beautiful Launcelot and Guinevere, which has hitherto only appeared in the columns of a newspaper; to Mr. St. Loe Strachey for some excellent suggestions; and chiefly to Mr. G. H. Ely, not only for unwearying assistance in the business of proof correction, but for much valuable criticism of details. STEPHEN GWYNN. February, 1899. Tennyson A Critical Study Chapter I. In all cases criticism should bear some relation to biography; in many, the two are inseparable. Sometimes the events and external circumstances of a life intertwine themselves inextricably with a poet's work, as they did with Byron's; sometimes an alien influence can be detected, like a coloured liquid poured into water, traceable at first in its distinct hue, though materially in fusion, then gradually merging into a single but changed whole. So one can watch the first crude appearances of Godwin's teaching in Shelley's poetry, and follow the development till there is no separable Godwin, but a new Shelley. Tennyson's is the very opposite of such natures. The most significant thing about his biography is-if one can say so without disparagement-its lack of significance. You find there a most interesting book; you arrive at a picture of the man in his habit as he lived, and not only of him, but of the friends who surrounded him; but the story of his life is not unfolded, for the excellent reason that there was no story with dramatic episodes or mental turning-points for the biographer to tell. The You might as well try to write the biography of an oak. It sprang in a good soil, it drew to itself sustenance from the sap of earth and the dew of heaven, it put out leaves and branches, it became a stature in the forest; but there was no point at which you could say, Something has happened. That is a fair image, indeed Tennyson himself has used it in one of the most characteristic among his later poems. If you go to sum up his life, what you find is this: That he was born in 1809, that he was bred as a gentleman should be, that he wrote poems, became laureate, grew rich through his art, was the close and honoured friend of the men most honourable in his time, and after eighty-four years died, beautiful and majestic in his death. whole is a process of growth, gradual and stately, but of events there are none. The only thing in Tennyson's life which needs to be stated to explain any of his poems is that he had a friend whom he loved and looked up to; that this friend suddenly died young, and that the poet enshrined his memory in perhaps the finest of all his verse. Nor is there any trace distinguishable of any sudden admixture in his mind. He knew Carlyle intimately, but you cannot put your finger on any poem and say, Here Carlyle comes in. Yet there is no man in all English literature more closely in touch with the thought of his times. His mind was an absorbent; essentially a brooding mind, that slowly drew in to itself the vital elements out of the atmosphere which it breathed and converted them into a definable shape. In a sense no poet is more personal, more self-created; in a sense none more impersonal, none more devoid of all eccentricities and waywardnesses. He led, but it was always on a path that his countrymen were already prone to follow; he struck off at no abrupt tangents; and whether in matters of religious faith, domestic re |