TENNYSON'S RULING PASSION.

IT is right that the public monument to the genius of Tennyson should stand on the crest of an English down, and look out on that part of the sea which is as much a piece of England as the chalk of Surrey or the clay of Somerset. The English Channel is by name, by history, and by the universal thought and usage of mankind as much ours as any part of the island. When our ships are going up or down Channel, or when they are making for either of the great ports of Portsmouth or Southampton, they pass by the down on which the Tennyson beacon stands,—not a mere piece of sentimental stone, but a recognised "sea-mark," regularly adopted by the Trinity House, and made one of their official possessions. Thousands of men coming back to England will thus connect the Tennyson " sea-mark " with their first view of home. That is just as it should be, for Tennyson was the most English and the most national of poets, and it is appropriate that his name and his genius should be so strikingly connected with both the land he loved and dwelt in and with that greater heritage of the sea which he so strongly felt to belong to England. England and the sea breaking and roaring on England's coasts, England's ships and her sailors and the homes they guard, these are the most essential and constant of all the many elements in Tennyson's poems, and it is right and true thab they should be connected in men's minds with his genius as a poet.

The old plan of finding a man's ruling passion and of judging and interpreting him thereby, has much to be said for it. In any case there cannot be a doubt that Tennyson's ruling passion was England and the English, pure flame of patriotism and of love for the mother- land. Tennyson not only believed that England was worthy of his love, but did his best to make her worthy. But there was nothing slavish or idolatrous in his love and devotion. It was always the love and devotion of the free man. He did not cast himself at the foot of the shrine and grovel before it, but recognised the truth that he could not love England so much, loved he not honour, freedom, and duty more. His was a passionate desire to make his land worthy of all reverence and honour, and in the best sense to

beautify and ennoble the thought of England to her sons.

Thus be was not always beating the big drum or blowing the brazen trumpet about English exploits and English courage.

He could do this, and do it magnificently on occasion, but as often he used "the perfection of that inestimable art" which was his, to weave a wreath of violets—" wet with Channel spray," one is tempted to say, in the words of a younger poet—round the brows he loved. His power of moving the

human heart, and moving it deeply, by some simple touch of Nature, even when engaged on some grand and solemn theme, is again and again apparent. Like Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior," he turns in his moments of greatest exaltation to the fields and flowers :— " Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes."

Take, as an instance of this, the exquisite poem on "Freedom," composed in Tennyson's later years. As a proof of English patriotic feeling it is perfect, and as an example of the same worship of freedom its equal is not to be found in the whole range of literature. In the second verse we see the idyllic touch of which .we speak. He has been speaking of the

spirit that "informed the Parthenon" :— "So fair in Southern sunshine bathed, But scarce of such majestic mien As here with forehead vapour-swathed In meadows ever green."

See how lovingly, even in this severe and abstract hymn to Freedom, the poet turns to the " homefelt pleasures and the gentle scenes" of English rural life. We see the deep green of

English fields and orchards, and the mist and vapour which give them their magic and, if rightly understood, their majesty also. The same note, though under such different conditions, is touched in "The Defence of Lncknow" :—

"Thoughts of the breezes of May blowing over an English field." That is perhaps the most moving line, judged even from the

patriotic standpoint, in the whole poem. But in truth the poem on Freedom, of which we speak, is, in a quite special degree, typical of Tennyson's attitude towards England and the English race and institutions. Who can read this

address to Freedom, with the reminder how much nobler is the English ideal of freedom than that of the Greek or

Roman, without the keenest and best sense of pride,—without feeling, that is, that the national pride is being evoked to a.

noble and worthy purpose :— " For thou—when Athens reign'd and Rome, Thy glorious eyes were dinne'd with pain To mark in many a freeman's home The slave, the scourge, the chain; 0 follower of the Vision, still In motion to the distant gleam, Howe'er blind force and brainless will May jar thy golden dream Of Knowledge fusing class with class, Of civic Hate no more to be, Of Love to leaven all the mass, Till every soul be free; Who yet, like Nature, wouldst not mar By changes all too fierce and fast This order of Her Human Star, This heritage of the past; 0 scorner of the party cry That wanders from the public good, Thou—when the nations rear on high Their idol smear'd with blood,

And when they roll their idol down— Of saner worship sanely proud ; Thou loather of the lawless crown

As of the lawless crowd ; How long thine ever growing mind Hath stilrd the blast and strown the wave, Tho' some of late would raise a wind To sing thee to thy grave, Men loud against all forms of power-

linfurnish'd brows, tempestuous tongues— Expecting all things in an hour—

Brass mouths and iron lungs !"

We quote the poem at length because it seems to us to have in it all the essential elements of Tennyson's genius, and

to show to the full his ruling passion. The poem would have been incomplete without that note of high imagination verging on mysticism which has always had its place in English poetry, and nowhere more than in Tennyson's verse. We find it in the idea of "the gleam" which leads on and points to the ideal. But when we touch the ideal, it even is subdued to the uses of good citizenship, and has in it nothing of the vague or the unreal. We are bidden to look for no transformation scene, but rather for the orderly growth of Nature, and to respect the heritage of the past. Above all, we are taught to despise the demagogue and rhetorician.

But we must not merely re-echo the poem. It is curious to note, however, that in these verses, almost better than in any other, the reader may understand how it was that Tenny- son came to give such strong and sound expression to the patriotic feelings of his race and country. It was, in truth, because Lord Tennyson was one of the most English Englishmen that ever lived. The man was English all through. There was something of almost every section of English feeling in his nature, but harmonised into an indi- vidual whole. He had the "vision," the love of beauty, and the imagination which, in spite of all the contra-indications, belong to our race. He had something, too, of the yeoman's surly contempt for the presumptions and pretensions of rank—" Clear the line, my lords and lacqueys "—but at the same time he loved what was venerable and noble. Again, while he was a strong friend of the Liberal spirit, he loathed the acrid self-righteousness of the Jacobin. In all affairs of State he was indeed Left-Centre,—the habitual, we had almost said the necessary, attitude of the normal Englishman what- ever may be his nominal politics, and whether he professes to follow a Tory or a Radical leader. If it were not a sort of profanation to call so fresh and beautiful a poem by this " stuffy " name, we should be inclined to describe the lines we have just quoted as "Left-Centre." At any rate, this was Lord Tennyson's attitude. He often gave it expression in undying verse, but on one occasion—we forget for the moment where—he put it in the plainest, crudest, and most prosaic form, gave it, in fact, the expression which would be given it by the commonplace man :—

"For some cry 'fast' and some cry 'slow,' But while the hills remain,

Up hill, too slow will need the lash, Down hill, too fast the chain."

But this is the attitude of the plain Englishman everywhere. He wants the coach to move, and be intends at the proper time to use both whip and drag; but he has no sort of notion of throwing away the drag because, as a rule, he wants to get along. It is, as we have said, because Lord Tennyson was so typical an Englishman, and represented so many sides of the English character that he touches so true a note of patriotism. But we must not forget that his " Englishry " would have been of no avail if he bad not possessed to the fall the true poet's inspiration. He was in the last resort a heart-shaking patriotic poet because he was a great poet. Thus the accomplishment, which he secured for his verse by study and long labour was a patriotic work. He worked for England when he made his style the splendid instrument it was. He could not have touched the national heart so nearly had he not had in his possession the golden gift of words,—the gift which brings joy directly to the heart, and so opens it to receive the good messages of the patriot.