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But as early as his second publication, Bells and Pomegranates, he had begun to speak for himself, and with Men and Women, a series of poems of amazing variety and brilliance, he placed himself unassailably in the first rank. Like Tennyson's, his genius continued high and undimmed while life was left him.
Its movement, indeed, is not more indolent than that of its lovely prototypes in Shakespeare, As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream. With all the pastorals Time ambles. But, on the other hand, Tennyson's piece is not a match for either of those Shakespearean works, in massiveness of dramatic signification or in the element of opportunity for the art of acting.
Sometimes a Tertullian voices this abdication of the reasoning faculty defiantly certum est quia impossibile est; but more often perhaps the same position is expressed in the spirit of Tennyson's well-known lines, which, indeed, bear directly upon our immediate theme:
He had to sit down again, and thought, half against his will, of that other Enid Tennyson's Enid, in her faded gown and of Prince Geraint's desire to kiss the dainty thumb "that crossed the trencher as she set it down." He at least was no Geraint, he said to himself, to win this gentle maiden's heart. But he watched her nevertheless, with a growing admiration which was not a little dangerous.
James Gardiner, who was extremely proficient on the violincello, was down for a solo, while Eleanor was to play twice. The crowning feature of the concert, however, was to be contributed by Anne and Eleanor. Anne was to recite Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," and Eleanor was to accompany her on the piano with the music that she had arranged for it.
The impression of works like Tennyson's In Memoriam or Idylls of the King, common text-books in colleges, the steady pressure of Acts of the British Government in India, like that raising the marriage age of girls; the example of men in authority like Lord Curzon, during whose vice-regal tour in South India there were no nautch entertainments; the necessity of understanding expressions like "general election" and "public spirit," and of comprehending in some measure the working of local self-government all such constant pressure must effect a change in the mental standpoint.
It is difficult at the present time, when Tennyson's poetry has become a part of the air we breathe, to look back into the world of literature as it existed before he came. There is a keen remembrance, lingering ineradicably with the writer, of a little girl coming to school once upon recitation day, with a "piece" of her own selection safely stored away in her childish memory.
At home, too, everyone seemed to think it a matter for smiles, and laughed at the two tender little consciences. So they both ran back after dinner to Mrs. Tennyson's. But on the way Kathie said, "They let us, the minister and ev'ry body, but if it is wicked ever, how isn't it wicked now?" "I s'pose 'cause we're children," Lu said wisely. The logical trouble thus laid, they tripped on.
Less truculent boatmen I never saw than those who rowed us ashore at Naples; they were so quiet and peaceful that they harmonized perfectly with that tranquil scene of drowsy-twinkling city lights, slumbrous mountains, and calm sea, and, as they dipped softly toward us in the glare of the steamer's lamps, I could only think of Tennyson's description:
The poet's walks were shared by Arthur Hallam, then affianced to his sister Emily. By 1832 most of the poems of Tennyson's second volume were circulating in MS. among his friends, and no poet ever had friends more encouraging. Perhaps bards of to-day do not find an eagerness among their acquaintance for effusions in manuscript, or in proof- sheets. Infamous or not, it is extremely diverting.
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