26 NOVEMBER 1864, Page 13

AIR. BAGEHOT ON TENNYSON.

AIR. WALTER BAGEEIOT is one of the very best of our English literary critics, and his recent essay (to which we briefly referred last week) on "The Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Schools of Poetry," is one of the ablest of his many masterly and easy criticisms. It would be far beyond the limits of a news- paper article to follow him through the thread of his reasoning, but as he aims at modifying one very important literary estimate of the present generation, the esteem, we mean, in which our only great living poet, Tennyson, is generally held, and, as we think, at modifying it, in great measure at least, erroneously, it is worth while explaining and discussing his doctrine. Mr. Bagehot's teaching is, that poetry should delineate types, classes, objects of more or less universal interest, and not descend to mere individual life, that the individualizing touches should be such, and such only, as bring out the universal features with greater force, that Tennyson's bias, the bias to which at least he too frequently yields, is towards "ornate" art, which smothers these universal or typical characteristics in accidental beauties, and that the most perfect example of this fault is to be found in his recent poem of "Enoch Arden," as the most perfect example of his purest style is to be found in the poem on "The Northern Farmer." We suspect the theory of this criticism is wrong, although many of its practical applications may be partially right ; that the critic, able as he is, has given a false reason for a correct general taste; and that the tendency

of that theory, if it be admitted, is to condemn many of the Poet Laureate's most characteristic poems,—not only "Enoch Arden," still less, such traces only of excessive luxuriance as may no doubt be detected in many of the poems of Tennyson. Mr. Bagehot's theory seems indeed almost to ignore that field of poetry in which Tennyson's power is most singular and most perfect.

In the first place, we cannot believe it to be, as Mr. Bageltot evidently considers it, the ch a ra c ter is t ic of either art or poetry to " explain " to us our own experience. That, we should say, was rather the characteristic of philosophy than of poetry; and though it may be an incidental charm which some fine art and some fine

poetry has that it does so, it is in the expressive rather than the " ex- planatory " power that the essential worth of both art and poetry consists. The powerful expression of the most vital and therefore generally the most latent characteristics of either nature, or man, or what lies partially above man,—that we take to be of the essence of the various fine arts, not the exposition or explanation of typical qualities, to which, indeed, either art or poetry may contribute much, and not perhaps accidentally, but which is by no means its first aim. Mr. Bagehot says a true picture is that which catches most perfectly the general character of the scenery it delineates, so as to embody it in an individual scene. But this reference back to the number of particular experiences embodied and generalized, cannot surely be of the essence of a fine picture. It is quits conceivable that a scene such as had never been beheld would make the noblest of pictures. Mr. Bagehot may say, "Yes, because it would be itself a type, though it were the only individual of that type." Then how is it known to be a type? Surely he is substituting the philo- Sophical idea for the artistic? That which tells us that a scene to which we have never beheld anything analogous is a great subject for a picture, is, not its explaining or interpreting power, but that deep sense of vital harmony in the artist's mind which measures almost instantaneously the quantity, if we may so call it, of con- cordant living expression which any particular scene contains. It is not because it is a typical scene, but because it is full of mutu- ally enhancing effects, because it has .a capacity for bringing out living features which are elsewhere latent, that the artist knows it to be a great subject for his art. It may no doubt also be typical, —but it is not its capacity as a type, it is not its universality, but its fulness of qualities which agree with and set off each other, that recommends it to the artist. Raphael's "Madonna di San Sisto" is pro- bably the greatest picture of its kind in the world, and yet does much less to interpret any man's past experience than to give him one wholly new. It expresses a combination of infantine innocence and divine depth of nature,— it gathers into a baby's eye the gleam of the eternal world, the novel wonder of life, the foreboding of victori- ous passion, and the perfect rest of love, which we should say it was simply idle for an artist to attempt if the artist had not first shown us that that the attempt could succeed. Well, surely the cha- racteristic of this picture is not that it represents a type of which it • is the only specimen, but that it gathers together for the,.first time a combination of harmonious expressions which oa ly the greatest of artists could conceive and realize to others. It is in the indi- vidualizing power that the artist shows himself. Of course the larger the number of harmonious effects which he brings to a focus, the wider is the field of intellectual memory to which he appeals, but it is not the characteristic test of his success that he clears and deepens your understanding of the past, but that he thrills you with a sense of living power and harmony, of latent life brought to the surface, of new creation such as nature in her highest and happiest moments produces.

Precisely the same remark seems to us to apply to Mr. Bagehot's theory of poetry. He objects to "ornate "poetry because it drowns "the type" in overgrowths of individualizing effect. We should object to ornate poetry simply because it does not individualize, be- cause it fails to connect together the many touches into a living whole. If it does this, we should deny that it could be ornate, and should care nothing about the type. If it fails to do this, whether through exuberance in detail, or through any other cause, it fails in art, because all art aims at life-like unity, and poetry especially aims at expressing the deepest unity of life. So far we are agreed with Mr. Bagehot in objecting to ornate poetry, though for a different reason. But his " typical " theory misleads him, we think, in his estimate of Tennyson. Thinking of a type as the true object of poetic delineation, he asks himself if Enoch Arden is a typical sailor. He discovers that Enoch Arden is not a typical sailor, that his feelings are too fine for a sailor's, his perceptions too delicate, his appearance too clean, and his fish-basket too ornamental. By the way, we may just observe that Enoch Arden is not properly a sailor at all, but afisherman,—a very different class of man indeed, one much more trained to self-denial, and even generous heroism, than sailors—and not liable to many of the influences which have a peculiar effect in making the sailors as a class coarse, loose, and untidy. But to criticize "Enoch Arden " fairly, we do not think we have any business with the question of type at all, but only with the poet's conception. We do not think Mr. Tennyson had the slightest intention of describing the class even of fishermen,—still less of describing this fisherman dramati- cally, and from his own pointof view. The whole idea of the poem seems to us to be, to describe an act of heroism from the poet's own centre of thought,—to describe it in the unity of its effect on his own imagination. And it seems at least as irrelevant to say

that Enoch Arden, being a poor fisherman, would never have noticed the beauties of the tropical scenery in his desert island as it was in Lord Jeffrey, for instance, to describe Wordsworth's poem on "The Thorn" by saying that a woman in a red cloak went up to the top of a hill, said "Oh misery !" and came down again. The whole perspective of Wordsworth's poem is false if you do not re- cognize the meditative centre of it in the poet's own mind, and the whole perspective of Mr. Tennyson's poem is also false if you trans- fer yourself to Enoch .Arden's own point of view, except so far as a poet fashioning for himself the details of the story and following his hero in imagination through every step of it, would identify himself with it. You must grant a poet his own point of view as much as you would a painter. Mr. Bagehot looks through the fisherman's eyes and says Mr. 'Tennyson's picture is false. But Mr. Tennyson did not attempt for a moment to look through the fisherman's eyes,- but to look through his own at the story of the fisherman's heroism. And surely it is artistically as justifiable to reflect the impressions which a great action produces on a poetic imagination, as it confessedly is to paint a landscape, as Wordsworth almost always does, th rough the subjective impressions it awakens rather than to paint its mere exter- nal features. We admit that Mr. Tennyson throws few meditative touches into the picture, but still everything seen and everything suffered is, without disguise, described as it would appear to the poet's narrating imagination, not dramatically.

But further, to view Mr. Tennyson's luxuriance as due to the love of ornament is, we think, to ignore his greatest power as a poet. It seems to us that his special genius is shown in delineating the highly complex moods of mind,—half observation, half thought, half feeling, half humour,—so characteristic of modern reflection. His finest moods are all highly composite. We find in most of them a relaxation and a nervous strength, a strong fibre of thought and a languor of sentiment, a flash of faith, a vivid pictorial instinct, and then a dying away of impulse, which represents the strangely mixed elements of our modern life making its first effort to combine in earnest the material and spiritual worlds, and scarcely knowing how to weave its science and its faith, its melan- choly and its earnestness together, without doing injustice to some- thing else in which it earnestly believes, or believes that it believes. Look, for instance, at such a poem as "Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue,".—the wonderful ease with which it passes through the various moods of slight vinous exaltation, tender memory, wistful hopes, humorous observation kindling the fancy, freaks of con- ception dying away into bantering melancholy half grave, half gay :-

"No vain libation to the Muse, But may she still be kind, And whisper lovely words, and use Her influence on the mind, To make Ire write my random rhymes, Ere they be hall-forgotten; Nor add and alter, many times, Till all be ripe and rotten.

"I pledge her, and she comes and dips Her laurel in the wine, And lays it thrice upon my lips, These favour'd lips of mine ; Until the charm have power to make

New lifeblood warm the bosom, And barren commonplaces break In full and kindly blossom.

"I pledge her silent at the board ; Her gradual fingers steal And touch upon the master-chord Of all I felt and feel.

Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, And phantom hopes assemble; And that child's heart within the man's Begins to move and tremble.

" Thro' many an hour of summer suns, By many pleasant ways, Against its fountain upward runs The current of my days : I kiss the lips I once have kiss‘d ; The gas-light wavers dimmer ; And softly, tiro' a vinous mist, My college friendships glimmer."

If Mr. Tennyson sometimes falls into over luxuriance, it is not usually through any tendency to adorn,but through the press of com- plex moods,—observing, thoughtful, religious, scientific, humorous, imaginative, —which cry for delineation in the same reverie. Some- times no doubt he may fail to give the perfect unity to this complex- ity, and then Mr. Bagehot would call him ornate. But it is not due to the love of studding a bright picture with brilliant ornaments, but to the number of flying threads of feeling, fancy, and faith which he feels to be really wanting to the unity of his own conception. It is not that he is trying to beautify a type" with d crowd of harmonious associations, but that he has not truly individualized his own conception till he has introduced the complex delicacies of expression all of which are of its very essence. Mr. Bagehot may say that a poet should choose simpler subjects. But if he did, he would fail to express the most characteristic life of the day,—which is not simple, but full of flickering lights and flying shadows. With a simple subject like" The Northern Farmer (01 Style)" Mr. Tennyson can be simple and direct enough. But "T Northern Farmer " is of the " old style," nor would Mr. Tennyso a be the great poet he is if he had limited himself to poems on sul eject so simple and massive, while he can paint so powerfully an inward life by no means simple and massive, but on the contrary, various, fit- ful, involved, eager, speculative,—yet still the life of our time, the best life we have,—our own. Classical and typical poetry may be good in its way ; but it is not in classical and typical poetry that you can delineate the involutions of modern thought and feeling.