535 A TABLE TALK. ALFRED BARON TENNYSON, BORN AUGUST 5, 1809. PEERAGE and a tomb in Westminster Abbey-such are the rewards Great Britain reserves for those she seeks most to honour. Common enough has been in the past each form of distinction. Until recent days, tombs in the Abbey were allotted to absolute obscurities; and the list of names of occupants supplied by Dean Stanley in his "Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey," from Chaucer, Jonson, Dryden, Handel, and Newton, to Mr. Thomas Smith and Nicholas Bagenall, an "infant of two months old, by his nurse unfortunately overlaid." Peerages meanwhile have not seldom been the well-known recompense of servility and venality. Where both honours-a peerage and a tomb in either Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's-have been awarded, national service has generally been rendered. Nine times out of ten the recipient of such distinctions has been a fighter. The soldier and the sailor still stand foremost in the world's pageant, and their brows are those ordinarily "lighted" by the coronet. Whose are the statues that are seen in our streets? To whom rise the tall columns which grace our squares and public places? To whom are given by a grateful country the palaces from which their descendants lightly part? In almost every case to warriors. If not to such, to successful misrulers and prosperous lawyers. Among these stood Lord Tennyson: a unique instance in this country of a man attaining the highest places for purely literary accomplishment, untainted with military or political service. HIS CAREER. A PROSAIC if brilliant recognition is that we have rendered. In France, where idea stands for far more than in England, a decoration is all that a country, as apart from a king, has been able to bestow. In Italy, in which life has been more picturesque, a wreath of bay leaves accorded during the lifetime of the writer has been held to suffice. One can still see Tasso, after a lifetime of poverty, difficulty, struggle, and defeat, making his triumphal entry into Rome, for the purpose of receiving from the Pope the crown, "the ornament of emperors and poets." A distinction of that kind, real and, in a sense, adequate in Italy, would in England be regarded as ridiculous. A poet would accept no such decoration, nor would a Government dare to dream of offering it. Such honours and rewards as are in the power of the Government were ungrudgingly awarded, and it was only in the poet's own profession that any condemnation was heard of the pecuniary grant by which honours and titles were accompanied. The public did the rest. Tennyson might even have followed the example of Scribe, and, taking the pen for crest, have accompanied it with the motto Inde fortuna et libertas. He might, indeed, have followed further the example of his far less renowned and illustrious predecessor, and have written on the front of the house at Aldworth, with the alteration of la poésie for le théâtre, what Scribe put over a châlet in his domain of Séricourt : NAT Le théâtre a payé cet asile champêtre : Vous qui passez, merci ; je vous le dois peut-être. "THE PASSING OF "" TENNYSON. ATURE has joined with man in rendering homage to the departed poet, and has closed with a death he would have chosen a life such as he desired. It is not every one who takes the view of death ascribed to Ernest Renan, whose own departure prefaced by a few days only that of Tennyson. To Renan the most desirable death appeared to be a shot received in action; and he is alleged even to have dreamed of accepting honours that might subject him to the chance of being the victim of popular violence. Granting even that the antagonist or the assassin is deft in the execution of his task, and that, instead of lingering in agony, Scorched with the death thirst, and writhing in vain, the death is swift and sudden, it is too heroic for average humanity. On the other hand, Webster, in the "White Devil," makes one of his characters exclaim : How miserable a thing it is to die Neither violent nor harrowing was the death of the ex-Laureate. His days had not quite come in length to those of The many-wintered crow that leads the clanging rookery home; but full of years as of honours, with his family around him, he expired in the reposeful silence of his unlighted chamber. "Gloriously beautiful," Sir Andrew Clark said, was his departure. In words that will not soon be forgotten Sir Andrew continues, "In all my experience I have never witnessed anything more glorious. There were no artificial lights in the chamber, and all was in darkness save for the silvery light of the moon at its full. The soft beams of light fell upon the bed and played upon the features of the dying poet like a halo." To this, thinking of the worth of the man and the warmth of a nation's recognition, it is natural to apply the passage in "Samson Agonistes," too appropriate not to have been [quoted before, in which Manoah speaks of the death of his son, with God "favouring and assisting to the end." No time for lamentation now. Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail IT THE DEATH OF POETS. T is a favourite fancy that when the poet dies Nature mourns. The idea Sir Walter Scott has crystallised in well-known lines beginning Call it not vain; they do not err who say That, when the poet dies, Mute Nature mourns her worshipper, And celebrates his obsequies, &c. Of Dante it is said that his future eminence was foretold in the fact that he was born on the moment of the 8th of May, 1265, when the sun was in the sign of Gemini, and that the year of his death (1321) was memorable for a total eclipse of the sun. If such dreams could merit attention it would be easy to believe that in the case of poets such as Marlowe, Chatterton, Keats, Shelley, Byron-who died by accident or disease, before their full strength had been shown and their whole message delivered to the world-Nature might be supposed to share the sorrows of man. Seeing, however, that death comes to all, and may not be avoided, there is no cause for lamentation when it arrives only in the plenitude of time. That the full moon shone with unsurpassable brightness on the night on which Tennyson expired many must have observed. In this case, then, Nature's homage seems peaceful and appropriate, and the picture will not soon pass from the memory of the white face which Gleam'd to the flying moon by fits. CON RECOGNITION AWARDED TENNYSON. ONCERNING Tennyson's exquisite art two opinions have not been, and cannot be, held. He furnishes, indeed, an instance unique in literature of a man of absolutely foremost mark, concerning whose place in the Temple of Fame no doubt is permissible, who yet in his lifetime won plenary recognition. A few crabbed old dogs of the old-fashioned school bayed at his brightness, and the "crusty, crusty, musty, fusty Christopher North even snapped at his heels." The elect, however, recognised his merits from the first, and in early life even he was idolised of the reading public generally. Admiration. of him is mightiest in the mightiest, and the warmest tributes to the poet have been paid him by the greatest of his compeers. The utterance of Wordsworth, who, contrary to what might have been expected, recognised the worth of the man destined to be his successor; those of Carlyle, Longfellow, and others have been given to the world in extenso; that of Mr. Swinburne, who alone is worthy to wear the mantle of the Laureate, fallen from the august shoulders that wore it, is known to his friends. Not easily shall I forget hearing Mr. Swinburne recite as the most musical lines ever written, two lines from the "Lotos-Eaters": Music that gentlier on the spirit lies The shorter lyrics meanwhile are unequalled since Shakespeare, Milton himself having nothing in the way so exquisite; only in a foreign language, less suited perhaps than our own to the purposes of poetry, can we find anything to equal them in finish and beauty-a few lyrics of Musset and Victor Hugo alone can challenge supremacy. ΤΗ TENNYSON'S "MESSAGE." HE one question that rises, then, is whether the message of Tennyson's poetry is equally worthy with the method employed by the poet. On this point alone two opinions are possible. A certain measure of truth underlies the assertion that in some of his best known poems Tennyson reflected his own age rather than the world at large, and that the "In Memoriam," in some respects his crowning work, presents aspects of mental struggle which the world has since outlived. A man so creative and daring as Shakespeare— and, longo intervallo, Balzac-may take for his domain the whole range of human life. On natures less profoundly original, the times in which they are placed exercise a potent influence. If Tennyson is held to represent a period, the same may be said of Dante and of Milton. Men who in the matter of negation go what is practically the whole length-Rabelais, Voltaire, Goethe-get the credit or discredit of their thoroughness. Others, with Pascal and Tennyson, though held by the "unco guid" as heretics, are in fact the most devout of believers. Of what may be and is called agnosticism "In Memoriam" is the bible, of aggressive negation it contains nothing. The most serious defect in his literary equipment, as in that of Victor Hugo and Milton, is the absence of humour. His poems in dialect-" The Northern Farmer " and the like—are regarded by some as humour. What is so called is, however, observation of nature and insight into life. N' TENNYSON'S APPEARANCE. EVER, probably, was a face so seldom seen so familiar to the public. Photography is, of course, responsible for this. Tennyson, to use the customary phrase, "took well." Among men still living, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Irving alone probably would be as easily recognisable as was Tennyson. The costume he affected contributed to render him more conspicuous. His was a face that repaid perusal-beautiful in itself, revealing imagination, refinement, distinction, and pride. Carlyle's often-quoted description cannot be surpassed: "One of the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of rough, dusty-dark hair; bright-laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free and easy-smokes infinite tobaccos." With the exception of the "brightlaughing eye," which was known only to those more intimate than I had the privilege to be, the portrait is exact. I am disposed to add as complementary to it, however, the statement of Edward Fitzgerald, that his smile was rather grim. Some particulars of his excursions I had from his brother Septimus, who long ago died. Of these none is worth recalling except one statement that bears out Carlyle's description-"smokes infinite tobaccos." In company with frier.ds, a long ramble in Italy had been arranged. When the party arrived at Florence, Tennyson found that his tobacco had given out. No tobacco fit to be smoked could be found in Italy, and the poet, |