TENNYSON AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT.

BY A. PATCHETT MARTIN.

At the request of the Editor of Vectis, (himself, in every way, so much better fitted for the task), I am about to set forth, with some fulness, my personal impressions of the Memoir' of Alfred, Lord Tennyson by his Son.' Alien as I am, I shall yet aim to bring out the close connection between the great Poet and this fair little isle which to him-(as to our Sovereign Lady) became in early married life, and remained until the last, his home. I am told that the Islander' is not unjustly twitted by his less favoured fellow-countrymen, of Great and Greater Britain, with being a trifle too 'insular.' He, it seems, like others, mistakes at times,

the rustic cackle of his burg For the great wave that echoes round the world. But, honestly it seems to me, as a recent dweller in the Wight, that its folk are hardly sufficiently proud of Tennyson and Farringford.

To be frank, the literary associations of the Island are neither numerous nor intimate. True, Dr. Arnold, was born at West Cowes; but the great Headmaster and moulder of noble Englishmen, can in no way be linked with the Isle of Wight, save by this accident of birth. Poor John Sterling (forgotton long since but for Carlyle's Life'), dwelt a brief uneasy space at Ventnor, flying thither to dodge that dread shadow,' which there he met. Like a flickering sunbeam, John Keats passed over 'leafy Shanklin'; but now, alas!

I gather that no man knoweth the precise spot whither he strayed. Still, as the loveliest, (I do not say the greatest), of English poets, indubitably sojourned for a while on this pleasant shore, and here in some unmarked sea-side dwelling, wrote Lamia' and other immortal verse, why have you not, in the locality, a ' Keats' Road'? Sandown has been before you with its Wilkes' Road'; though to be sure, Rascally Jack' if a more ignoble was a more substantial resident of the then little neighbouring fishing-village whose air he found so fresh and fragrant after the din and dust of Westminster and the City.

These, however, are but shadows of a dream compared with the mighty figure of Tennyson, who was no fleeting ghost or mere chance comer, but a veritable 'Islander of Islanders' by his own personal choice and feeling, and by right of adoption. Surely, after Somersby Rectory, Farringford House, Freshwater, will remain to all generations of men to come, the favourite Shrine of our great Victorian poet. This was the house he chose after those long years of early struggle for fame and competence-it was indeed his first real home; to this lovely spot he proudly brought his long-desired bride, Emily Sellwood, who as Lady Tennyson is as closely linked with the memories of Farringford as himself, aye in a sense, more closely, for while the Poet rests in the Great Abbey beside his peers, she who bore his name, shared his fortunes, and gloried in his fame, now sleeps the last sound sleep in that village churchyard.

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If, in this favoured Isle there be any of that true patriotic feeling of 'place' which is not to be confused with mere local prejudice and insular narrowness, this 'Memoir' of their great fellow-Islander should become a widely read and fondly treasured book. Tennyson's Life,' like his poems, has a local as well as general significance. Although the poems appeal to the whole English-speaking world, they should yet have a peculiar esoteric meaning to the dwellers in his native Lincolnshire and to those born and bred in the Isle of Wight. Line after line, verse after verse might be pointed out which describe in vivid lightning-like flashes the sights and sounds around Farringford. Who that has wandered o'nights on the Downs, can fail to be haunted by such lines as those in Rizpah

Heard! have you ever heard when the storm on the downs began?

The wind that 'ill wail like a child and the sea that 'ill moan like a man.

So with the Life.' A good half of it springs from Farringford. But it is time, leaving this merely local aspect of the matter for a while, that I took the book itself in hand, and personally conducted' my readers. through some of the narrative.

In opening these two handsome volumes, the full, ripe fruitage of four years of assiduous labour and painstaking thought (a true act of filial piety) let us note carefully the prefatory sonnet, which strikes, as it were, the key-note of the whole composition. Cardinal Newman, who was by nature like Tennyson, a recluse, and had the same horror of prying eyes and heedless publicity, once expressed, in a letter to his sister, Mrs. John Mozley, his matured views on the subject of Biography :

Lord Burleigh's nods; but contemporary letters are facts."

That there is a large amount of truth in this is self-evident, although the growing modern practice of securing every scrap of a notelet written by an eminent man, and publishing it, often regardless or in ignorance of the circumstances which produced it, is as likely to lead to erroneous conclusions as any other method of perpetuating idle gossip and baseless rumour.

Nowhere is the art of selection more needed than in issuing a man's private letters and confidential or casual memoranda. Tennyson, too, in his unpublished sonnet, which is the key-note to this 'Memoir,' seems to me to look much deeper and to hit a profounder truth than New

man :

The man's life in the letters of the man.
There lies the letter, but it is not he

As he retires into himself and 18:
Sender and sent-to go to make up this.
Their offspring of this union.

Nevertheless, in proper hands, a man's letters are often the surest clue to his inner character, and inmost feelings; and of this the son and biographer shows himself fully conscious. Besides the letters of Tennyson himself, we find in these volumes many suggestive letters from Tennyson's oldest and dearest friends, as well as communications from utter strangers and mere casual correspondents, all carefully selected with an eye to the main object of the work-the elucidation of the personality of the Poet. In addition to such admirable side-lights, several character sketches are given by old and valued friends by Mr. Aubrey de Vere, Mr. Palgrave, the late Professor Tyndall, Mr. Lecky, the Duke of Argyll, the Dean of Westminster, and the late Master of Balliol. This painstaking plan may at times lead to tedious repetition, and thus lessen rather than intensify the vividness of the intended portrait. But to the patient student, this kind of additional testimony lends a feeling of confidence; while it is always interesting to learn how