POETS AND POETRY.
THE FORMATION OF TENNYSON'S STYLE.* As Professor Pyre remarks in his introductory note, Tennyson is a poet whose works afford a particularly profitable subject for technical analysis. Many of his " sources " are known, and, moreover, we can, as it were, often "catch him at it," as a great number of his earlier poems are available in an experimental form, or, as Professor Pyre is bold enough to state, in their imperfect as well as in their improved state.
Has the reader ever amused himself by turning over the books issued by landscape gardeners between about 1750 and 1820 ? The pictures are in two halves. As you turn the leaf there is the park. Little arrows point you to the blemishes, the browsing line on the trees, the quincunx of oaks that obscures the hollow, the road that cuts straight and awkward across the grassland. Turn the little flap, and there is the same place, but with " the prospect improved." The road meanders, the little hollow—no longer obscured by the oaks—now holds a small lake, the trees are trimmed. In a somewhat similar way Professor Pyre shows us Tennyson at work Reptonizing his early poems. As a rule the result is an improvement, but sometimes, as it wore, to the lake are added a bridge and a boat-house, and the final result is that we find that, in Pope's phrase, " we better like a field." He has gone too far and has emasculated his prospect. The alterations made in the later version of (Enone are cited by Professor Pyre :- "Hither came
Mournful (Enone, wandering forlorn
Of Paris once her playmate. Round her neck Her neck all marble white and marble cold Floated her hair or seemed to float in rest.
This becomes in the later version : Hither came at noon Mournful (Enone, wandering forlorn
Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills.
Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck
Floated her hair or seemed to float in rest."
The coming of the goddess has also been retouched:— "Violet amaracus and asphodel, Lotus and lilies : a much more natural phrasing than Lustrous with lilyflower, violeteyed Both white and blue, with lotetree-fruit thickset.
' More lovelier ' disappears ; vine-entwined stone' becomes a fragment twined with vine' ; and such unnecessary oddities as fulleyed," greengulphed," water-rounded,' and ' evil- willedness ' give place to more ordinary expressions with a more extraordinary effect."
Here are one or two cases where the improvement is not • The Formation of Tennyson's Style. By J. F. Pyre. University of Wis- consin. Madison. clear; " water rounded," for instance, seems singularly happy. The alterations made in " Walking to the Mail " are other cases in point.
Of larger interest are Professor Pyre's own judicious and well- balanced opinions as to Tennyson's didacticism and the inter- esting reminders which he introduces concerning the effect which Tennyson produced upon the more clear-headed of his contemporaries. The critics of the present generation often do not realize that the unbounded adulation which they very properly deprecate was not the only sort of criticism which Tennyson heard in his own day. Professor Pyre quotes FitzGerald as writing to Hallam Tennyson in 1866: " I am considered a very great heretic because, like Carlyle, I gave up all hope of him after the Princess." This is going further than his most confirmed detractor would go to-day. Alas that the " Art for Art's sake " controversy—as it seems to us now a most unreal dilemma—should have made the epoch so uneasy and caused that most unnecessary division into decorative and didactic poets ! Professor Pyre describes how Tennyson might have been " a very King among the Pre-Raphaelites " but for the repeated pokes of the horns of this stupid dilemma.
One more interesting problem is raised by the present book., A great part of it is concerned with elaborate and often ingenious metrical analysis—iambics, anapaests, rhyme schemes, the use Of extra syllables. and the whole bag of tricks come into play. But a horrid doubt has lately been assailing, among others, the present writer. Does all this science of prosody play any part at all in the making or enjoyment of poetry ? It seems, on consideration, far from clear that it does. We, the doubters, have been led to this disturbing reflection by the fact that all the effects of smoothness, polish, repetition, and so on which are attained by the use of rhyme schemes can be and are achieved in vers Libre. Have we been hunting Snarks ? I hope some day to return to this ridiculously fundamental problem.
A. WILLIAMS-ELLIS.
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