ALFRED TENNYSON.
Alfred Tennyson. By Arthur Christopher Benson. With 8 Illustrations. (Methuen and Co. 3s. 13d.)—Few things of the kind are more striking than the multiplication of editions of Tennyson's poems as they become released from copyright, and of books upon his life and work. This mass of literature, constantly increasing, can only be compared to that which grew up in his life and just after his death around the great poet of the Roman Empire, whom the late Laureate in so many ways resembled. Professors, grammarians, schoolmasters, popular lecturers, brother-poets, all had their turn at Virgil, all are now trying their hand on Tennyson. Now, as then, the effort is partly literary and professional, partly a labour of love. It need hardly be said that the more it is the latter the better it is. Notably is this the case with the artistic and dainty little book before us. A happy poet himself, a skilled critic and literary artist, a scholar, and a Cambridge scholar, Mr. Arthur Benson has many of the most necessary qualifications for making a study of Tennyson. He did not, he tells us, know the poet. "With himself, to my eternal regret, I never exchanged a word. Virgllium vidi tantum." But his father, the Archbishop, and his uncle, Professor Homy Sidgwick, were old and intimate friends of Lord Tennyson, and Mr. Benson has known, of course, ever so many more of the poet's circle of acquaintance, and has a direct and living tradition which
makes itself apparent in many of his pages. Let it be said at once that he has achieved no small measure of success. His book has charm—charm of presentment, charm of style—a light and graceful touch, and a spice of critical pleasantry which make it very readable. Mr. Benson says some things whieli are new, and he says them delightfully. His account of all the more personal side of Tennyson, of his relations, in par- ticular, to mother, wife, and son, is full of taste and sympathy. The sentence in which he describes the settling-down at Farriug- ford is specially happy. "Into this quiet domestic life," he says of it, "Tennyson Bank like a diving bird into a pool with hardly a ripple." His contrast, again, between the attitude of Words- worth and Tennyson towards Nature is excellent. "Wordsworth feared the invasion of science as he might have feared the attack of a ruthless foe. Tennyson boldly crossed the frontier and annexed for ever the province of science to the domain of poetry." It is, however, only fair to Wordsworth to remember that he fore- told that a time would come when this would be done, though he did not realise that it was so near. Mr. Benson finds the real Tenny- son in the poet, not in the Laureate ; in the mystic, not in the man of the world; in the Virgilian, not in the Horatian vein ; in the affinity to Keats rather than to Wordsworth or Goethe. lie thinks that the early Tennyson was the truer and better Tenny- son. But he hardly does justice to the other vein, which was ever a natural and noble vein, and was already present when he wrote "Freedom," and "Love thou thy land," and "The States- man." It is true, doubtless, that, finding himself Laureate, still more, finding himself everywhere listened to, Tennyson became more self-critical and deliberate. Here, again, the parallel of Virgil is illuminating. The young Virgil to whom, as his friend Horace said, "the Muses that love the country accorded a vein of dulcet pleasantry" is to be found in the " Eclogues"; but the true Virgil is to be found, not less but rather more fully, in the " Georgics " ; and more fully yet, despite its mixed and artificial character, in the " Aeneid " ; and most fully of all, in all taken together. Tenny- son without "Maud" and "In Memoriam" is Virgil without the Fourth and Sixth " Aeneids." Tennyson without the " Idylls " is Virgil without the rest of the " Aeneid." The consequence is that though Mr. Benson does ample justice to the sweetness and magic of Tennyson, he scarcely does justice to his greatness and wisdom. He thinks "his intellectual force was not great nor his knowledge profound." This hardly agrees with the judgment of his peers, of Tyndall or Martineau, of Lord Selborne or of "old Fitz" himself, whom Mr. Benson so often quotes. He is perhaps too severe on the sonnets. Tennyson did not, it is true, much affect the sonnet, but the early lines on "Love and Death" and on "Alexander" are surely better than any of his brother's, which Mr. Benson approves, and " Montenegro " is one of the finest of the kind in the language. Of the plays he takes the conventional view that it is a pity Tennyson ever wrote them. Time will show whether this view is just. It is only a few years ago that all theatre managers thought that Shakespeare spelt ruin. None play and few read Marlowe. But Becket was a success, and is even now being played again. But whether Mr. Benson praises or criticises, he does it with grace. One point calls for special remark. Mr. Benson's attitude towards previous critics and biographers is an example to all. Specially exem- plary is his attitude towards the great Memoir by the poet's son. In a passage as true as it is subtle, he praises the tact of the father in suppressing the unpublished poems, and of the son in inserting them, not indeed in the poetical works, but in the Life. In taking leave of this attractive little volume, and commending it son sine grano to all who wish to study Tennyson, we will add one word which the moment of its appearance dictates. Much nonsense has been written about Lord Tennyson's peerage. Mr. Benson handles it with sense and justice. Lord Tennyson was anxious, amongst other things, he writes, "that his son should eventually have a chance of playing a part in the political world." The wish has already found a rich realisation. It only remains to add that the illustrations are well chosen and reproduced. Like the Life, they give both the realistic and the heroic presentment,—the head by "Dicky" Doyle and the amateur sketch by James Spedding, side by side with the noble portraits, in youth, by Samuel Laurence, and in age, by Watts.
THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND.
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