THE TENNYSON PEERAGE.
IT seems tolerably clear that, whatever may be the actual result, the Poet-Laureate has been assured of the wish of the Crown to raise him to the dignity of a Peerage. We con- clude, therefore, that the Prime Minister, on whom must devolve the duty of making such a recommendation as this to the Queen, entertains the view that the House of Lords should be a sort of reservoir of all the dignities of the nation, even without relation to any special fitness for the particular functions—the political functions—which are expected of its members. The late Mr. Bagehot used always to speak of the Throne and the House of Lords as the ornamental and dignified parts of the Constitution, —those parts of the Constitution which most impress the imagi- nation of the people, and give them a certain pride in the national unity and life in virtue of the external magnificence with which it moves. Perhaps Mr. Gladstone holds that the addition of any really great national figure to the House of Lords, —whether it happen to be one distinguished on the political side or not,—adds to the scenic impressiveness of the House of Lords, and to the respect felt by the nation for its collective influence. We are far from denying that there may be some- thing to be said for that view. It is certain that a good deal of just national pride in the possession of such a poet as Mr. Tennyson is felt, and also that Mr. Tennyson has a keen feeling for the statelier aspects of Constitutional liberty, and has given expression to that class of emotions in some of the finest verse of the last half-century. That he is one of our great national dignities, we should be the last to question. And yet we do question very greatly whether his accession to
the Peerage would add to the weight of the Peerage, and, still more, whether it would not to some extent detract from the dignity which at present unquestionably attaches to his own name
The truth is, that the dignity attaching to the name of a great poet, like the dignity attaching to the name of a great saint, has something spiritual about it, which does not seem to accord well with the kind of respect which the conferring of a Peerage is capable of expressing. We do not in the least mean to assert that there is anything necessarily inconsistent between poetry and a title. There are several poets, including one great poet, who have been Peers, and who have not been less esteemed as poets for their Peerage. Lord Houghton's poetry and Lord Lytton's novels did not fall in public estimation because their authors accepted a seat in the House of Lords, but then both Lord Houghton and Lord Lytton were made Peers chiefly on the strength of their political achievements and their social in- fluence. Mr. Tennyson, if he is to be a Peer, will become a Peer solely because he has fired the imagination of the English people, and that is not the kind of distinction which seems to us to be at all naturally expressed by ranking him amongst the Barons or Viscounts of England. If Charles Lamb had been a man of ever so good a fortune, no one would have thought of making a Peer of him on the strength of his wit, his humour, and the delightful vagaries of his lively fancy. There is something incommensurable between the literary qualities of such a man as " Elia" and a Peerage ; and the same remark applies, though probably in a less degree, to Tennyson himself. That the author of" In Memoriam " or "Break, break, break, break," should be made a Peer because he possesses the greatpoetic gifts needful to produce those marvellous productions, seems to us almost as incongruous as it would have been to confer a Peerage on Charles Wesley for writing some of the most beautiful hymns in the English language, on Wordsworth for his "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," on Keats for his " Hyperion," and on Shelley for his " Skylark" and his " Adonais." There was dignity in all these poets, and great dignity in Wordsworth, but not the kind of dignity that you could aptly express by summoning him to take his seat beside the Earl of Lonsdale on the benches of the Mouse of Lords. So far as we know, this is the first case in which poetry has been thought the proper title-deed for a Peerage. Doubtless, a baronetcy was given to Sir Walter Scott in some degree, we suppose, for his literary achievements ; but even that was not given him till he had become a man of great social influence in Scotland,— a lawyer and sheriff of no small repute,—and till it was known that lie attached at least as much importance to founding a family and getting together a landed estate, as he did to the literary achievements by which he had been enabled to compass these ends. Scott was already a mag- nate before he received the baronetcy,—it was because he was a magnate that the offer of the baronetcy seemed appropriate, not because he was a poet and a novelist. Our own view is that a Peerage is an appropriate distinction only for those who, in some degree, already wield and deserve political influence, and not as a mark of popular reverence for any qualities, whatever they may be, which justly deserve reverence. Keble deserved reverence for the qualities which enabled him to write "The Christian Year," but no one would have felt it a natural and fitting way of expressing that reverence to have raised him to the House of Lords. No doubt, there are certain qualities of poetic imagina- tion,—the statelier qualities, we mean,—which seem less out of keeping with a coronet than devotional poetry like Keble's, and we are far from denying that Mr. Tennyson displays them. Still, make what you can of the magnificence of his verse, and it is not a kind of magnificence which seems to be in sufficient harmony with worldly distinction, to admit of expressing your respect for it by conferring a great worldly distinction. Make out what case we may, a Peerage conferred for poetic achievements alone will remain a fancy peerage,' which will seem not only to sit uneasily on a great poet, but to fit awkwardly into the entourage of the House of Lords. The King of Prussia might almost as well have made Kant a Graf for writing the " Kritik of Pure Reason," as the Queen confer a Peerage on Mr. Tennyson for singing his elegy on the death of Arthur Hallam, and writing the noble series of poems called "The Idyls of the King." Whatever distinction the Poet-Laureate may confer on the House of Peers, we fear it must be an incongruous distinction, like a patch of rich Ori- ental workmanship let into the centre of a solid Brussels carpet, or the illumination of a medimval missal embodied in the pages of Caldecott. That Tennyson would be a great ornament to the House of Lords, we are far from denying. But he will be an incongruous ornament,—such an ornament as a
wreath of roses round the brow of the Governor of the Bank of England, or a spiritual smile on the countenance of a London Lord Mayor.
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