FIVE ENGLISH POETS.

IV. THE POETS' LOVERS.

THE test of a poet's true greatness, dramatically at any rate, is mainly to be found in his treatment of vital emotions; those emotions, that is, by which the course of the individual life is most deeply affected; most of all, the love of man and maiden, or man and wife. The subject is one of such vital importance, and one in connection with which impulsive natures are prone to make such desperate mistakes, that it is commonly regarded as too dangerous to dwell upon, in face of the fact that it is a literal impossibility to keep it out of people's heads. It is unwise to shut our eyes to patent facts. Human nature has settled the matter; and even if the appeal to human nature be denied, it is still perfectly clear that unless the poets as well as the novelists are all locked up, it is futile to hope that young people can be blind to love as a possible factor in their lives. It is well, therefore, that the ideas they do imbibe should be true and serious.

Two of our poets, however, have not had overmuch to say on the subject. Neither Wordsworth nor Arnold had the dramatic gift, and neither of them chose to unlock the chambers of his own heart, unless Wordsworth's 'Lucy' poems are regarded as an instance to the contrary, or Arnold's 'Marguerite' series. Beautiful as the former are, they can scarcely be regarded as the expression of any very strong feeling, and the kind of scholarly emotion after the best and most imperturbable models in the latter can scarcely be dignified with the name of love. Arnold's emotions, as exhibited in his writings, were schooled to a pitch of philosophic placidity, which to less patient or reserved mortals is apt to prove irritating. And if 'Marguerite' is cold, Tristram and Iseult' is positively frosty. Wordsworth's nearest approach to a poem with love for its

central interest is 'Laodamia;' and there, admirable as is the teaching of the lines which give the keynote,

'the gods approve

The depth and not the tumult of the soul,'

the whole poem is characterised much more by gravity than by intensity; there is more head than heart in it.

But with Tennyson and Browning, things are altogether different. With their wide and varied human sympathies, they have between them presented us with what one might almost call a museum of lovers of every possible type: lovers fickle, and lovers loyal; hopeful, despairing, triumphant, defeated, diffuse, concentrated, indignant, joyful; lovers like Merlin, the victims of a strange and awful witchery; like Guinevere, with her great repentance; like Pompilia, with her stainless whiteness; dramatic studies in which one supplements the other so that the whole field seems to be covered, Browning's greatest powers coming into play just where Tennyson's limitations bound him.

It was observed in a previous paper that while Tennyson's portrayal of certain dramatic types approaches perfection as nearly as may be, the range within which this holds good is not a very wide one. At the same time, its whole scope is within the sympathetic capacities, so to speak, of average folk: we do not feel it any effort to understand how people could feel like that, because we can imagine ourselves feeling like that without any very great difficulty.

Applying this to love-songs and poems about lovers, it means that Tennyson is particularly successful in treating the idyllic and tender, or the superficial and vehement examples, which may be conveniently grouped together under the heading of sentimental. I am not sure that the word is altogether a fair one, because it is apt to convey a suggestion of unreality, of theatrical claptrap, which is not intended. On the contrary, the emotions expressed are perfectly genuine, and carefully to be distinguished from the unwholesome sham excitement for the sake of effect of the herd of poseurs who selected Byron's worst characteristics to take model by. Tennyson's lovers do not indulge in tinsel heroics; they do not profess sentiments which they do not feel, and metaphorically present pistols at their own heads with a cheerful consciousness that they are unloaded. Nor on the other hand are they the limp consumptive creatures of the era of 'Sensibility.' But words get so maltreated that classification

which shall not be misleading is exceedingly difficult, and the word which I am driven to as covering the range of genuine passion outside the Tennysonian field requires at least equally careful guarding. That word is Intense. For, a few years ago, the slang usage of a clique gave such a hopelessly corrupt sense to it, that for a long time it could hardly be used without conveying a sense as nearly as possible the opposite of what it ought to be. Vigour, concentration, virile energy ought to be implied in it; it came to mean limp, futile, and gushing. It is sufficiently obvious that Browning, the most robust of writers and a born fighter, was not 'intense' in that preposterous use of the word; but intensity, in its proper sense is the most marked characteristic of the emotions of his characters, as it is not of Tennyson's.

I have divided Tennyson's poems for the present purpose into two classes; the idyllic, and the vehement. Now it is an essential note of the idyll that its atmosphere shall be peaceful; and that prohibits the introduction of stormy emotions. But what is entirely and perfectly appropriate is that tender and thoroughly real feeling which we find in the Gardener's Daughter.'

'So home I went, but could not sleep for joy,
Reading her perfect features in the gloom,
Kissing the rose she gave me o'er and o'er,
And shaping faithful record of the glance
That graced the giving-such a noise of life
Swarmed in the golden present, such a voice
Called to me from the years to come, and such
A length of bright horizon rimmed the dark.'

Every word there rings true; any suspicion of posing, of pretending to a feeling not really present, would jar on one at once and ruin the harmony. Tenderness, not force, is what is wanted and what we get; the force may be latent, but is not expressed; to express it would be an artistic blunder, because it would be exciting instead of soothing. There is no tragedy in the air; no stern endurance, no tremendous sacrifice. There are peaceful idyllic lives in this world, and they are very pleasant and healthy to contemplate; some of us are inclined to rate their value something too low, for one reason or another. Sometimes it is a hopelessly wrong reason, a craving for excitement for its own sake which is apt to develop into morbid and fantastic forms of intellectual dram-drinking; but this is pro

bably rare.

Much oftener I take it to be the outcome of a genuine eagerness and vigour, an unrest which is the condition of all forward and upward movement, but fails to find sufficient outlet in placid sylvan surroundings. While we are thirsting for the fray, or in the thick of it, with tense nerves and bounding pulses, the picture of these peaceful scenes excites a certain indignant impatience. But at an earlier stage, and when in the pauses of the battle we have time to feel exhausted, we can realise that they have their own delight, and that by no means a contemptible one. The pipe has its uses as well as the trumpet. We don't much want to play the part of Corin and Sylvia ourselves, but we are obliged to the poet for giving us a glimpse of them—and even now and then it is borne in upon us that Corin and Sylvia don't have such a very inefficient life of it after all.

But indeed, these comments only apply to the point of view of a minority. All of us at times, most of us as a rule, find a readier pleasure in these tender sentiments than, perhaps, we are quite disposed to own. It is only when they become unreal and tricky that they become also unwholesome and twaddly; and that these idyllic lovers of Tennyson's never are, seeing that they have in them all a characteristic which takes them out of the field of mere triviality, in the unfailing reverence of the man for the maiden; not spoken in so many words, but conveyed in every word.

Gareth is perhaps hardly a fully-developed lover in the story, but his attitude towards Lynette well illustrates my meaning -enshrined in King Arthur's memorable words concerning a 'Maiden passion for a maid.' And something of the same is to be found in Geraint's speech to Yniol-the Geraint of the first part, of course; not the amazingly contemptible Geraint the husband, of the second part, who has no claim to the sacred name of lover at all.

'To whom Geraint with eyes all bright replied,
Leaning a little toward him, "Thy leave!
Let me lay lance in rest, O noble host,
For this dear child, because I never saw,
Tho' having seen all beauties of our time,
Nor can see elsewhere anything so fair.
And if I fall, her name will yet remain
Untarnished as before; but if I live,
So aid me Heaven when at mine uttermost,
As I will make her truly my true wife."'

Whether Enid's love is altogether satisfactory is a question to which different people would doubtless give different answers.

It

is accompanied by a degree of self-suppression which is certainly not emulated by her spouse, and seems to sum up the whole duty of woman as adoration plus obedience. Tennyson's heroines are altogether lacking in that initiative which is so pre-eminently characteristic of Shakspeare's, who are quite as likely as not to be the guiding spirits in the partnerships. The conception is that which is commonly supposed to be favoured by the masculine mind, which lays a somewhat excessive stress on sweetness and pliability, and scarcely fits into that ideal of 'The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;

A perfect woman, nobly planned

To warn, to comfort, and command,'

which Wordsworth describes, and a good deal more of which there would need to be about the maiden who should awaken in her lover that passion which King Arthur would have to make him 'worship her by years of noble deeds.'

Geraint himself serves a double capacity; first as the lover in an idyll, and secondly as a worse specimen of the same type as those in Maud' and 'Locksley Hall,' who have the common note, that they think about themselves a good deal too much. They are not absorbed in their love.

'Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight."

Yes; but it would seem that the speaker is not accurately describing his own experience. He cannot forget what a very superior person he is; and one has a dim suspicion that perhaps the shallow-hearted Amy had begun to think he was more interested in his own superiority than in hers before she decided 'to decline

On a lower range of feeling, and a narrower heart than mine.'

In like manner, the hero of Maud is too much possessed with his own wrongs to be absorbed in his love, or to keep his head for Maud's own sake under an insult. He is as vehement in his loathing for her brother as in his passion for her; not a strong man absorbed by a master passion, but a weak man tossed between passions of which now one, now another gets the control over him. The real strong man we never seem to get.