No More Learning

And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn Expunge the world,


which was plainly suggested by Homer, iv. , 275:--

[Greek: hos d' hot apo skopiaes eide nephos aipolos anaer
erchomenon kata ponton hupo Zephuroio i_oaes tps de t' aneuthen eonti,
melanteron aeute pissa, phainet ion kata ponton, agei de te lailapa
pollaen. ]

(As when a goat-herd from some hill-peak sees a cloud coming across
the deep with the blast of the west wind behind it; and to him, being
as he is afar, it seems blacker, even as pitch, as it goes along the
deep, bringing with it a great whirlwind. )


So again the fine simile in 'Elaine', beginning

Bare as a wild wave in the wide North Sea,


is at least modelled on the simile in 'Iliad', xv. , 381-4, with
reminiscences of the same similes in 'Iliad', xv. , 624, and 'Iliad',
iv. , 42-56. The simile in the first section of the 'Princess',

As when a field of corn
Bows all its ears before the roaring East,


reminds us of Homer's

[Greek: hos d' ote kinaesae Zephyros Bathulaeion, elthon labros,
epaigixon, epi t' aemuei astachuessin]

(As when the west wind tosses a deep cornfield rushing down with
furious blast, and it bows with all its ears. )


Nothing could be more happy than such an adaptation as the following--

Ever fail'd to draw
The quiet night into her blood,


from Virgil, 'Aen'. , iv. , 530:--

Neque unquam Solvitur in somnos _oculisve aut pectore noctem
Accipit_.

(And she never relaxes into sleep, or receives the night in eyes or
bosom),


or than the following (in 'Enid') from Theocritus:--

Arms on which the standing muscle sloped,
As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone,
Running too vehemently to break upon it.

[Greek: en de mues stereoisi brachiosin akron hyp' _omon estasan,
aeute petroi oloitrochoi ous te kylind_on cheimarrhous potamos
megalais periexese dinais. ]

--'Idyll', xxii. , 48 'seq.
'

(And the muscles on his brawny arms close under the shoulder stood out
like boulders which the wintry torrent has rolled and worn smooth with
the mighty eddies. )

But there was another use to which Tennyson applied his accurate and
intimate acquaintance with the classics. It lay in developing what was
suggested by them, in unfolding, so to speak, what was furled in their
imagery. Nothing is more striking in ancient classical poetry than its
pregnant condensation. It often expresses in an epithet what might be
expanded into a detailed picture, or calls up in a single phrase a whole
scene or a whole position. Where in 'Merlin and Vivian' Tennyson
described

The _blind wave feeling round his long sea hall
In silence_,


he was merely unfolding to its full Homer's [Greek: kuma k_ophon]--"dumb
wave"; just as the best of all comments on Horace's expression, "Vultus
nimium lubricus aspici," 'Odes', I. , xix. , 8, is given us in Tennyson's
picture of the Oread in Lucretius:--


How the sun delights
To _glance and shift about her slippery sides_.

Or take again this passage in the 'Agamemnon', 404-5, describing
Menelaus pining in his desolate palace for the lost Helen:--

[Greek: pothoi d' uperpontias phasma doxei dom_on anassein. ]

(And in his yearning love for her who is over the sea a phantom will
seem to reign over his palace. )


What are the lines in 'Guinevere' but an expansion of what is latent but
unfolded in the pregnant suggestiveness of the Greek poet:--

And in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk
Thy shadow still would glide from room to room,
And I should evermore be vex'd with thee
In hanging robe or vacant ornament,
Or ghostly foot-fall echoing on the stair--


with a reminiscence also perhaps of Constance's speech in 'King John',
III. , iv.

It need hardly be said that these particular passages, and possibly some
of the others, may be mere coincidences, but they illustrate what
numberless other passages which could be cited prove that Tennyson's
careful and meditative study of the Greek and Roman poets enabled him to
enrich his work by these felicitous adaptations.

He used those poets as his master Virgil used his Greek predecessors,
and what the elder Seneca said of Ovid, who had appropriated a line from
Virgil, might exactly be applied to Tennyson: "Fecisse quod in multis
aliis versibus Virgilius fecerat, non surripiendi causa sed palam
imitandi, hoc animo ut vellet agnosci". [4]

He had plainly studied with equal attention the chief Italian poets,
especially Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto and Tasso. On a passage in Dante he
founded his 'Ulysses', and imitations of that master are frequent
throughout his poems.