No More Learning

It is
one thing to call art to the assistance of art, it is quite another
thing to call art to the assistance of nature. And this is what both
Gray and Tennyson do, and this is why their artificiality, so far from
shocking us, "passes in music out of sight". But this cannot be said of
Tennyson without reserve. At times his strained endeavours to give
distinction to his style by putting common things in an uncommon way led
him into intolerable affectation. Thus we have "the knightly growth that
fringed his lips" for a moustache, "azure pillars of the hearth" for
ascending smoke, "ambrosial orbs" for apples, "frayed magnificence" for
a shabby dress, "the secular abyss to come" for future ages, "the
sinless years that breathed beneath the Syrian blue" for the life of
Christ, "up went the hush'd amaze of hand and eye" for a gesture of
surprise, and the like. One of the worst instances is in 'In Memoriam',
where what is appropriate to the simple sentiment finds, as it should
do, corresponding simplicity of expression in the first couplet, to
collapse into the falsetto of strained artificiality in the second:--


To rest beneath the clover sod
That takes the sunshine and the rains,
_Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God_.


An illustration of the same thing, almost as offensive, is in 'Enoch
Arden', where, in an otherwise studiously simple diction, Enoch's wares
as a fisherman become

Enoch's _ocean spoil_
In ocean-smelling osier.


But these peculiarities are less common in the earlier poems than in the
later: it was a vicious habit which grew on him.

But, if exception may sometimes be taken to his diction, no exception
can be taken to his rhythm. No English poet since Milton, Tennyson's
only superior in this respect, had a finer ear or a more consummate
mastery over all the resources of rhythmical expression. What colours
are to a painter rhythm is, in description, to the poet, and few have
rivalled, none have excelled Tennyson in this. Take the following:--


And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
_On the bald street strikes the blank day_.

--'In Memoriam'.

See particularly 'In Memoriam', cvii. , the lines beginning "Fiercely
flies," to "darken on the rolling brine": the description of the island
in 'Enoch Arden'; but specification is needless, it applies to all his
descriptive poetry.
It is marvellous that he can produce such effects by
such simple means: a mere enumeration of particulars will often do it,
as here:--


No gray old grange or lonely fold,
Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple style from mead to mead,
Or sheep walk up the windy wold.

--'In Memoriam', c.

Or here:--


The meal sacks on the whitened floor,
The dark round of the dripping wheel,
The very air about the door Made misty with the floating meal.

--'The Miller's Daughter'.


His blank verse is best described by negatives. It has not the endless
variety, the elasticity and freedom of Shakespeare's, it has not the
massiveness and majesty of Milton's, it has not the austere grandeur of
Wordsworth's at its best, it has not the wavy swell, "the linked
sweetness long drawn out" of Shelley's, but its distinguishing feature
is, if we may use the expression, its importunate beauty. What Coleridge
said of Claudian's style may be applied to it: "Every line, nay every
word stops, looks full in your face and asks and begs for praise". His
earlier blank verse is less elaborate and seemingly more spontaneous and
easy than his later. [2] But it is in his lyric verse that his rhythm is
seen in its greatest perfection. No English lyrics have more magic or
more haunting beauty, more of that which charms at once and charms for
ever.

In his description of nature he is incomparable. Take the following from
'The Dying Swan':--


Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,


or the opening scene in '? none' and in 'The Lotos Eaters', or the
meadow scene in 'The Gardener's Daughter', or the conclusion of 'Audley
Court', or the forest scene in the 'Dream of Fair Women', or this stanza
in 'Mariana in the South':--


There all in spaces rosy-bright
Large Hesper glitter'd on her tears,
And deepening through the silent spheres,
Heaven over Heaven rose the night.


A single line, nay, a single word, and a scene is by magic before us, as
here where the sea is looked down upon from an immense height:--


The _wrinkled_ sea beneath him _crawls_.

--'The Eagle'.