JOWETT AND TENNYSON.
CTo sus Forms or rue " arm-mon:1 Sea,—The interesting article by Professor Hearnshaw in your issue of October 6th tempts me to make a few random remarks on Tennyson and his critics. Personally I should not object to such a double rhyme as "blundered" and "hundred." But I may remark that the poet breaks what I may call the old-world rule of the "r" in his poem "Recollections of the Arabian Nights"; he rhymes " lawn " with "thorn." I heard Canon Ainger stand up for this rule, but some present-day readers may doubt whether the Poet is not here a pioneer in disregarding a pedantic and obsolete restriction. A somewhat similar doubt occurs to me in reference to Macaulay's introducing a split infinitive into one of his Essays.
In my Memoir of Jowett it is mentioned that - "On the occasion of my visit to him at Freshwater, I heard him
pass judgment on Browning. He came ecross u statement in the Saturday Review that we had one poet of the first order, but that we had scarcely another who could be ranked even in the second class. He stopped, looked straight before him for a second, and then said: 'I think that Browning deserves a shady first." " Would not this comment seem damning with the faintest praise to the numerous Browningolaters of the present time ? Tennyson said in conversation that " people in general have no notion of the way in which we poets go to work." But even a poet most Lave his convictions, and it may be worth noting that Jowett quoted approvingly a saying of his that " things are going quite fast enough." At the end of his life he certainly thought that thinly were going a great deal too fast. Mr. Browning, however, told on that he regarded Tennyson as decidedly a Liberal—according. that is, to the standard of the " sixties " and the " seventies."
Jowett, whose comic side was somewhat deficient, told me that he did not care for Clongh's " Bothie." But he praised " The Nov, Sinai," comparing it to "The Two Voices," which, however, he described as better than anything that Clough ever wrote. I myself should have thought that the modified scepticism of Clough's poem rather recalls that of Tennyson's "Higher Pan- theism." The passage in " In Memoriam " which begins with " Oh yet we trust " may be called the locus classless of Universalism, a tenet which is at variance with the obvious meaning of texts in the New Testament. The same poem has the famous line, " Ring in the Christ which is to be." In reference to this and other Tennyeonian phrases, Principal Tullocli told me that the poet seemed to him to expoot a future revelation which would adapt Christianity to the needs of the time. Jowett certainly thenght that orthodoxy had, as it were, to be brought up to date, and that his own disciples looked for guidance not merely to the plain meaning of Scripture but also to the trend of Christian civilization. Had he not such a notion when Inc committed himself acme time ago to the paradox that the Bible is Christendom It was at the time thought a paradox; but 7101e might it not serve as the :mitts of the Broad and Broadening Church party ?-1
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