Alfred Tennyson

THE life and work of Tennyson present something like the normal type of what, incircumstances as fortunate as mortals may expect, the life and work of a modernpoet ought to be.

A modern poet, one says, because even poetry is now affected bythe division of labour.

We do not look to the poet for a large share in the practicalactivities of existence: we do not expect him, like Æschylus and Sophocles,Theognis and Alcaeus, to take a conspicuous part in politics and war; or even, as inthe Age of Anne, to shine among wits and in society.

Life has become, perhaps, toospecialised for such multifarious activities.

Indeed, even in ancient days, as a Celticproverb and as the picture of life in the Homeric epics prove, the poet was already aman apart-not foremost among statesmen and rather backward among warriors.

Ifwe agree with a not unpopular opinion, the poet ought to be a kind of "Titanic"force, wrecking himself on his own passions and on the nature of things, as didByron, Burns, Marlowe, and Musset.

But Tennyson's career followed lines reallymore normal, the lines of the life of Wordsworth, wisdom and self-control directingthe course of a long, sane, sound, and fortunate existence.

The great physicalstrength which is commonly the basis of great mental vigour was not ruined inTennyson by poverty and passion, as in the case of Burns, nor in forced literarylabour, as in those of Scott and Dickens.

For long he was poor, like Wordsworth andSouthey, but never destitute.

He made his early effort: he had his time of greatsorrow, and trial, and apparent failure.

With practical wisdom he conqueredcircumstances; he became eminent; he outlived reaction against his genius; he diedin the fulness of a happy age and of renown.

This full-orbed life, with not a fewyears of sorrow and stress, is what Nature seems to intend for the career of a divineminstrel.

If Tennyson missed the "one crowded hour of glorious life," he had not tobe content in "an age without a name."