BOOKS.

FREDERIC TENNYSON'S POEMS.°

Ma. FREDERIC TENNYSON comes before the public under serious dis- advant,ges. He has to contend agahist his more celebrated brother's reputation, which will, however unreasonably, be applied as a stand- ard by which to judge him ; he has to contend against the indiffer- ence to purely Eesthetio literature, chronic to our age, but enhanced just now by the excitement incident to the commencement of a great war, in which our highest interests are deeply staked, and of which no one can guess the course or feel confident of the ultimate result. He has further to struggle with disadvantages peculiarly his own, in that his poetry is of an order which at no time could profoundly stir the emotions, and has nothing to catch the ear and feed the thoughts of a time busied beyond most others in solving practical problems, whether of social organization or of speculative truth

that is the most practical of all. Had Mr. Tennyson not been. born an Englishman of the nineteenth century—had big lot been east in times and places of Arcadian dolee far niente—his poetry could not have been more free from local or temporary allusions, or more untinctured with that Faust spirit which is the peculiar dis- tinction for good or ill of the English and German mind of our age. We do not say that the struggles of a self-conscious self- inquiring nature into the problems about itself and its own des- tiny, and its relations to its hind and to the world in which it finds itself, are in themselves the fittest subjects for poetry ; but that the taste of our countrymen has long run that way, and that the poet who does not touch such subjects has no hold upon a consider- able portion of the readers of poetry. Were this all, still a large audience would remain, always ready to sympathize with fictitious representations of human life, however different its conditions from their own, however removed from themselves in purpose, opinion, and cultivation, the persons of the fiction might be. But certainly to the majority of readers, men and women are necessary elements in prose or poetry that is to in- terest them. Either their sympathies must be touched directly by the actions and passions of men and women, or their intellects aroused by reasoning and reflection related to human action and destiny. But Mr. Tennyson offers almost as little excitement to the emotions as he does to the speculative intellect and to the con- science. One meets in his poems neither with men who solve problems for us, nor with men who love and hate, act and suffer. So far as the actions, passions, joys, sorrows, and affections of hu- man beings, form any part of his material for poetry, the mode of treatment is allusive, general, devoid of individuality and detail. If he speaks of the perplexities that torment and discipline the human soul—of the glimpses of the eternal realities that cheer it along its pathway from birth to death—his language is often grand and glowing; but it is not the doubt, the hope, the despairs the victory, that he presents to his reader, but the abstract words that stand for these movements of the soul viewed as scientific generalities ; and scientific generalities they remain, however the fancy of the speaker apparel them in rich phrases and adorn them with sublime images. The cold fleshless bones shine through ap- parel and ornament ; there is no beauty in them that we desire them or rejoice in their presence. And so again, in dealing with the passions, the affections, the ties of kindred and of choice, tpho pleasures and regrets of social life, it is the general tuba expressive of these things which are elaborated and adorned,'not the things themselves that are presented. This mode of treatment is destructive of the interest such topics have in common for all mankind ; it is not by it that "the one touch of nature" is attained which "makes the whole world kin." Real emotion never deals in general terms, and the artist who would move the world's heart must learn his rules of art from the instincts of emotion. Direct presentation is the one characteristic of the highest art ; and even when words alone are its instrument, the artist must never forget the spirit of the Horatian maxim, and must aim at the " subjecta oculis." To effect this is the single function of imagination ; and the language it uses will be in proportion to its own power and purity, what Milton defined to be the characteristic of poetic lan- guage—simple, sensuous, and passionate. Mr. Frederio Tenny- son's poetic language is the reverse of this, for the most part, when he deals with human beings and their inner life. An audience is, however, to be found among us, which does not ask of a poet that he should strain his nature to tasks for which he has no taste, but welcomes every order of genius as having value of its own, and only demands that it should be ge- nius, and should not shrink from the labour which every art, after its kind, exacts of its votaries. And this class will recog- nize in Mr. Frederic Tennyson a true genius and a careful artist. He sings, faithful to his inspiration, of that which swells his heart with joy and sends pleasure through every nerve of his frame. He sings of the glories of the summer heaven, the magnificence of the cloud pageantry, the far-off snowy peaks of towering monn.. tains, the sparkling and music of rivulets, the beauty and fragrance of flowers. When human affections touch his heart, the loves of youths and maidens, the ambition and turmoil of manhood, the sadness and regret of age, these are for the most part either inci- dental to some lyrical effusion in which the form, colours, and sounds of nature have the largest share, or are figuratively ex- pressed through the analogies of external nature: Ile is not, how- ever, a landscape-painter. The scenes that move him to utterance in song are not described, but the glory of them passes into his • Days and Hours. By Frederic Tennyson. Published by Parker and Son.

heart, and the resulting hymn is more the spirit than the outward embodiment of the scene, in which adoration and enjoyment clothe themselves in a rich, allusive, and personifying language. The faculty predominant is not imagination, but reflective fancy. We are made to share the speaker's emotion by its force of expression and its charm of music, but not by a direct representation of that which ex- cites it in him. This necessarily gives to most of his poems a generality—a vagueness some might call it; from which, how- ever, there are striking exceptions, as in the "Harvest Home," and in the "Dream of Autumn. Nothing can be more distinctive and local than these ; and for this reason they will be general favourites. If we sought parallels for the mass of these poems, it would be to Milton's earlier poems, to Collins's Odes, and to Oray's Elegy and Odes, that we should compare them. Like all these, they pre- sent general rather than local features of natural scenery; like all these, they reflect the tone of a particular mood of mind, are sub- jective rather than objective; and, like all these, their prevailing language is ornate, abstract, and full of classical allusions and per- sonification, while their versification is fine and musical. We are not comparing Mr. Tennyson in poetic genius to Milton, Gray, or Collins. but indicating the class to which his poems belong, and the standard by which they ought to be judged. They are not epic or dramatic in spirit, any more than in form; they are not, in one word, presentative, which is the characteristic of the highest poetry. But for rich play of fancy, especially in expressing the powers and phenomena of nature under various images and per- sonifications—for subtile analogies between external nature and human emotion—for graceful and refined feeling—for sustained stateliness and vigour of language, and beauty of versification— we call to mind no recent poetry at all equal to this ; while in the two poems above excepted—and in two others in a somewhat less degree, "The Bridal" and "Mayday "—high, imaginative, and really presentative powers are displayed, which cause the more re- gret that a lower faculty has been so generally allowed to predo- minate.

We said that "Harvest Rome" was likely to be a favourite poem of the volume. Its pictures are clear, its language simple and direct ; it is almost free from personifications, of which Mr. Frederic Tennyson is fonder than most modern readers of poetry, so far as our social experiences go ; and it is quite free from transcendent ecstacies, which to most readers will seem some- what overstrained expressions of feeling for the causes which ex- cite them. We should for these reasons quote it, had we not al- ready, at its first appearance in Fraser's Magazine, transferred a considerable portion of it to our columns. The opening and end- ing of a poem on the "First of March" are more characteristic of the author's general manner. The four stanzas that we omit seem to us to mar the poem, by crowding together details that do not make a picture, and by an occasional incongruity of style, which our space only permits us to allude to without specifying.

" Thro' the gaunt woods the winds are shrilling cold, Down from the rifted rack the sunbeam pours Over the cold grey slopes, and stony moors; The glimmering watercourse the eastern wold, • And over it the whirling sail o' the mill, The lonely hamlet with its mossy spire, The piled city smoking like a pyre, Fetch'd out of shadow gleam with light as chill.

vi.

"You cannot hear the waters for the wind;

The brook that foams, and falls, and bubbles by, Hath lost its voice : but ancient steeples sigh, And belfries moan—and crazy ghosts, confined In dark courts, weep, and shake the shuddering gates, And cry from points of windy pinnacles, Howl thro' the bars, and 'plain among the bells, And shriek, and wail like voices of the Fates !

"And who is He, that down the mountain-side, Swift as a shadow flying from the sun Between the wings Of stormy Winds doth run, With fierce blue eyes, and eyebrows knit with pride ; Though now and then I see sweet laughters play Upon his lips, like moments of bright heaven Thrown 'twixt the cruel blasts of morn and even, And golden locks beneath his hood of grey ?

VIII.

"Sometimes he turns him back to wave farewell To his pale Sire with icy beard and hair ; Sometimes he sends before him thro' the air A cry of welcome down a sunny deli; And while the echoes are around him ringing, Sudden the angry wind breathes low and sweet, Young violets show their blue eyes at his feet, And the wild lark is heard above him singing ! "

Those last four lines would have some way to search for their match, either in individual beauty, or in the perfect effectiveness of the sudden change they introduce, and paint both to eye and mind.

Here is a sweet noon-picture from the poem called "Mayday." The poet and his mistress talk together in decasyllable verses with alternate rhymes; between each speech comes in a description of the scene before them, and it changes from morn to eve, with the interlude of a summer hurricane.

"At noon beneath its folded wing.

The wild Breeze slept—upon all things Lay dreamy stillness without stir, All but the chirking Grasshopper ;

The clouds hung in the purple skies At anchor, like great argosies;

The poplars flitter'd not—the streams

Were bridged by long, calm golden gleams,

The aun athirst drank the last drops Of dew, and drew from flowery slopes Rich breaths, that wafted not away ; We sigh'd amid the fervent day, But in the hush she looked on me; We heard the roaring of the Sea! She whisper'd—' When our cup is brimm'd with joy, And Fortune throws us Pleasures never ceasing, When momenta without shadow pass us by, And Honour is a tide each day increasing, Oh! while we hear soft songs, and breathing flowers Sit at the noonday banquet flown with mirth, Then let us sometimes hark the coming Hours, And the great Voices calling to the Earth !' "

The key-note to much of the strength and weakness of Mr. Tennysou's poetry is struck in a line or two of a poem on the "Thirty-first of May."

"And Summer, from the chambers of the South, Is coming up to wipe away all tears."

And again, at the close, he says to the gardens, the rivers, and the

mountains,

"What ye can do no mortal spirit can ;

Ye have a strength within we cannot borrow ;

Blessed are ye beyond the heart of man, Your Joy, your Love, your Life, beyond all sorrow."

The man who really feels in this degree will write glowingly of what he feels, but he will not carry with him many of our country- men. His only chance of raising their feelings to his own pitch would be by painting, as Ruskin sometimes does in prose which is itself like music and painting in one new-created art, the scenes that so mightily sway the pulses of his soul. But Mr. Tennyson cannot do this. His organ is the reflective fancy, not the presentative power of imagination ; similes and sentiments in abundance, with a rich pomp of language and a sustained charm of verse, but seldom a clear presentation of objects. Hence results a want of substantial interest in many of these poems, an overwriting that sometimes be- comes feebleness, though the writing is always good. " Zephyrus "

is a specimen of what we mean. Most persons will think it rather

a long paraphrase of the simple assertion that the West wind blows at morning and evening ; but no one will deny the elegance of the fancy, old as its material is.

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" Three hours were wanting to the noon of day, When long-haired Zephyrus flying from the Sun O'er the green wooded uplands winged his way, And left the plains where freshness there was none; Amid the Western clouds, and shadows gray He thought to slumber till the day was clone, And up he clomb into a realm of wonder, With towers and domes, and pyramids of thunder.

IL

"The wild birds mourn'd for him, the wild flowers sent Their sweets to call him back, they fain would keep; The trembling leaves sigh'd farewell as he went, The thunders spread their banners o'er his sleep ; Silence stood sentinel before his tent, And hush'd the earth, and breathed upon the deep ; On a gold cloud his curly head he laid, And dream'd of virgin buds, and morning shade.

"Three hours were sped since noon—when Zephyrus, free Of slumber, leapt up and began to sing, And ran and dipt his foot into the sea, And then an arm, and then a shining wing, And moved upon the waters gloriously ; The waters at the touch of their own king Quiver'd unto their springs with joyful fear, And made low answers silver-sweet to hear.

"The glassy ripplets first began to throng Each to the smooth shore like an eager hound ; Then a faint murmur like a whisper'd song Crept o'er the tawny sands; and then a sound Of a far tumult waxing near and strong ; And then the flash, and thundering rebound Of powers cast back in conflict, and the moan Of the long banded waters overthrown !"

Whether Mr. Frederic Tennyson win popularity or not, he is unquestionably an original poet, and no singer by imitation. His notes are his own, and betoken a peculiar temperament, in which sensibility and a lively fancy seem to us to predominate over per- ception and imagination. His weakest point is the want of that profound intellect which distinguishes our greatest English poets from Shakspere down to his own brother, no less than their pro- perly poetic gifts. They have lived, and will for ever live on men's tongues and in their hearts, not more because they are sweet and lofty singers, than because they are wise and thoughtful men ; because they teach us as well as delight us ; because to them we go as to oracles and to prophets, for secrets that the logicians and the men of facts cannot tell us. And with this want is coupled and connected another, which is perhaps the source of it—the want of that experience of and sympathy with the passions which is the deepest if the most costly teacher. " Men learn in suffering what they teach in song " : where the suffering has left faint traces— where life has not been a struggle, outward or inward—Arcadian singers, not teachers of men, are fashioned ; and they must seek an audience in Arcadia. Only it must be remembered that Arcadia is not a place only, but a state of mind ; and that England can furnish from her millions many a quiet heart and serene soul to whom this volume will be welcome for its own sake, while thousands more will welcome it for the honoured name it bears. We said at first that Mr. Tennyson's relationship to Me " Alfred " was a disadvantage to him. We recall the remark : it will be a passport to the affectionate attention of exactly the au- dience that a highly cultivated poet would desire.