Alfred Tennyson. 403 attained his first great success by the publication, in 1871, of "A Daughter of Heth," one of the most pleasing and healthy novels of this generation. In 1872 followed the "Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," founded on a driving excursion made by the author from London to Edinburgh, a book full of high spirits, genial humour, and showing an excellent eye for scenery. "A Princess of Thule," which has been translated into many foreign tongues, and is perhaps the most popular of Mr. Black's novels, appeared in 1873. It has been succeeded by many other excellent novels, all written in a healthy genial spirit, displaying a wide knowledge of character, and never wearying the reader with needless digressions and moralisings. Mr. Black's power of painting scenery is such as is possessed by few writers. The word-painting of most novelists is mere padding, and is generally skipped by the reader-wisely, because it is impossible that the description given could convey to the mind any real idea of the scene portrayed. With Mr. Black the case is different; his descriptions always stand forth vivid and lifelike. Other eminent novelists of the day, such as James Payn, George Meredith, George MacDonald, Wilkie Collins, Mrs. Oliphant, Mrs. E. Lynn Linton, our limits forbid us to deal with.1 We now turn to the poetry of our own time. There can be no doubt as to who is the most popular poet of the Victorian era. It is long since Mr. Tennyson took that proud 1 As illustrating the rich rewards which await a successful writer of fiction in these days, it may be worth while to mention some facts which came out during an action for damages by Charles Reade against the proprietors of the Glasgow Herald in 1875. From Mr. Reade's evidence it appeared that Dickens gave him £5 per page for the publication of "Hard Cash " in All the Year Round, Mr. Reade retaining the copyright. Mr. Andrew Chatto (of Messrs. Chatto & Windus) stated that for a series of stories which Mr. Reade was then contributing to Belgravia they paid him £5 a page, or rather more than twopence-halfpenny a word, if the stories did not exceed four pages, and £4 a page if the stories were over that limit, Mr. Reade's copyright being reserved. He also corroborated what Mr. Reade had mentioned, that Mr. Chatto had offered him £2000 for a three-volume story, to be published in Belgravia and separately, Mr. Reade retaining the copyright. position, and though since then many rivals have appeared, none has ever come near to dislodge him from it. Alfred Tennyson was born on August 5, 1809, at Somersby, a hamlet in Lincolnshire, about six miles from Horncastle. Of Somersby and a neighbouring parish his father was Rector. After having received the elements of education from his father and at the village school, Tennyson was sent to the grammar-school at Louth. While there he prepared, along with his brother Charles, his first volume of poems, which was published in 1827 under the title of "Poems by Two Brothers." It is scarcely necessary to say that none of the pieces contained in the little book have been reprinted. About 1828 the poet went to Cambridge, and in the same year he wrote a poem of greater promise than his previous attempts, "A Lover's Tale," not printed till 1833, and not published till 1879, when the author was compelled to resuscitate it to prevent its being pirated. At Cambridge, which he left without taking a degree, Tennyson gained in 1828 the Chancellor's prize for a poem on "Timbuctoo," and there began that friendship for Arthur Henry Hallam, son of Hallam the historian, which he has rendered immortal by "In Memoriam." In 1830 appeared "Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson," a volume containing 154 pages, of which about sixty have been thought worthy of preservation. Another little volume, containing amongst other poems such gems of song as "The May Queen," "The Miller's Daughter," "Enone," followed in the winter of 1832. Both were on the whole favourably received, but as yet Tennyson had not caught the public ear. In 1842 appeared "Poems by Alfred Tennyson," in two volumes, consisting partly of selections from the 1830 and 1832 volumes, partly of poems published for the first time. The reception of these volumes was most enthusiastic ; all the critics were loud in their praise, and such men as Wordsworth, J. S. Mill, and John Sterling joined to swell the popular applause. In 1847 appeared "The Princess," suggested apparently by a passage in Johnson's "Rasselas :"-"The Princess thought that of all sublunary things, knowledge was the Tennyson's Characteristics. 405 best. She desired first to learn of sciences, and then proposed to found a college to teach women, in which she would preside." In 1850 was published "In Memoriam," a record of the poet's love for Arthur Hallam, a young man full of promise, who died abroad in 1833, at the early age of twenty-two. In the same year, on the death of Wordsworth, Tennyson received "The laurel, greene from the brows "Maud" appeared in 1855; the "Idylls of the King" in 1859; Enoch Arden" in 1864; "The Holy Grail and other Poems," containing four new idylls, in 1870; two dramas, "Queen Mary" and "Harold," in 1875 and 1877 respectively. The volume, "Ballads and other Poems," published in 1881, shows that the Laureate's genius has suffered no diminu tion by age; and the fervent prayer of all who love poetry is that he may long be spared to enrich our literature with many more masterpieces of art. Mr. Tennyson's great fame has not been attained without. much patient labour. The research of commentators on him has shown that his poems bear many marks of careful revision, the textual variations in different editions of some of them being considerable. Refined taste and exquisite workmanship are the characteristics of all he has written. Fully alive to all the influences of his time, there are few phases of modern thought which are not touched on in his writings; while his rich gift of imagination, his pure and elevated diction, and his freedom from faults of taste and manner, give his writings a place among those which the world will not willingly let die. His range of poetic power is wide. As a describer of natural scenery he is so accurate that it has been said that a painter might perfectly rely on his statements of facts. "Perhaps, compared with the great old masters, Exquisite lyrics of love, and stirring war-ballads of equal excel lence, have come from his pen. He is as much at home in giving dramatic utterance to the reflections of the "Northern Farmer" as in picturing the feelings of St. Simeon Stylites. Among the least successful of his works must be placed his dramas, full as they are of passages of noble poetic eloquence. Why the writer who has shown such admirable dramatic skill in the monologues put in the mouth of Ulysses, the Northern Farmer, and others, should have comparatively failed when he came to write a complete play, is a question which must have puzzled many readers. The answer to it may perhaps be found in the following extract from Mr. W. C. Roscoe, who has written one of the best of the many estimates of the Laureate's genius. "He is," says Mr. Roscoe, "at once the most creative and the least dramatic of poets; the nearest to Shakespeare, and the furthest from him. He has in the highest degree the fundamental poetic impulse. He fuses all things, and golden shapes spring from his mould, with only the material in common with his ore; rather, ideas are sown in his brain, and spring up in concrete organic forms. The passion to reproduce in concrete wholes constitutes, indeed, that fundamental poetic impulse which we have ascribed to him. He may be didactic, philosophical, oratorical, sentimental, but all these things he encloses in a golden bail of poesy. He may have, and often has, an ultimate moral object. This is by no means inconsistent with the highest effort of artistic production, as has been sometimes too easily assumed. It is true, you cannot comply with the conditions of art, you cannot have the feelings of the artist, if you drive directly by the medium of verse at a moral result or an intellectual conclusion; but you may have these for your ultimate object, and you may embody them in true poetical forms. . . . To say that Tennyson's genius is not dramatic, is certainly to contradict some of his critics. Something depends on what is meant by the term. He certainly has the power of penetrating the mood of another mind; but it will generally be found that this is another mind in a special situation; and this is a very different thing from exhibiting character through the medium of situations and the self-expression Robert Browning. 407 elicited by these situations; and in this, we take it, consists the essence of the drama." The essay from which these words are taken was written in 1855, long before Mr. Tennyson formally appeared as a dramatist. They certainly afford a very remarkable instance of acute critical insight. While Tennyson's works are read and admired by all who make any pretensions to literary taste, it is only to a limited circle that the genius of Robert Browning is known except by hearsay. The frequent harshness of his phraseology; his obscurity, his love of dealing with subjects which have little. interest for the majority of people, have combined to confine him to an audience fit, perhaps, but certainly very few. Yet by those who really appreciate him, no poet is prized more highly; and his originality and genius have long since been acknowledged by the general consent of all competent judges. No poet since Dryden has equalled him in the power of reasoning in verse; and his masculine vigour of thought and remarkable faculty of setting dramatically before us different types of character, give him a place by himself in the roll of English poets. He was born at Camberwell on May 7, 1812. From his earliest years he was fond of writing verse, and by the time he was twelve years of age had collected poems enough to form a volume, for which he tried to get a publisherfortunately in vain, he was afterwards doubtless glad to think. His first publication, "Pauline," a little volume of seventy pages, appeared in 1833. In 1835 followed "Paracelsus," a drama of a shapeless kind, which found not a few imitators. "Paracelsus" is a very stiff morsel for the student of poetry, and it is not wonderful that its sale was small and the criticisms of it for the most part unfavourable. In 1837 Mr. Browning's tragedy of "Strafford" was brought out on the boards of Drury Lane Theatre. In 1840 appeared one of his most characteristic works, the epic "Sordello." In 1841 he began the publication of the series of "Bells and Pomegranates," which extended to eight numbers, concluding in 1846. In it was published much of Browning's finest poetry, including his tragedy of the "Blot on the Scutcheon," and the |