CHAPTER V.

TEN YEARS' SILENCE AND ITS RESULTS.

Two different causes may account for our Poet's silence during the next ten years (1833-1842);1 his over

1 A silence not, however, altogether unbroken. In 1837 the poem of "St. Agnes" appeared in the " Keepsake,” and in the same year Tennyson contributed some stanzas to "The Tribute; a Collection of Miscellaneous Unpublished Poems, by Various Authors, Edited by Lord Northampton." This volume elicited the first notice of Tennyson from the Edinburgh Review," which had till then been silent respecting him. "We do not profess," says the reviewer,

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perfectly to understand the somewhat mysterious contri"bution of Mr. Alfred Tennyson, entitled 'Stanzas ;' but "amidst some quaintness, and some occasional absurdities of expression, it is not difficult to detect the hand of a true

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poet-such as the author of 'Mariana' and the Lines on "the Arabian Nights' undoubtedly is-in those stanzas "which describe the appearance of a visionary form, by "which the writer is supposed to be haunted amidst the streets of a crowded city.”—ED. REV. October, 1837, p. 108. These stanzas, beginning "O that 'twere possible," were

whelming grief for the loss of his friend, and the desire to perfect himself in his art.

A record of this ten years' apprenticeship to the Muses would be deeply interesting, could we get it; but we must not pry too closely into the private history of a poet:

"No public life was his on earth,

No blazon'd statesman he, nor king."

At any rate he has been profiting by the admonitions of reviewers, friendly or inimical, and is pruning, clipping, cutting, and clearing his garden of weeds and noxious excrescences. That is to say, he is ruthlessly

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eighteen years afterwards incorporated into the poem of 'Maud;""recovered," says George Brimley, "from the pages of a long-forgotten miscellany, and set as a jewel "amid jewels." Mr. Swinburne has more recently spoken of them as "the poem of deepest charm and fullest delight of "pathos and melody ever written even by Mr. Tennyson; "since recast into new form and refreshed with new beauty "to fit it for reappearance among the crowning passages of "Maud.”—Academy, January 29, 1876.

"The Tribute" also contains two short pieces by Charles (then the Rev. Charles) Tennyson, "To a Lady" and "Sonnet on some Humming Birds." The literary association of the two brothers was renewed at a more recent period, when they both became contributors to "Macmillan's Magazine.”

drawing his pen through one poem, and revising another, till it is scarcely recognizable as the juvenile production from which it sprung.

All this while, too, section after section of " In Memoriam" is being painfully and slowly elaborated; and at last comes out of the furnace, like the refiner's silver, seven times purified. The world, however, did not see it until 1850.

But at length, in 1842, after many and repeated calls for a new edition of the former volumes, which had long been out of print,' appeared:

1 "One of the severest tests by which a poet can try the true "worth of his book, is to let it continue for two or three years "out of print. The first flush of popularity cannot be trusted. "Admiration is contagious, and means often little more than

sympathy with the general feeling-the pleasure of being "in the fashion. A book which is praised in all the reviews "thousands will not only buy, but be delighted with; and "thus a judicious publisher may contrive, by keeping it

cleverly in people's way, to preserve for years a popularity "which is merely accidental and ephemeral. But if this be "all, the interest in it will cease as soon as it becomes difficult "to procure. Let a man ask for it two or three times with"out getting it, he will take to something else; and his

curiosity, unless founded on something more substantial "than a wish to see what others are looking at, and a dis“position to be pleased with what others praise, will die away. If, on the other hand, a new edition be perseve

"Poems by Alfred Tennyson. In Two Volumes. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXLII.'

The first volume contained two divisions, 1. A selection from the volume of 1830 (many of the poems

ringly demanded, and when it comes, be eagerly bought, we may safely conclude that the work has something in it of 66 abiding interest and permanent value; for then we know "that many people have been so pleased or so edified by the "reading that they cannot be content without the possession. "To this severe test, the author of the unpretending volumes "before us has submitted an infant and what seemed to many a baseless and precarious reputation; and so well "has it stood the test-for we understand that preparations are already making for another edition-as to give him an undeniable claim to the respectful attention of all "critics.

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"The book must not be treated as one collection of poems, "but as three separate ones, belonging to three different periods in the development of his mind, and to be judged accordingly. Mr. Tennyson's first book was published in 1830, when he was at college. His second followed in "1832. Their reception, though far from triumphant, was "not inauspicious; for while they gained him many warm "admirers, they were treated even by those critics whose ad66 miration, like their charity, begins and ends at home, as "sufficiently notable to be worth some not unelaborate "ridicule. The admiration and the ridicule served alike to "bring them into notice, and they have both been for some years out of print."-Edinburgh Review, April, 1843, pp.

373-374.

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untouched, and none having received more than a few verbal alterations); 2. Some dozen poems, from the volume of 1832, almost entirely rewritten,1 together

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with six or seven new pieces, written, with one exception, in 1833.

The second volume contained poems entirely new, with the exception of "The Sleeping Beauty," a portion of "The Day-Dream," originally published in the volume of 1830, and the poem of "St. Agnes," which, as we have already seen, was originally printed in 1837. We propose to examine the contents,

"The Dream of Fair Women," considerably altered in this edition, was again retouched in the editions of 1845 and 1853.

2 Two of these pieces, "Lady Clara Vere de Vere" and "The Blackbird," have received slight alterations in subsequent editions. In the former poem (st. 7) we had originally "The gardener Adam" instead of "The grand old gardener," and in "The Blackbird":

"I better brook the drawling stares,

Now thy flute-notes are changed to coarse

Not hearing thee at all, or hoarse

As when a hawker hawks his wares.' ""

And there is a curious but unimportant alteration in another

stanza of the same poem.