ART. III.-Enoch Arden, etc. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet Laureate. London, 1864.

BUT

UT few years have elapsed since we devoted an article to the Poetry of the Laureate; and a fresh poem of his has already become famous. Scarcely indeed has any work of his issued from the press when it is found in almost every drawing-room in England, and as fast as steam can carry it, it is borne in thousands to every market where the English tongue is spoken; so eager are all to read. Maidens bend their faces over the page, and sinking slowly down where they stood, are lost in the story of Elaine or of Arden; and fathers, in the quiet evening, will trust to the poet's care those tenderer thoughts which love to dwell in secret. It is strange, to one who thinks of it, this vast and silent power which the modern poet wields. Our bards stand no more in the midst of the people, speaking to them burning words, or bowing before the acclaim of a myriad tongues. They pass no more from side to side of the market-place, or from street to country ways, gathering around them young and old in little wondering circles. The power of the older singers was more directly reflected in action, but yet bears no comparison with the power of him who now can weave in secret a magic web of waving lines, and by the infinite multiplication of the press can gather at once kingdoms and continents under his spell. The printing-press, perfect as it now seems to be, is a means to Mr. Tennyson of a power at once wider and more immediate than ever fell to the lot of poet. Perhaps since its invention no poet has, during his lifetime, obtained so extensive an audience. The several poems of Lord Byron were greedily bought up as they appeared, but the reading circles at home were then very much narrower, and the poems of Lord Byron had not the same command of large colonial societies. Moreover they obtained notoriety rather than favour, and were often read for their worse qualities for that kind of sentiment which gives a flash of life to our so-called 'sensation' novels. But we shall return to the question of Mr. Tennyson's popularity after a review of that last volume of his whose title now stands at the head of our page.

In this book we have many pieces collected; pieces of various degrees of merit, and of various pretension. The poem of Enoch Arden, placed first, and giving its name to the volume, is at once the longest and most important, and also bears evident marks of being a cherished work, perfected by untiring and affectionate care. In point of execution it ranks with Elaine and Guinevere, and in point of story it ranks with those domestic idylls for

which Mr. Tennyson is so justly celebrated, and the subjects of which seem so well fitted to his genius. The poem of Tithonus, also contained in this volume, is a work of transcendent merit; it is, however, very much shorter than Enoch Arden, and on that ground we defer the consideration of it. We need not apologise to our readers for taking them once more over the now well-known story of Enoch Arden. To read once or twice only a work so careful and so beautiful, is an actual wrong to the author, the very perfection of whose art lies in the chastened reserve and elusive delicacy of his touches. The opening scene of the poem is laid in a fishing village, a quaint, self-contained little port, whose counterpart may be found in many a bay on the eastward coast of England. The first lines, which set this scene before us, are so simple, the effect of them is so complete, and the separate touches so firm, that condensation is impossible :

'Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm;
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands;
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf

down

In cluster; then a moulder'd church; and higher
A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd mill;
And high in Heaven behind it a gray
With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood,
By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes

Green in a cup-like hollow of the down.'

We ask attention here, not to the direct purpose of the description alone, but also to the fine craft by which these opening lines are made to serve the unity of the piece. Out of the chord thus struck, every future change will flow, and no unmeaning note is found within it. Ever in our minds will be the sea and its power, with the life of work and the life of rest upon the limit of it. There will be also the church with its memories, its giving in marriage, and its gathering of the dead together in hope; and there again the mill, and high in heaven behind the gray and breezy down, which with the sea gave strength and breadth to the hearts of those who lived upon them, and whose hazelwood, in its cup-like hollow, resounded to their childish mirth, and was the kindly shelter of the passions of their stronger years. Here a hundred years ago three children of three houses, -pretty Annie Lee; Philip Ray, the miller's son; and Enoch Arden, a rough sailor lad, made orphan by a winter shipwreck -played upon the shore; and here with exquisite feeling the poet makes them playing out day by day the mimic symbols of their future life-castles of sand dissolving in the tide, strings of

little

little footprints daily washed away; and the housekeeping in the cave, when each in turn would marry Annie Lee, with their strivings for her, her little sorrows in their strife, and her promise to be little wife to both.' Thus grew up their loves. Enoch's that of a strong and self-reliant man, who, where he fixed his heart, there set his hand to do the thing he willed, and bear it thro';' Philip's a silent devotion which had in it rather the heroism of sacrifice than of self-will. Annie seemed kinder to Philip, but loved Enoch, though she knew it not, and would, if asked, deny it.' Enoch, full of his set purpose, and trained to fighting his own way, worked and hoarded, prospered in wealth as a bold and lucky fisherman, and in fame as the bravest in danger. And thus, one nutting time, in the mellowness of the

year

'On a golden autumn eventide,

The younger people making holiday,

With bag and sack and basket, great and small,
Went nutting to the hazels. Philip stay'd
(His father lying sick and needing him)
An hour behind; but as he climb'd the hill,
Just where the prone edge of the wood began
To feather toward the hollow, saw the pair,
Enoch and Annie, sitting hand-in-hand,
His large grey eyes and weather-beaten face
All-kindled by a still and sacred fire,
That burn'd as on an altar. Philip look'd,
And in their eyes and faces read his doom;
Then, as their faces drew together, groan'd,
And slipt aside, and like a wounded life
Crept down into the hollows of the wood;
There, while the rest were loud in merry-making,
Had his dark hour unseen, and rose and past
Bearing a life-long hunger in his heart.'

And those two were merrily wed, and merrily ran their happy
years of health, of love, of competence. Then Enoch, ever bent
upon his purposes, saved all his earnings to the uttermost, that
his children might have a better bringing up than his had been
or her's.'
But as he toiled, there came a change. Clambering
on a mast, he fell and broke a limb; and, as he lay recovering,
his wife bore him another and a sickly son. 'Another hand, too,
crept across his trade,' and on him fell, although a grave and
staid God-fearing man, yet lying thus inactive, doubt and gloom.'
While thus lying sick in heart and body came the master of
a ship wanting a boatswain for a China voyage, and Enoch, seeing
hope

hope again, assented. Not for his own self caring, but for Annie -for Annie and her children, he let her plead in vain, and 'grieving held his will and bore it thro'.' So Enoch sold his boat with many a sigh, fitted up the little house with goods and stores, set Annie forth in trade with all that seamen needed or their wives, and brightly and boldly faced the morning of farewell, speaking hopefully, and as she heard him speak,

'She almost hoped herself; but when he turn'd
The current of his talk to graver things

In sailor fashion roughly sermonizing

On providence and trust in Heaven, she heard,
Heard and not heard him; as the village girl,
Who sets her pitcher underneath the spring,
Musing on him that used to fill it for her,

Hears and not hears, and lets it overflow.'

We would pause here for a moment to point out the skill and judgment which Mr. Tennyson has shown in giving intensity and sinew to the passion of his tale by the slight leaven of a Puritan faith. The want of moral grandeur in modern life is one of the chief difficulties with which a modern poet has to deal; nor can he any longer fill this want by use of those supernatural systems which are now fitly called 'machineries.' This difficulty the Laureate has successfully evaded by laying the scene of his action in a secluded fishing port, where a stern creed had grown up under the changeful northern sky, and the mysterious perils of the sea; and where the traditional superstitions of a sailor life were woven in with an intense and living belief handed down from a Puritan ancestry. The occasional use of supernatural means, such as Annie's dream, so falls evenly upon the reader's mind, and certain superstitious observances are justified; while a moral sublimity is also gained which gives depth and unity to the tone of the poem. Enoch, as the hour of parting came, cast all their cares on God, and threw his arms about his drooping wife, and kissed his wonder-stricken little ones,' all except the sickly babe, who slept; and Enoch would not wake him, but kissed him in his cot, taking from his forehead one tiny curl. Let us note the subtile beauty of this passage as connected with the after part. The father passing away for ever from the faces of his own, and the little child so soon to die, and whose sleep is now the symbol of his death, seeming to go with him. and needing no farewell. Many a long year after, when dying, neglected, and unknown, Enoch remembered this, and thought that there was one of his who would embrace him in the world to come; then only yielding up that treasured braid of hair, he loosed

loosed the visible bond in hope of the invisible, and that one little child

'Said not good-night; but in some brighter clime

Bid him good-morrow.'*

So Enoch went, and with him all healthy life and vigorous thrift. Annie, too gentle to thrive in petty trade, so 'failed and sadden'd' as she knew it; and then the sickly child,

'After a lingering-ere she was aware,
Like the caged bird escaping suddenly,
The little innocent soul flitted away.'

Wonderful as are many of Mr. Tennyson's descriptive rhythms, perhaps none have shown such marvellous and subtile skill as these three lines, which, catching the reader 'ere he is aware' by their quickened flight and the sudden hurry of their cadence, leave him with parted lips. In the depths of sorrow is found relief. As Annie sat sorrowing and all broken with grief and care, Philip came falteringly, and with a noble tenderness and generous tact, begged for Enoch's sake-for had not Annie chosen the best among us'-to put the babes to school, and Enoch should repay him when he came. This was the favour that he sought. Then she turned—

'She rose, and fixt her swimming eyes upon him,
And dwelt a moment on his kindly face,

Then calling down a blessing on his head
Caught at his hand, and wrung it passionately,
And past into the little garth beyond.

So lifted up in spirit he moved away.'

And Philip put the boy and girl to school and made himself theirs, tho' for Annie's sake, Fearing the lazy gossip of the port, He oft denied his heart his dearest wish, And seldom crost her threshold.' Dearly the children came to love him as the years went on. 'Lords of his house and of his mill were they.' But Enoch seemed to them

'Uncertain as a vision or a dream,

Faint as a figure seen in early dawn
Down at the far end of an avenue,
Going we know not where.'

So fled ten years, and all their nutting times; and then it chanced one evening Annie's children longed to go with others nutting to the wood,' and she went with them; and as they passed they found 'Father Philip' like the working bee in

Sonnet by A. L. Barbauld, vide Palgrave's ‘Treasury,' p. 165.

blossom