The dominant note of Tennyson’s poetry is assuredly the delineation of human moods modulated by Nature, and through a system of Nature-symbolism. Thus, in “Elaine,” when Lancelot has sent a courtier to the queen, asking her to grant him audience, that he may present the diamonds won for her in tourney, she receives the messenger with unmoved dignity; but he, bending low and reverently before her, saw “with a sidelong eye”
“The shadow of some piece of pointed lace
In the queen’s shadow vibrate on the walls,
And parted, laughing in his courtly heart.”
The “Morte d’Arthur” affords a striking instance of this peculiarly Tennysonian method. That is another of the very finest pieces. Such poetry may suggest labor, but not more than does the poetry of Virgil or Milton. Every word is the right word, and each in the right place. Sir H. Taylor indeed warns poets against “wanting to make every word beautiful.” And yet here it must be owned that the result of such an effort is successful, so delicate has become the artistic tact of this poet in his maturity.1 For, good expression being the happy adaptation of language to meaning, it follows that sometimes good expression will be perfectly simple, even ordinary in character, and sometimes it will be ornate, elaborate, dignified. He who can thus vary his language is the best verbal artist, and Tennyson can thus vary it. In this poem, the “Morte d’Arthur,” too, we have “deep-chested music.” Except in some of Wordsworth and Shelley, or in the magnificent “Hyperion” of Keats, we have had no such stately, sonorous organ-music in English verse since Milton as in this poem, or in “Tithonus,” “Ulysses,” “Lucretius,” and “Guinevere.” From the majestic overture,
“So all day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea,”
onward to the end, the same high elevation is maintained.
But this very picturesqueness of treatment has been urged against Tennyson as a fault in his narrative pieces generally, from its alleged over-luxuriance, and tendency to absorb, rather than enhance, the higher human interest of character and action. However this be (and I think it is an objection that does apply, for instance, to “The Princess”), here in this poem picturesqueness must be counted as a merit, because congenial to the semi-mythical, ideal, and parabolic nature of Arthurian legend, full of portent and supernatural suggestion. Such Ossianic hero-forms are nearly as much akin to the elements as to man. And the same answer holds largely in the case of the other Arthurian Idylls. It has been noted how well-chosen is the epithet “water” applied to a lake in the lines, “On one side lay the ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full.” Why is this so happy? For as a rule the concrete rather than the abstract is poetical, because the former brings with it an image, and the former involves no vision. But now in the night all Sir Bedevere could observe, or care to observe, was that there was “some great water.” We do not – he did not – want to know exactly what it was. Other thoughts, other cares, preoccupy him and us. Again, of dying Arthur we are told that “all his greaves and caisses were dashed with drops of onset.” “Onset” is a very generic term, poetic because removed from all vulgar associations of common parlance, and vaguely suggestive not only of war’s pomp and circumstance, but of high deeds also, and heroic hearts, since onset belongs to mettle and daring; the word for vast and shadowy connotation is akin to Milton’s grand abstraction, “Far off His coming shone” or Shelley’s, “Where the Earthquake Demon taught her young Ruin.”
It has been noted also how cunningly Tennyson can gild and furbish up the most commonplace detail – as when he calls Arthur’s mustache “the knightly growth that fringed his lips,” or condescends to glorify a pigeon-pie, or paints the clown’s astonishment by this detail, “the brawny spearman let his cheek Bulge with the unswallowed piece, and turning stared;” or thus characterizes a pun, “and took the word, and play’d upon it, and made it of two colors.” This kind of ingenuity, indeed, belongs rather to talent than to genius; it is exercised in cold blood; but talent may be a valuable auxiliary of genius, perfecting skill in the technical departments of art. Yet such a gift is not without danger to the possessor. It may tempt him to make his work too much like a delicate mosaic of costly stone, too hard and unblended, from excessive elaboration of detail. One may even prefer to art thus highly wrought a more glowing and careless strain, that lifts us off our feet, and carries us away as on a more rapid, if more turbid torrent of inspiration, such as we find in Byron, Shelley, or Victor Hugo. Here you are compelled to pause at every step, and admire the design of the costly tesselated pavement under your feet. Perhaps there is a jewelled glitter, a Pre-Raphaelite or Japanese minuteness of finish here and there in Tennyson, that takes away from the feeling of aërial perspective and remote distance, leaving little to the imagination; not suggesting and whetting the appetite, but rather satiating it; his loving observation of minute particulars is so faithful, his knowledge of what others, even men of science, have observed so accurate, his fancy so nimble in the detection of similitudes. But every master has his own manner, and his reverent disciples would be sorry if he could be without it. We love the little idiosyncracies of our friends.
I have said the objection in question does seem to lie against “The Princess.” It contains some of the most beautiful poetic pearls the poet has ever dropped; but the manner appears rather disproportionate to the matter, at least to the subject as he has chosen to regard it. For it is regarded by him only semi-seriously; so lightly and sportively is the whole topic viewed at the outset, that the effect is almost that of burlesque; yet there is a very serious conclusion, and a very weighty moral is drawn from the story, the workmanship being labored to a degree, and almost encumbered with ornamentation. But the poet himself admits the ingrained incongruity of the poem. The fine comparison of the Princess Ida in the battle to a beacon glaring ruin over raging seas, for instance, seems too grand for the occasion. How differently, and in what burning earnest has a great poet-woman, Mrs. Browning, treated this grave modern question of the civil and political position of women in “Aurora Leigh!” Tennyson’s is essentially a man’s view, and the frequent talk about women’s beauty must be very aggravating to the “Blues.” It is this poem especially that gives people with a limited knowledge of Tennyson the idea of a “pretty” poet; the prettiness, though very genuine, seems to play too patronizingly with a momentous theme. The Princess herself, and the other figures are indeed dramatically realized, but the splendor of invention, and the dainty detail, rather dazzle the eye away from their humanity. Here, however, are some of the loveliest songs that this poet, one of our supreme lyrists, ever sung: “Tears, idle tears!” “The splendor falls,” “Sweet and low,” “Home they brought,” “Ask me no more,” and the exquisite melody, “For Love is of the valley.” Moreover, the grand lines toward the close are full of wisdom —
“For woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse: could we make her as the man
Sweet love were slain,” &c.
I feel myself a somewhat similar incongruity in the poet’s treatment of his more homely, modern, half-humorous themes, such as the introduction to the “Morte d’Arthur,” and “Will Waterproof;” not at all in the humorous poems, like the “Northern Farmer,” which are all of a piece, and perfect in their own vein. In this introduction we have “The host and I sat round the wassail bowl, then half-way ebb’d;” but this metaphorical style is not (fortunately) sustained, and so, as good luck would have it, a metaphor not being ready to hand, we have the honester and homelier line, “Till I tired out with cutting eights that day upon the pond;” yet this homespun hardly agrees with the above stage-king’s costume. And so again I often venture to wish that the Poet-Laureate would not say “flowed”