The Age of Tennyson

Sydney Dobell

(1824-1874).

Sydney Dobell had the misfortune to be born a member of a narrow and intense religious sect, in which his talents caused him to be regarded as the destined instrument for some grand design of providence. He outgrew the sect, but never quite outgrew the education it had given him and the ideas it had instilled. From about 1850 he devoted himself chiefly to literature. His writings are The Roman (1850), Balder (1853), Sonnets on the War (1855), in which he collaborated with Alexander Smith, and England in Time of War (1856). But his health failed, and though he lived eighteen years longer he wrote little more of consequence.

‘He never weeded his garden,’ wrote Dr. John Brown of him, ‘and will, I fear, be therefore strangled in his waste fertility.’ This is the central truth about Dobell. Few poets are so uneven, perhaps hardly any poet capable of rising so high has ever sunk so low. Many passages are mere fustian, some are outrages against all taste; but others have a sublimity not often surpassed.

At the beginning Dobell gave promise of development which, if fulfilled, would have led him very high indeed. In the short interval between The Roman and Balder the youthful author had grown surprisingly. The Roman, a fervid poem carrying on a Byronic tradition of interest in Italy, has all the faults of youth. It is too long, and it is bombastic. Its chief merit is width of sympathy; and it also contains here and there hints that promise in the future reach of thought. In Balder we see this promise redeemed. It is far more forcible than The Roman and it is loaded with thought. Balder was a poem of vast design. It was to be in three parts, of which only one was ever published. The purpose was, in the words of the author’s preface, to trace ‘the progress of a human being from Doubt to Faith, from Chaos to Order. Not of Doubt incarnate to Faith incarnate, but of a doubtful mind to a faithful mind.’ The design therefore bears a certain general resemblance to that of Paracelsus. Balder is not equal to that great poem. It is even more difficult while less profound, and it is especially far less of a unity. It is, strictly speaking, paradoxical to regard as a whole what proclaims itself as a part; but a part of a great design may have completeness in itself, and this Balder has not.

Again, if we regard the poem in the light most favourable to it, as a collection of passages in verse, we have to admit the most amazing inequalities. Few passages in literature are more hideous than the description of the monster on which Tyranny rides; but, on the other hand, the best passages may challenge comparison with all but the greatest poetry. Even this comparison has been sometimes made. The description of Chamouni has been said to rival the great hymn of Coleridge, and that of the Coliseum the celebrated stanzas of Byron on the same subject. The comparison, especially with Coleridge, is unkind to Dobell. At his best he cannot rival one of the most poetic minds in all literature in one of its highest flights. Nevertheless, both passages are exceedingly good. The subjects moreover are characteristic. Magnitude and massiveness are congenial to Dobell, and almost necessary to draw out his best. ‘Alone among our modern poets,’ says Dr. Garnett, ‘he finds the sublime a congenial element.’ It is in such passages as those named, and in Balder’s magnificent vision of war, that Dobell shows the grand material of poetry that was in him.

For this reason it might have been expected that Dobell’s next volumes, Sonnets on the War and England in Time of War, would have been more uniformly good. The Roman proves that he had the fire of patriotism in his veins, and many passages of his verse show that this fire was not all spent, as most of Byron’s was, to warm other nations than his own. Of all the poets then living, Dobell had the largest share of Tennyson’s patriotic fervour and of his love for warlike themes. Nevertheless, the Sonnets on the War are of but moderate merit; and though England in Time of War contains some powerful pieces, it has all the inequality of Dobell’s earlier poetry. Dobell had learnt little of the art of self-criticism, and whether he had the capacity to learn must remain doubtful. He afterwards wrote a few fine poems, such as The Magyar’s New-Year-Eve and The Youth of England to Garibaldi’s Legion, but broken health prevented him from undertaking any great work. He remains therefore a poet great by snatches. A selection, including the passages already mentioned, An Evening Dream, with its stirring ring of heroism, the fascinating ballad, Keith of Ravelston, and some others, might be made, which would greatly raise his reputation. The volume would not be large, but the contents would be excellent.

Alexander Smith

(1829-1867).

Next in importance among the Spasmodic Poets to Dobell was Alexander Smith. He was the son of a pattern-designer of Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, and in his now little known but quietly pleasing novel, Alfred Hagart’s Household, he has embodied a good deal of autobiographic matter. He was also the author of a thoughtful and well-written volume of essays, Dreamthorp. But he is first and chiefly a poet. His earliest volume was A Life Drama (1853), which excited a degree of interest rarely roused by the first work of a young author. It was warmly praised and loudly condemned; and the result of the controversy that raged over it was to make the author for a short time one of the most prominent writers in the kingdom. But his fame speedily declined, and City Poems (1857), though it contains some of his best work, was coldly received. Edwin of Deira (1861) was somewhat more successful, but was far from reviving the interest which had centred in A Life Drama.

The present generation, which has been unjust to Dobell, has dealt still more hardly with Alexander Smith. The Nemesis of excessive praise is unjust depreciation, and both have been Smith’s lot. He has been denied the title of poet altogether; but he is a poet, and even a considerable one. He shares both the defects and the excellences of Dobell, never sinking so low, and, on the other hand, never rising as high. His execution is unequal, he rants, he uses metaphor to excess, he is by no means free from affectation. But though the Life Drama is crude and unequal, there is plenty of promise in it. There was ground to hope that the spirit from which it proceeded was like a turbid torrent which would by-and-by deposit its mud and flow on strong and clear. To those who hoped thus Edwin of Deira was disappointing. A good deal of the mud had been deposited, the execution was more perfect, but there was less strength and less volume of thought than might have been expected. It is in his minor pieces and in occasional lines and passages that Smith shows best. There is rare beauty in the melancholy close of the lyric Barbara in Horton. The picture of the sphinx, ‘staring right on with calm eternal eyes,’ has the true touch of imagination; and so has the image of the wind smiting ‘his thunder-harp of pines.’ Glasgow in the City Poems, is a strong as well as a beautiful piece. There can be no question of the imaginative power of this picture of the city in its cloud of smoke pierced by sunlight:

‘When sunset bathes thee in his gold,In wreaths of bronze thy sides are rolled,Thy smoke is dusky fire;And, from the glory round thee poured,A sunbeam like an angel’s swordShivers upon a spire.Thus have I watched thee, Terror! Dream!While the blue night crept up the stream.’

Coventry Patmore

(1823-1896).

There remain two or three considerable poets whom it is difficult to classify. Coventry Patmore cannot be placed in either the Pre-Raphaelite or the Spasmodic School, and though he has some points of affinity with the poets of the intellectual movement, they are not close enough to justify ranking him with them. Patmore is especially the poet of domestic love. His greatest work, The Angel in the House (1854-1856), was meant to be a poem on married life. In the opening the poet congratulates himself that he, though born so late, has had the good fortune to discover ‘the first of themes sung last of all.’ As he proceeded however he found his mistake, and never carried out his design; but it imparted the characteristic tone of quiet domestic affection to his verse. He may be described as the Wordsworth of the home. He is seldom if ever great, but his verse at its best has a simple sweetness, with an occasional dignity, that is exceedingly pleasing. It is unfortunate that against the merits of the better passages of The Angel in the House there has to be set the weakness of the letters of Jane. Patmore’s purpose was to fit the thought to the character; but merely weak thought and merely weak character have no right to a place in poetry such as this. There is no dramatic realisation and no humour to justify them.

The Unknown Eros (1877) is a work strangely different from The Angel in the House; it is more lyrical and more ambitiously imaginative; and for this very reason it brings into greater prominence Patmore’s weaknesses. There is a frequent sense of effort. The meaning is often obscure, and there are here and there, as in the earlier poem, surprising lapses of taste. The poem recalls Drummond of Hawthornden, not only by the rhythm, but also by a certain ‘preciosity’ of diction and imagery.

The second Lord Lytton

(1831-1891).

The second Lord Lytton, best known in literature by his pseudonym of Owen Meredith, must also be ranked among ‘the unattached’ of literature. He had a distinguished diplomatic career which more than once interrupted his pen. But, except for the intervals caused by his various ambassadorships and his eventful tenure of the Viceroyalty of India, Lytton was, from 1855 to his death, a diligent writer. In 1855 Clytemnestra and other Poems appeared, while Marah was a posthumous work. The greater part of Lytton’s writings is poetical, and their total bulk is very great. It is indeed too great for his fame, and most of his poems would be improved by condensation. Lytton presents a singular example of heredity, which, in his case, showed itself in a manner damaging to his reputation. We have seen how the first Lord Lytton veered with every turn of the popular taste. The second Lord Lytton changed his style, chameleon-like, with almost every poet he happened to be reading. The consequence is, in the first place, that his own style is not easily discovered; and in the second place that he has been accused of plagiarism with more show of reason than almost any other man of equal literary rank. It is not merely that he echoes successively the pensive sentiment and melancholy reflectiveness of Arnold, the rich diction of Tennyson, the headlong abundance of Browning, the lyrical sweetness of Shelley, or that he in a snatch or two almost paraphrases Byron. In Lucile, his indebtedness to George Sand is far more extensive. It is true he avowed that he had taken from her the story of the piece; but the story is the principal part of it, and no writer ought to borrow quite so much from another. The fault is a serious one, and it is reason sufficient for the belief that Owen Meredith will never take a high place in poetry; yet his endowments were almost great, his taste was purer than his father’s, and had he been more independent-minded he might have stood high in the second class of the poets of the century.

J. B. Leicester Warren, Lord de Tabley

(1835-1895).

J. B. Leicester Warren, Lord de Tabley, was a man of richer poetic gifts, who might have done very great work had he met with popular encouragement. He began his poetic career as early as 1859, but his first volume of importance was Præterita, issued under the pseudonym of William Lancaster, in 1863. For the next ten years he was an active writer. Partly his own taste and partly admiration for Atalanta in Calydon induced him to attempt the classical drama; and his two experiments, Philoctetes (1866) and Orestes (1867), rank among the most finished of their class. They secured the warm approval of the best judges, but they did not become popular. He tried novels, also without winning popularity; and after two more experiments in verse—Rehearsals (1870) and Searching the Net (1873)—he almost disappeared from the ranks of authors for twenty years; for the Soldier of Fortune, though bulky, can hardly be considered important. It was the reissue in 1893 of his best pieces under the title of Poems Dramatic and Lyrical that first made Lord de Tabley’s name widely known. So marked was the success of this collection that it was followed two years later by another, which was less successful because it was the result of a less rigid selection.

These volumes represent Lord de Tabley at his best, and that best is very good indeed. Such pieces as the Hymn to Astarte, the Woodland Grave and Jael, would do honour to any poet. There is intense dramatic power in the last-named piece, and a rich magnificence of style in the others. A tendency to sameness may sometimes be detected. He has, for example, one favourite colour, and the whole world is seen by him bathed in an amber light. There are also here and there echoes of contemporary poets, such as Browning, and still more, Swinburne, whose fulness of sound attracted De Tabley. But he is an essentially independent poet, and had he been encouraged to write he would doubtless have grown increasingly independent. Few losses in contemporary literature are more serious than that occasioned by his almost complete silence between 1873 and 1893, just the years when, by reason of his age, his work ought to have been best. He was a great man unrecognised, and the failure to recognise is sometimes severely punished.

William Morris

(1834-1896).

Most of Lord de Tabley’s contemporaries by birth belong rather to the subsequent period than to the Age of Tennyson. Even Swinburne did so, though before 1870 he had, by the publication of Atalanta in Calydon (1865), enriched English literature with one of its most perfect dramas on the Greek model, and by the Poems and Ballads (1866) had ‘raised a storm, and founded a school.’ The fact that he founded a school makes him rather the poetical leader of the present generation than a member of the preceding one. In some ways Lord de Tabley has more affinity to this later band than to those who were under the dominion of Carlyle and Browning and Tennyson. He certainly shows the workings of a new spirit, and seems to feel the old ideals insufficient; but his twenty years of literary eclipse serve to fix him chronologically rather among the older men. For a different reason William Morris, a man just one year older than De Tabley, also belongs, as a poet, to this period. Morris was a man who played many parts in life, and he played them not concurrently, but rather successively. In his characters as high priest of domestic art and as prophet to the Socialists he is identified with the closing quarter of the century; while his greatest achievements in poetry belong to the third quarter. The Defence of Guenevere and other Poems (1858) was his first volume of verse. Then after nine years came The Life and Death of Jason, followed almost immediately by The Earthly Paradise (1868-1870). Morris afterwards translated the Æneid and the Odyssey, and he also did much to make familiar in England the spirit of Icelandic literature. His Sigurd the Volsung (1876) is certainly the finest English poem inspired by Scandinavia, and perhaps his greatest work.

Morris is the most prominent example in these later days of that revival of the mediæval spirit which was initiated by the Romanticists of the latter part of last century, which attained its fullest flower in Scott, and which shows itself in such varied aspects in Rossetti’s poetry, in the Pre-Raphaelite painters, and in the Oxford theologians. Morris exhibits it in a way quite his own. Chaucer more than any one else is his master in poetry. To him Morris reverted for the model of his verse, and the old poet’s influence is seen in the disciple’s mode of conception as well as in many turns of expression. One thing however Morris could not learn, though Chaucer was eminently qualified to teach it, and that was the true narrative spirit. Morris chose the narrative form, but the interest of his poetry rarely lies in the story. He does not himself care greatly for the story. He is never passionate; he is too calm to enter deeply into the feelings or to be absorbed in the fortunes of his characters. The charm of his poetry resides rather in leisurely and restful beauty of description. In this respect it ranks high, but seldom attains absolute mastery. Nearly all of Morris is readable and enjoyable, but few of his lines linger in the memory, and perhaps the only one frequently quoted is that in which he describes himself as ‘the idle singer of an empty day.’ Morris was more than this, but it may be questioned whether there is enough either of the substance of thought in his verse or of melody and pure poetic beauty to keep it long alive.

minor poets.

Sarah Flower Adams

(1805-1848).

Sarah Flower Adams is sure of at least a small niche in the temple of the English poets were it but for the beautiful hymn, ‘Nearer, my God, to thee.’ Her Vivia Perpetua is an ill-constructed drama, partly redeemed by fine passages.

William Allingham

(1824-1889).

William Allingham was an Irish poet, of much taste, but of no great power. His inspiration is strangely fitful and uncertain, and after his removal to London, in consequence of the success of his earlier verses, it seemed almost wholly to desert him. He was for a time editor of Fraser’s Magazine.

John Stuart Blackie

(1809-1895).

John Stuart Blackie, for many years Professor of Greek in Edinburgh University, was a very vigorous miscellaneous writer. He translated Æschylus, the Iliad and Faust. He was very successful in the lighter lyrical strain, and appears at his best in his rollicking and amusing university songs.

Robert Barnabas Brough

(1828-1860).

Robert Barnabas Brough was the author of Songs of the Governing Classes (1859), a small collection of pieces, chiefly satirical, and remarkable for their vigour, point and sincerity. Strength of feeling, clearness of intellect and wit are his characteristics. Brough was generally very much in earnest, but in his Neighbour Nellie he showed that he could touch lighter themes very charmingly.

Charles Stuart Calverley

(1831-1884).

Charles Stuart Calverley, the scholarly and witty author of Verses and Translations (1862) and Fly Leaves (1872), had a faculty for more serious things, but, partly from indifference, partly because of the accident which made great effort in his later years impossible, he never wrote anything worthy of his talents. What he has left however is the very best of its kind. He is one of the most skilful of translators; and his parodies and satiric verse are excellent.

Mortimer Collins

(1827-1876).

Mortimer Collins, poet and novelist, had a very happy knack for the lighter kinds of lyrical verse, half playful and half serious. Under pressure of circumstances he wrote too much, and the failure to ‘polish and refine’ tells against a great deal of his work.

William Cory

(1823-1892).

William Cory, originally Johnson, for many years one of the masters of Eton, was the author of a small volume of Poems entitled Ionica (1858), which, after long neglect, won, in its third edition of 1891, the attention due to thoughtfulness and scholarly expression. Cory’s best pieces, such as Mimnermus in Church, soar beyond the range of the minor poet, and show that it only needed quantity to insure him a considerable place in literature. But he wrote few such pieces, and indeed little verse of any kind after Ionica.

Sir Francis Hastings Doyle

(1810-1888).

Sir Francis Hastings Doyle succeeded Matthew Arnold in the chair of poetry at Oxford. Doyle is distinguished for the spirit and the martial ring of the ballads in which he celebrates deeds of daring. The Red Thread of Honour, The Private of the Buffs, and Mehrab Khan are pieces that take high rank among poems inspired by sympathy with the heroism of the soldier.

Sir Samuel Ferguson

(1810-1886).

Sir Samuel Ferguson has been called the national poet of Ireland, on the score of Congal, an epic published in 1872. He is really more remarkable for his shorter pieces, some of the best of which deal with subjects not specially Irish. He was an active contributor to the Dublin University Magazine at the beginning of the period.

Adam Lindsay Gordon

(1833-1870).

Adam Lindsay Gordon divides with Charles Harpur and Alfred Domett (Browning’s ‘Waring’) the honour of being laureate of the Antipodes. Wildness in youth drove him to Australia. It is probably true that but for the stirring and adventurous life there he never would have written anything of note; nevertheless, what we find in his verse is rather the spirit of the English hunting field and of English adventure the world over, than much that is distinctively Australian.

David Gray

(1838-1861).

David Gray, author of The Luggie, a poem on a small stream which flowed near his home, was cut off too soon to do much in literature. His verse however is pleasant, and it might have acquired power. It retains a pathetic interest on account of the author’s fate. He was drawn by the hope of fame from his native village to London, caught a cold there, and died while his poem was in process of printing.

Dora Greenwell

(1821-1882).

Dora Greenwell is chiefly remarkable as a writer of religious verse, the best of which is to be found in Carmina Crucis. She also wrote prose of considerable merit.

Robert Stephen Hawker

(1803-1875).

Robert Stephen Hawker, a clergyman who spent his life in the remote parish of Morwenstow, in Cornwall, is best known for his Cornish Ballads (1869). The spirited and stirring Song of the Western Men, printed as early as 1826, and accepted by Scott as a genuine old ballad, is the most celebrated of all his compositions. Hawker wrote also The Quest of the Sangraal (1863), a poem displaying a mysticism which must have been deep-seated in the author’s character; for it led to his reception, just before he died, into the Roman Catholic Church.

Jean Ingelow

(1820-1897).

Jean Ingelow is one of the best of recent poetesses, and has also acquired a considerable, though a less conspicuous name as a writer of fiction. She is best as a lyrist, and some of her poems are touched with a very fine and true pathos. She likewise excels in the modern ballad form.

Edward Lear

(1812-1888).

Edward Lear, author of the Nonsense Rhymes (1861) stands high in the very peculiar and difficult kind of writing indicated by the title of his book. There are other writers of humorous verse, like Lewis Carroll, who possess greater qualities, but the Nonsense Rhymes are unique for rich whimsical inventiveness. Lear was an artist as well as a writer, and illustrated his own books.

Gerald Massey

(1828-1907).

Gerald Massey is a minor poet of unusual range. His attachment to the Christian Socialists gives a clue to his work; but in him the enthusiasm of humanity is concentrated in an intense patriotism. Massey’s martial verse is fine, but not quite excellent. Sir Richard Grenville’s Last Fight suggests comparison with Tennyson’s Revenge; and the comparison illustrates the difference between good art and consummate art. Neither is Massey the equal of Doyle on this side; but he is far more varied and copious.

The Honourable Mrs. Norton

(1808-1877).

The Honourable Mrs. Norton was a grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and inherited some of the family genius. Her poetic gift was not great, but her verse is spirited, and has frequently a ring of genuine pathos. Her sister, Lady Dufferin, also wrote verse, which, though less brilliant than Mrs. Norton’s, is on the whole of a more poetic quality.