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man of genius during the last forty years. It comes more intimately home to English sympathies than "Lycidas" or "Adonais," and may be pointed to, perhaps, as the one special monody to which beauty of form and feeling have given an universal currency.-London Athenæum (1863).

Mr. Tennyson's greatest poetical effort.-North British Review.

I have read Tennyson's "In Memoriam," or, rather, part of it; I closed the book when I had got about half way. It is beautiful, it is mournful, it is monotonous. Many of the feelings expressed bear in their utterance the stamp of truth; yet if Arthur Hallam had been somewhat nearer Tennyson-his brother instead of his friend - I should have distrusted this measured and printed movement of grief. What change the lapse of years may work I do not know; but it seems to me that bitter sorrow, while recent, does not flow out in verse. - CHARLOTTE BRONTÉ.

At the age of forty a man blessed with a sound mind in a sound body should reach the maturity of his intellectual power. At such a period Tennyson produced "In Memoriam," his most characteristic and significant work; not so ambitious as his epic of "King Arthur," but more distinctively a poem of this century, and displaying the author's genius in a subjective form. In it are concentrated his wisest reflections upon life, death, and immortality, the worlds within and without, while the whole song is so largely uttered, and so pervaded with the singer's manner that any isolated line is recognized at once. This work stands by itself; none can essay another upon its model without yielding every claim to personality, and at the risk of an inferiority that would be appalling. The strength of Tennyson's intellect has full sweep in this elegiac poem-the great threnody of our language, by virtue of unique conception and power. "Lycidas," with its primrose beauty and varied lofty flights, is but the extension of a theme set by Moschus and Bion. Shelley, in "Adonais," despite his spiritual ecstasy and splendor of lament, followed the same masters-yes, and took his landscape and imagery from distant climes. Swinburne's dirge for Baudelaire is a wonder of melody; nor do we forget the "Thyrsis" of Arnold, and other modern ventures in a direction where the sweet and absolute solemnity of the Saxon tongue is most apparent. Still, as an original and intellectual production, "In Memoriam" is beyond them all, and a more important, though possibly no more enduring, creation of rhythmic art. The metrical form of this work deserves attention. The author's choice of the transposed quatrain verse was a piece of good-fortune. Its hymnal quality, finely exemplified in the opening prayer, is always impressive, and although a monotone, no more monotonous than the sounds of nature-the murmur of ocean, the soughing of the mountain pines. Were "In Memoriam" written in direct quatrains, I think the effect would grow to be unendurable. The work as a whole is built up of successive lyrics, each expressing a single phase of the poet's sorrow-brooding thought; and here again is followed the method of nature, which evolves cell after cell, and joining each to each constructs the sentient organization. But Tennyson's art instincts are always perfect; he does the fitting thing, and rarely seeks, through eccentric and curious movements, to attract the popular regard. As to scenery, imagery, and general treatment, "In Memoriam" is eminently a British poem. The grave, majestic, hymnal measure swells like the peal of an organ, yet acts as a brake on undue spasmodic outbursts of discordant grief. A steady yet varying marche funèbre; a sense of passion held in check, of reserved elegiac power. -E. C. STEDMAN.

His long poem, "In Memoriam," written in praise and memory of a friend who died young, is cold, monotonous, and too prettily arranged. He goes into mourning, but, like a correct gentleman, with bran-new gloves, wipes away his tears with a cambric handkerchief, and displays throughout the religious service which ends the ceremony all the compunction of a respectful and well-trained layman.Η. Α. ΤΑΙΝΕ.

The greatest poem, all things considered, that Tennyson ever wrote is " In Memoriam." Its name indicates one of the most difficult efforts which can be made in literature. It aims at embalming a private sorrow for everlasting remembrance, at rendering a personal grief generally and immortally interesting. The set eye and marble brow of stoicism would cast back human sympathy; the broken accents and convulsive weeping of individual affliction would awaken no nobler emotion than mere pity; it was sorrow in a calm and stately attitude, robed in angel-like beauty, though retaining a look of earnest, endless sadness that would draw generation after generation to the house of mourning. No poet save one possessed not only of commanding genius, but of peculiar qualifications for the task, could have attempted to delineate a sorrow like this. The genius of Tennyson found in the work its precise and most congenial employment; and the result is surely the finest elegiac poem in the world. - PETER BAYNE.

We should be guilty of treason against our deepest convictions were we to pass without a protest the notion that "In Memoriam" is a morbid mistake-the unhealthy product of a man of genius in an unhealthy mood, degrading his genius by employing it in the delineation of a sorrow that is unmanly and exaggerated-a spasmodic utterance of a weak mind that can only affect other weak minds with hysterical emotion, and incapacitate all who subject themselves to its influence for their duties to their fellowmen and their reliance upon the goodness of God. Even if we regarded "In Memoriam" as simply the record of a personal sorrow, a poetical monument to a personal friend, we should be cautious of calling it exaggerated till we were quite certain that there was anything unworthy and unmanly in binding up our hearts with the life of another, and in feeling them quiver with agony when that other life was torn from us. It is easy to understand, when social intercourse goes no deeper than liking and disliking, being amused and bored; when personal relations have dwindled down to club intimacies, and a friend is the man

with whom we dine and play whist, that such a tender and rooted affection as is recorded through "In Memoriam" should appear exaggerated. The question is whether the Pall-Mall standard of human nature be the highest; whether a profound personal affection be really a weakness; or whether, on the Pall-Mall theory, the world would not rapidly become a pigsty or a slaughter-house. Compare the tone in which Shakspeare addresses the male friend to whom the greater number of the sonnets apply, with Tennyson's tone in speaking of Arthur Hallam. If the one is supposed to do no discredit to the soundest-hearted as well as the largest-minded man of modern Europe, why is the other to be called morbid and exaggerated? The critics need not take so much trouble to let the world know that they are not Shakspeares and Tennysons in heart any more than in intellect. No one who knows the class would be in danger of so erroneous a supposition. But there are thousands of men and women whose affections are akin to those of these great poets, and who are grateful for the power of reading in beautiful poetry an adequate expression of their own deepest feelings. We know that such persons find in "In Memoriam" the sort of consolation and strength they find in the Psalms of David.GEORGE BRIMLEY.

"In Memoriam" - in our eyes the noblest Christian poem which England has produced for two centuries-a collection of poems on a vast variety of subjects, but all united, as their name implies, to the memory of a departed friend. We know not whether to envy more the poet the object of his admiration, or that object the monody which has been consecrated to his nobleness. For in this latest and highest volume, written at various intervals during a long series of years, all the poet's peculiar excellences, with all that he has acquired from others, seem to have been fused down into a perfect unity, and brought to bear on his subject with that care and finish which only a labor of love can inspire. We only now know the whole man-all his art, all his insight, all his faculty of discerning the più nell' uno, and the uno nell' più. Everything reminds him of the dead. Every joy or sorrow of man, every aspect of nature, from

"The forest cracked, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huddled on the lea,
The thousand waves of wheat

That ripple round the lonely grange."

In every place where in old days they had met and conversed; in every dark wrestling of the spirit with the doubts and fears of manhood, throughout the whole outward universe of nature, and the whole inward universe of spirit, the soul of his dead friend broods-at first a memory shrouded in blank despair, then a living presence, a ministering spirit, answering doubts, calming fears, stirring up noble aspirations, utter humility, leading the poet upward step by step to faith and peace and hope. Not that there runs throughout the book a conscious or organic method. The poems seem often merely to be united by the identity of their metre, so exquisitely chosen, that while the major rhyme in the second and third lines of each stanza gives the solidity and self-restraint required by such deep themes, the mournful minor rhyme of each first and fourth line always leads the ear to expect something beyond, and enables the poet's thoughts to wander sadly on from stanza to stanza and poem to poem, in an endless chain of

"Linked sweetness long drawn out."

There are records of risings and fallings again, of alternate cloud and sunshine throughout the book - earnest and passionate, yet never bitter; humble, yet never abject; with a depth and vehemence of affection "passing the love of woman," yet without a taunt of sentimentality; self-restrained and dignified, without even narrowing into artificial coldness - altogether rivalling the sonnets of Shakspeare. Why should we not say boldly surpassingfor the sake of the superior faith into which it rises, for the sake of the proem at the opening of the volume-in

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