No More Learning

, 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. 'In Memoriam', both in its general scheme as
well as in numberless particular passages, closely recalls Petrarch; and
Ariosto and Tasso have each influenced his work. In the poetry of his
own country nothing seems to have escaped him, either in the masters or
the minor poets. [5] To apply the term plagiarism to Tennyson's use of
his predecessors would be as absurd as to resolve some noble fabric into
its stones and bricks, and confounding the one with the other to taunt
the architect with appropriating an honour which belongs to the quarry
and the potter. Tennyson's method was exactly the method of two of the
greatest poets in the world, Virgil and Milton, of the poet who stands
second to Virgil in Roman poetry, Horace, of one of the most illustrious
of our own minor poets, Gray.

An artist more fastidious than Tennyson never existed.
As scrupulous a
purist in language as Cicero, Chesterfield and Macaulay in prose, as
Virgil, Milton, and Leopardi in verse, his care extended to the nicest
minutiae of word-forms. Thus "ancle" is always spelt with a "c" when it
stands alone, with a "k" when used in compounds; thus he spelt "Idylls"
with one "l" in the short poems, with two "l's" in the epic poems; thus
the employment of "through" or "thro'," of "bad" or "bade," and the
retention or suppression of "e" in past participles are always carefully
studied. He took immense pains to avoid the clash of "s" with "s," and
to secure the predominance of open vowels when rhythm rendered them
appropriate. Like the Greek painter with his partridge, he thought
nothing of sacrificing good things if, in any way, they interfered with
unity and symmetry, and thus, his son tells us, many stanzas, in
themselves of exquisite beauty, have been lost to us.


[Footnote 1: 'De Sublimitate,' xvii. ]

[Footnote 2: Tennyson's blank verse in the _Idylls of the King_
(excepting in the _Morte d'Arthur_ and in the grander passages), is
obviously modelled in rhythm on that of Shakespeare's earlier style seen
to perfection in _King John_. Compare the following lines with the
rhythm say of _Elaine_ or _Guinevere_;--

But now will canker sorrow eat my bud,
And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
And he will look as hollow as a ghost;
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit:
And so he'll die; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.

--_King John_, III. , iv. ]

[Footnote 3: 'Illustrations of Tennyson'. ]

[Footnote 4: Seneca, third 'Suasoria'. ]

[Footnote 5: For fuller illustrations of all this, and for the influence
of the ancient classics on Tennyson, I may perhaps venture to refer the
reader to my 'Illustrations of Tennyson'. And may I here take the
opportunity of pointing out that nothing could have been farther from my
intention in that book than what has so often been most unfairly
attributed to it, namely, an attempt to show that a charge of plagiarism
might be justly urged against Tennyson. No honest critic, who had even
cursorily inspected the book, could so utterly misrepresent its purpose. ]






IV


Tennyson's place is not among the "lords of the visionary eye," among
seers, among prophets, but not the least part of the debt which his
countrymen owe to him is his dedication of his art to the noblest
purposes. At a time when poetry was beginning to degenerate into what it
has now almost universally become--a mere sense-pampering siren, and
when critics were telling us, as they are still telling us, that we are
to understand by it "all literary production which attains the power of
giving pleasure by its form as distinct from its matter," he remained
true to the creed of his great predecessors.