs the censure administered to all statements which are based on transitory feelings and are wholly unconfirmed by critical investigation. Is it within the bounds of reason that any calm, dispassionate judge, could, with one disdainful gesture of his hand, brush aside "Maud," In Memoriam and the "Idylls," and declare that his earlier lyrics are the sole pillars of Tennyson's fame? Who would be bold enough to declare that if the poet had left his later works unwritten, as Fitzgerald more than once wished he had done, his memory would be as dearly cherished by us as it is? True, his name would have descended to posterity. The author of the "Morte D'Arthur," of the "Lady of Shalott" and of the "Palace of Art" would never have sunk into utter oblivion. But, when a hundred years had elapsed, popular anthologies alone would have preserved his remembrance; and that profound pyschological insight, that extraordinary command of metre, that Miltonic sense for the fitness of diction, and that wealth of color and artistic accuracy of reproduction which embellish his later compositions, would never have been the wonder and admiration of the whole English-speaking world.

Unwarranted as Fitzgerald's assertion may seem to us, it can

not be denied that it has met the applause and approval of many literary men, and it is therefore our duty to see whether there is not some substance in what a cursory glance bids us condemn as a shadowy remark. A conviction cherished by many minds in common may reasonably be argued to contain some element of truth, however obscure and confounded that element may be. Now, may there not be a germ of truth in Fitzgerald's erroneous estimate? A critical and unprejudiced examination of the facts convinces us that there is. There is, indeed, no such remarkable change in Tennyson's workmanship as the translator of the Rubaiyat professes to have discovered. But there is a change. For, while the poet was almost invariably successful in all his essays in poesy before 1842, while, with each new note struck, with each fresh venture into "fields and pastures new," another precious stone was added to the diadem of his glory, his successes thereafter were far less decided. The poems of 1842 were short. They were rich in theme, in variety of topic and in wealth of emotion. Each was

Small and pure as a pearl,
Exquisitely minute,

A miracle of design.

If, on the other hand, we compare the later poems with these precious gems, we shall find them laboring under the distinct disadvantages of greater length, infinitely greater complexity and noticeable lack of variety in treatment. Nevertheless, while it seems plain that Tennyson usually failed, in later life, whenever he endeavored to strike out along absolutely original lines, whenever, in short, he "pursued things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme," still, in those fields in which his first successes lay, it is demonstrable that he afterwards acquired a more perfect mastery of his art; so that we may not only believe, as Mr. Lang does, that Tennyson "in the full strength of years" just attained the level of Tennyson in the novitiate of his art; but we may venture to assert what Mr. Lang expressly denies, that the poet, in his greater maturity, during the period from 1842 to 1859, frequently surpassed the standard he had set in his youth, and displayed a consummate artistisic skill of which he had been quite incapable before.