Chapter X. Style and Metre. What exactly is meant by style? That is a question as old as criticism, and one which every critic has to answer for himself. Broadly speaking, it means the individual manner of doing things. If a man does any given thing often enough, from writing with a pen to bowling at cricket, he develops a way of doing it, not unlike that of other people, but distinguishable as his, and indeed inseparable from himself, stamped with the impress of his own particular endowment. This manner varies by excess or defect; it may arrive at perfect grace, it may be a contortion; but it is always there, and the more difficult the achievement, the greater will be the individual differences. Now it stands to reason that you cannot define style; a quality of this sort eludes definition. You may define the action of bowling, but you cannot define the action of a famous bowler, though you may attribute to it certain characteristics, in short, describe it: but it is highly improbable that your description will convey anything to a person who has not seen what you are describing. Still, description may help to concentrate attention upon the peculiar excellences of performance. But the difficulty of writing of Tennyson's style is that every manner results from a sort of compromise between individual endowment and imitation of a model; and we are conscious, only to a certain extent, of the peculiarities of that style which we take as our model. No man knows how he looks to others; and to a certain extent he sees his model as he sees himself. We are all bound to Tennyson by too many links of discipleship to see him clearly (M 535) and in detachment. Dickens, for instance, and Carlyle are as plain to us in their separate identities as Fielding and Johnson. We can sit and judge of their procedure, seeing it with the senses of a stranger: but Tennyson is still by far too near us; and in this chapter I shall keep as closely as possible to those formal qualities of style about which there can be little divergence of opinion. Nothing more need be said about his dramatic work, for critical opinion is practically agreed that they do not show Tennyson at his best. It is also probable that posterity will let them fall into as complete oblivion as has overtaken The Borderers and Remorse. We have to consider him, then, as a lyrical and narrative poet; that is to say, as a man using language and metre either to tell a story, to express a feeling or passion, or to set out a train of thought. And first, on the question of construction, which is at least akin to that of style, nobody can lay down the procedure of a lyric. In narrative there are well-recognized laws. It is worth noting perhaps that in the earlier narrative poems he tends to begin at the beginning, with— Sir Aylmer Aylmer, that almighty man, or A prince I was, blue-eyed and fair of face; but in the Idylls he adopts as a rule the more elaborate method of starting with a scene somewhere in the middle of the story, such, for instance, as Enid's lament over the inaction of Geraint, which, half overheard, leads to his jealousy; and then, after bringing this strongly before the mind's eye, harks back to an explanation. And it cannot be questioned that Tennyson was a master of this art of narrative. The Lover's Tale, so strangely incoherent when contrasted with its mature sequel, The Golden Supper, affords an easy means to judge by what labour he arrived at this perfection. Each one of the Idylls is a model of story-telling; they are perfectly lucid, they hold the attention, and they never fail of such an ending as Tennyson himself preferred, where the emotion roused softens gradually away to the quiet end with the ceasing of the narrator's voice. One may or may not care for the stories; but there is no doubt that they are admirably told, so far as concerns the sequence and marshalling of events and the selection of incidents. Excellent they are also in what is more purely a matter of style; the choice of key in which to set the recital. Elaine is studiously simple, Gareth and Lynette is elaborately pretty; in The Holy Grail the style feels the exaltation of the subject, and breaks into long and passionate rhapsodies of declamation; and in The Passing of Arthur there is the solemnity of an organ-music. But here we strike a question which reaches wider than the mere business of narrative, and concerns the architecture of all poetry. A poet working by means of language and metre has first of all to choose the tone of treatment for his subject; and from this more general choice follow consequences that dictate in all matters of detail. For instance, compare the light-hearted tone of Hervé Riel with the dignity of The Revenge: any one can see that Browning is justified by his attitude towards the subject in the use of phrases which would be incongruous in Tennyson. Given the subject, there remains a choice of language in which to express it. Given Tennyson's attitude towards the story of Lancelot and the maiden's sleeve-which is very different from Malory's-it follows that here is no place for such sonorities of diction and splendour of phrase as may rightly adorn the legend of The Holy Grail. Given again his attitude towards the story of Maud and her lover-that is, dramatic recital by a speaker half unhinged in mind—it is fit that the utterance should be strained and violent. Few poets, if any, have a wider range over the vocabulary; none are more discreet in their use of it. The same holds of metre; the poet, once given his subject, has not only to select his metre appropriately, but to make the metre chosen obey the mood. And in the lyrics, need it be pointed out how admirably Tennyson fits his metre to all cadences of the emotion? Witness, of course, Maud; witness his ballad of The Revenge, where the verse moves fast or slow at will, and where short lines are introduced, either to express the hurry of an instant decision Shall we fight or shall we fly? Good Sir Richard, tell us now, For to fight is but to die; or with equal skill to suggest the voice pausing upon words of heavy emphasis We have fought such a fight for a day and a night As may never be fought again! We have won great glory, my men! And a day less or more At sea or ashore, We die-does it matter when? A passage like that keeps through the harmony of metre all the natural rhythms of speech; and it is above all in this particular excellence-in the consummate mastery of metre-that Tennyson seems to me so great an artist. Yet he is hardly less, if less at all, as an artist in language. The first quality of style, whether in prose or verse, to be aimed at is, I think, lucidity. Contemporary opinion is against me in this matter, and critics are apt to set little store by the pains which a man takes to be understood; but clearness seldom fails of its ultimate reward. Tennyson, as I have pointed out in an earlier chapter, was at first freely accused of obscurity; and it must be allowed that certain passages of In Memoriam are very difficult to follow. But not all thoughts admit of equal clearness in exposition, and the thought in these passages is of necessity complex. Maud puzzled the critics greatly at its first appearance; it is not easy to see why, as a very little imagination supplies easily the necessary links. But for the most part it will be conceded that Tennyson had a singular power of expressing ideas, even complex ideas, so that the thought should be lucid and harmonious. Yet this gift of lucidity, though it stands first, is not the highest of a poet. The highest, if we are to exclude the dramatic power to make a living man put his whole self into a word, is the quality of magical suggestion. Literature affords no better instance than Virgil's Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. This is something even higher than the Horatian felicity of expression which packs a definite thought into words that become inseparable from it, like the Rectius vives Ode: yet in Horace too you can match it with a passage Nos ubi decidimus Quo pater Aeneas, quo dives Tullus et Ancus, Lines like these can never be adequately translated. Virgil's line can scarcely be translated at all, it can only be felt; it has the magic of Shakespeare. That 1 As an instance, Lewis Carroll (Life, p. 71) was so slow of comprehension as to need an explanation from Tennyson of "Well, if it prove a girl, my boy will have plenty; so let it be". |