No More Learning

--_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. "L'art pour art," he would
say, quoting Georges Sand, "est un vain mot: l'art pour le vrai, l'art
pour le beau et le bon, voila la religion que je cherche. " When he
succeeded to the laureateship he was proud to remember that the wreath
which had descended to him was

greener from the brows
Of him that utter'd nothing base,

and he was a loyal disciple of that poet whose aim had been, in his own
words, "to console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making
the happy happier, to teach the young and the gracious of every age to
see, to think, to feel, and therefore to become more actively and
securely virtuous". [1] Wordsworth had said that he wished to be
regarded as a teacher or as nothing, but unhappily he did not always
distinguish between the way in which a poet and a philosopher should
teach. He forgot that the didactic element in a poem should be, to
employ a homely illustration, what garlic should be in a salad, "scarce
suspected, animate the whole," that the poet teaches not as the moralist
and the preacher teach, but as nature and life teach us. He taught us
when he wrote 'The Fountain' and 'The Highland Reaper, The
Leach-gatherer' and 'Michael', he merely wearied us when he sermonised
in 'The Excursion' and in 'The Prelude'. Tennyson never makes this
mistake.
He is seldom directly didactic. Would he inculcate subjugation
to the law of duty--he gives us the funeral ode on Wellington, 'The
Charge of the Light Brigade', and 'Love and Duty'. Would he inculcate
resignation to the will of God, and the moral efficacy of conventional
Christianity--he gives us 'Enoch Arden'. Would he picture the endless
struggle between the sensual and the spiritual, and the relation of
ideals to life--he gives us the 'Idylls of the King'. Would he point to
what atheism may lead--he gives us 'Lucretius'. Poems which are
masterpieces of sensuous art, such as mere aesthetes, like Rosetti and
his school, must contemplate with admiring despair, he makes vehicles of
the most serious moral and spiritual teaching. 'The Vision of Sin' is
worth a hundred sermons on the disastrous effects of unbridled
profligacy. In 'The Palace of Art' we have the quintessence of 'The Book
of Ecclesiastes' and much more besides. Even in 'The Lotos Eaters' we
have the mirror held up to Hedonism. On the education of the affections
and on the purity of domestic life must depend very largely, not merely
the happiness of individuals, but the well-being of society, and how
wide a space is filled by poems in Tennyson's works bearing
influentially on these subjects is obvious. And they admit us into a
pleasaunce with which it is good to be familiar, so pure and wholesome
is their atmosphere, so tranquilly beautiful the world in which the
characters move and the little dramas unfold themselves. They preach
nothing, but deep into every heart must sink their silent lessons. "Upon
the sacredness of home life," writes his son, "he would maintain that
the stability and greatness of a nation largely depend; and one of the
secrets of his power over mankind was his true joy in the family duties
and affections. " What sermons have we in 'The Miller's Daughter', in
'Dora', in 'The Gardener's Daughter' and in 'Love and Duty'. 'The
Princess' was a direct contribution to a social question of momentous
importance to our time. 'Maud' had an immediate political purpose, while
in 'In Memoriam' he became the interpreter and teacher of his generation
in a still higher sense.