TENNYSON AS A THINKERS T HE two last great poets of
England were no less distinguished as thinkers than as artists. Browning was a, more subtle psychologist than Tennyson ; indeed, Shakespeare apart, Browning penetrated deeper into the human mind than any other poet England has produced. But while Tennyson was not the equal of Browning in psych- ology, he was a genuine and profound thinker, his mind ever dwelling on the deep problems of "fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," and his poetry from first to last was dominated by philosophic speculation. This attitude of 'Tennyson is made very clear by a little volume on "The Mind of Tennyson," by Professor E. H. Sneath, of Yale University (Archibald Constable and Co., 5s.), which admirably SUMS up for us Tennyson's philosophic ideas and the creed he had ulti- mately • arrived at. Since Mr. Stopford Brooke's com- prehensive survey of Tennyson, nothing so excellent has been written on the poet's ideas. It will be at once granted that Tennyson has been the most consummate poetic artist since Keats, but we doubt whether most English readers quite 'realise that Tennyson has given us in his exquisite finished verse a "criticism of life," to use Arnold's expression, the outcome of thought on the deepest themes. Of course every one knows that Tennyson de- liberately chose such themes and that his poetry is charged all through with moral power, showing him to be in the true line of succession to the greatest English poets. But they cannot trace, perhaps, the emergence and growth of his thought on the three great problems of God, Freedom, and Immortality, as revealed in the body of his work. It is here that the aid of Prcifessor Sneath's little volume will prove of no small value, especially as it is the work of one who is him- self a philosophic thinker and teacher. What especially renders Tennyson. -so. interesting as a thinker is that he embodies, as no other writer does, the mind of his age. Shakespeare is not for an age, but for all time. Milton was in advance of his age, as was Wordswqrth. But some -English poets have been the .Very incarnation of the Zeitgeist. Pope was in respect to that body of thought contained in the "Essay on Man" ; so was Cowper in the new Evangelicalism combined with the new human sym- pathies which permeate "The Task" and many of the minor poems. But never was there a more complete epitome of his time than Tennyson. The strenuous revolutionary poetry of Byron and Shelley had somewhat died down, the epoch of social earthquake had yielded to an epoch of rest marked by the poetry of Keats. Then came the awakening, especially in France and England, of 1830, which we associate with an eager spirit of hope in social life, and an enthusiastic Roman- ticism which reached its climax in Victor Hugo. Of this movement both Tennyson and Browning were born ; their young manhood coincided with its zenith. The fear and horror of the French Revolution had passed away, and a golden dawn appeared to promise a new day in which were enfolded boundless possibilities. But, on the other hand, a spirit of criticism, of positive science, was disturbing the mind of England. The Church was in the throes of con- flict, strange new critiaal theories were casting doubts on its message, on the validity of the Bible, on the 'very fundamental ideas of Christianity:. Long before Darwin imparted his shock to the Christian. edifice, St. Hilaire put forth the idea of evolution on its scientific side, as the great thinkers of Germany had developed its philosophic Side. The World was in a ferment. Elements of hope seemed to be con- fronted by dark spectres of doubt, all the root questions of life surged up in the teeming brains of young and ardent men, not, least in that little band at Cambridge of whom Arthur Hallam. and Alfred Tennyson were the foremost figures. All the conflicting thoughts, opinions, hopes, fears, doubts, centred themselves in the mind of the budding poet ; and it is this fact Which renders Tennyson of such exceptional interest. His -mind discloses to us, and will represent to posterity, "the very form and body of the time." • So far as the great problems of religion:--God, Freedom, Immortality.— could be disentangled by the poet, and. could.present themselves with persistent appeal .to his soul, this new birth was brought about by the death of Arthur Hallam. Tennyson, it is clear, was a doubter from hie boy- hood; he had. to face from earliest clays "the spectres of the mind." But Hallani's death forced the preblem to an issue; for the strong, many-sided, swift-glancing mind of Tennyson' there was no rest. Does death end all ? Can we know God? Is the world good? Is there aught but matter? The singing-robes of the poet synabelise more than symmetry of - verse and mastery over subtle forms of metre; they also mean for us a poetic treatment of the highest ideals and a reasoned out view of the content of religious belief. Professor Sneath finds in Tennyson a poetic statement of *antler). ideas. *ant furnished to mankind a kind of final analysis of the philosophic movement up to his time. In his "Critique of the Pure Reason" he is agnostic; the mind cannot know the real world. But in treating of the -"Practical Reason' *ant restores to us that which he had taken away. In a word, he finds God, Freedom, and Immortality given us in terms of consciousness; we cannot prove them, but they are essential factors in our inmost being. This seems to have been the creed towards which .Tonlyson grew and which he made his but it was enriched for him by a certain MY-die contemplation, through which- he appeared at times to rise t4-.; that state of Oriental " enlightenment" when the body is for- gotten and the soul dwells in the paradise of purity and light. Tennyson held with Kantthat we can only " know" phenomena, but that we must reach the transcendental Objects Of religion by faith. To this conclusion tend the specially religious poems, such as "In Memoriam," "The Two Voices," and " The Ancient Sage." This is Professor Sneatlf view, and it seems to us to represent, With truth the general tendencY of Tennyson's religious thought. - - _ It is easy, however, Mistifiderstanci this attitude, and therefore to class, Ten,nyson in that category of unthinking religionists whose belief. lies outside the intellectual circuits. "Believe," says Browning in a famous poem, "and the whole argument breaks up." Yes, but the argument does not break up because thought is suppressed, but because it is lifted into the higher region of imaginative reason. "Faith is the "sub- stance Of things hoped for, the evidence of thing's not seen." It is the shimmer of the distant jasper toweri3 of the City of God Smce, as Teiniyabri says, "The type of perfect in his mind- In Nature canhe nowhere find," faith in that perfect ie for the man of faith an intellectual neeessity. Ile must posit it he must see it in the vision of his soul, or the world falls in ruins around "him.. Faith is not the indolent attitude of a mind which has exhausted itself, it is the state of the mind in its highest potency, in its swiftest flight, in _its divinest power. It is, so to speak, the mind raised to its spiritual wth, the mind infinitely energised. This was1 the faith Of Tennyson.- This faith which in "The Ancient Sage" he commends to the materialistic youth "with a scroll," he fortifies by urging to a life of goodness.. "He that doeth the will," said Christ, "shall know of the doctrine." It is not by probing into the secrets of Nature- " I found Him not in world or sun "—nor by endless analysis ofthe niind—" The petty cobwebs we have .spun ",—that man rises to any knowledge of God. " Thoit canst not prove the Nameless "—but thou canst do 'Ills will and find an ever clearer response in thy 'soul to" the Power in darkness whom we guess." But if God is, immortality is, else were this world made in vain. Supreme reason would not perfect through countless ages conscious beings only in the end to- destroytheni. This attitude of mind is called by Professor. Sneath " rational consideration." But it is the same attitude' of faith in a reasoned order from which the imagination' cannot escape and does not wish to escape. - Such was Tennison's creed, which we do not criticise, but _ which seems to us significant, as being, after all is said and done, the outcome of the most representative mind of the epoch, after that mind had tried upon its fine edge all the theories and speculations of the time. The poet rests in his , intimations of divine things "Heaven opens inward.chasma yawn,
Vast images in glimmering dawn, Half shown, are broken and withdrawn.'
We think we nifty say he rested in that faith, though we' admit that there is not the unclouded peace of Wordsworth, or, indeed, Of Browning. Tennyson's temperament, seeptical from the first, counts for niudh, while Wordsworth, to who'd the world revealed nothing but blessing, lived before the' questioning age of Darwin. If Tennyson ha& not that perfect spiritual repose which his great predecessor in the Laureateship knew, at least his poetry testifies to a noble inner warfare waged without pause, to a brave facing of "the' spectres of the Mind," to an ever-growing spiritual strength,. and to the inspiring creed that it is the functien of poetry to testify to the Unseen, and so guide and inform the generations of men.
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