No More Learning

In 1843 it was altered to "Robert," and in
1845 and subsequent editions back to "Robin".

Compare, again, the old stanza in 'The Miller's Daughter':--

How dear to me in youth, my love,
Was everything about the mill;
The black and silent pool above,
The pool beneath it never still,


with what was afterwards substituted:--


I loved the brimming wave that swam
Through quiet meadows round the mill,
The sleepy pool above the dam,
The pool beneath it never still.


Another most felicitous emendation is to be found in 'The Poet',
where the edition of 1830 reads:--


And in the bordure of her robe was writ
Wisdom, a name to shake
Hoar anarchies, as with a thunderfit.


This in 1842 appears as:--


And in her raiment's hem was trac'd in flame
Wisdom, a name to shake
All evil dreams of power--a sacred name.


Again, in the 'Lotos Eaters'


_Three thunder-cloven thrones of oldest snow_
Stood sunset-flushed


is changed into

_Three silent pinnacles of aged snow_.


So in 'Will Waterproof' the cumbrous


Like Hezekiah's backward runs The shadow of my days,


was afterwards simplified into


Against its fountain upward runs
The current of my days.


Not less felicitous have been the additions made from time to time. Thus
in 'Audley Court' the concluding lines ran:--


The harbour buoy,
With one green sparkle ever and anon
Dipt by itself.


But what vividness is there in the subsequent insertion of


"Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm. "


between the first line and the second.

So again in the 'Morte d'Arthur' how greatly are imagery and rhythm
improved by the insertion of


Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere,


between


Then went Sir Bedivere the second time,


and


Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought.


There is an alteration in ? none which is very interesting. Till 1884
this was allowed to stand:--


The lizard, with his shadow on the stone,
Rests like a shadow, _and the cicala sleeps_.


No one could have known better than Tennyson that the cicala is loudest
in the torrid calm of the noonday, as Theocritus, Virgil, Byron and
innumerable other poets have noticed; at last he altered it, but at the
heavy price of a cumbrous pleonasm, into "and the winds are dead".
He allowed many years to elapse before he corrected another error in
natural history--but at last the alteration came. In 'The Poet's Song'
in the line--


The swallow stopt as he hunted the _bee_,


the "fly" which the swallow does hunt was substituted for what it does
not hunt, and that for very obvious reasons. But whoever would see what
Tennyson's poetry has owed to elaborate revision and scrupulous care
would do well to compare the first edition of 'Mariana in the South',
'The Sea-Fairies', 'OEnone', 'The Lady of Shalott', 'The Palace of Art'
and 'A Dream of Fair Women' with the poems as they are presented in
1853. Poets do not always improve their verses by revision, as all
students of Wordsworth's text could abundantly illustrate; but it may be
doubted whether, in these poems at least, Tennyson ever made a single
alteration which was not for the better. Fitzgerald, indeed, contended
that in some cases, particularly in 'The Miller's Daughter', Tennyson
would have done well to let the first reading stand, but few critics
would agree with him in the instances he gives. We may perhaps regret
the sacrifice of such a stanza as this--

Each coltsfoot down the grassy bent, Whose round leaves hold the
gathered shower, Each quaintly folded cuckoo pint, And silver-paly
cuckoo flower.




II

Tennyson's genius was slow in maturing. The poems contributed by him to
the volume of 1827, 'Poems by Two Brothers', are not without some slight
promise, but are very far from indicating extraordinary powers. A great
advance is discernible in 'Timbuctoo', but that Matthew Arnold should
have discovered in it the germ of Tennyson's future powers is probably
to be attributed to the youth of the critic. Tennyson was in his
twenty-second year when the 'Poems Chiefly Lyrical' appeared, and what
strikes us in these poems is certainly not what Arthur Hallam saw in
them: much rather what Coleridge and Wilson discerned in them. They are
the poems of a fragile and somewhat morbid young man in whose temper we
seem to see a touch of Hamlet, a touch of Romeo and, more healthily, a
touch of Mercutio. Their most promising characteristic is the
versatility displayed. Thus we find 'Mariana' side by side with the
'Supposed Confessions', the 'Ode to Memory' with Greek['oi rheontes'],
'The Ballad of Oriana' with 'The Dying Swan', 'Recollections of The
Arabian Nights' with 'The Poet'. Their worst fault is affectation.
Perhaps the utmost that can be said for them is that they display a fine
but somewhat thin vein of original genius, after deducing what they owe
to Coleridge, to Keats and to other poets. This is seen in the magical
touches of description, in the exquisite felicity of expression and
rhythm which frequently mark them, in the pathos and power of such a
poem as 'Oriana', in the pathos and charm of such poems as 'Mariana' and
'A Dirge', in the rich and almost gorgeous fancy displayed in 'The
Recollections'.