Versatile and graceful to the last, even in fields remote from that of his power, he published in 1892 his last drama, The Foresters, a romantic pastoral play, which achieved a brilliant success when produced by Mr. Daly in New York, with Miss Ada Rehan as Maid Marian. Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and the life under the greenwood tree must have conveyed something of the charm of English country life in the olden time to American audiences, whose ancestors' life indeed it was. But the harp from whose magic strings flowed the ever-varying, ever-melodious music that had seemed in English ears the sweetest of its time, was soon to be silent. In the autumn of 1892, but a few weeks before the publication of The Death of Enone and Akbar's Dream, rumours were heard of the poet's illness, and on October 6, before dawn, but in a room flooded with the quiet moonlight, the end came. He was buried among his peers and beside his friend, Robert Browning, in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. CHAPTER II. IN the spring of 1827, Charles and Alfred Tennyson were partners in a literary venture. The preface to the volume, which had for motto the line from Martial, "Hæc nos novimus esse nihil," stated that the "poems were written from the ages of fifteen to eighteen, not conjointly, but individually." In Messrs. Macmillan's "Poems by Two edition of 1893 the preface by Hallam, Lord Tennyson, contains the further in- Brothers," formation obtained from his father that he 1827. (Alfred) was between fifteen and seventeen when the poems were written, his brother Charles between fifteen and eighteen, and that four poems now signed "F. T." were by Frederick Tennyson, the eldest brother. In this latter edition the initials, supplied by Frederick Tennyson, of the supposed authors, either "A. T." or "C. T.," are appended to each of the poems, but we are warned that there is no certainty as to the authorship in individual cases.* Without the help of the initials, however, and despite the fact that the music now familiar as Tennysonian is nowhere to be heard in the book, there is little difficulty in determining the work of each author. * Some additional poems are for the first time printed in this edition. They belonged to the original MS. of 1827, but were omitted for some forgotten reason. After one perusal I was struck by the fact that the more ambitious poems are the work of one hand, and that hand is proved to be Alfred's by the occasional phrases to be met with which appear again in his later poetry-as, for example, in this volume, in the poem entitled Egypt, occur these lines: "The first glitter of his rising beam Falls on the broad-based pyramids sublime;" and in A Fragment, published by Alfred in the Gem in 1830, these occur: "Yet endure unscathed Of changeful cycles, the great Pyramids And here in Oriana the lines, "Winds were blowing, waters flowing, Aloud the hollow bugle blowing, Oriana," echo a similar movement in the Vale of Bones: "When on to battle proudly going, Your plumage to the wild winds blowing, I have noticed a number of these similarities and resemblances, and think it would be no difficult task to pick out with tolerable certainty the poems by Alfred from among the one hundred and two poems of which the volume is composed. The vein of feeling in Charles's poems is more tranquil, more domestic, and the themes chosen far less difficult. Alfred is the bolder adventurer, and ranges further in his search for subjects. His work seems to express a more de liberate determination to be poetic, and effort is more distinctly characteristic of his contributions to the book than those of Charles, which may be unhesitatingly described as by comparison spontaneous and natural. It may at once be said that there is no mark of distinction, no promise of future greatness in these poems. They are rather, indeed, remarkable for the absence of the puerility one might naturally expect to be somewhere betrayed in a series of such youthful efforts, than by any positive qualities. Many of the poems written by Alfred Tennyson in later years, such as, for example, The Skipping-Rope or The English War Song (of 1830), reach a lower deep of inanity than any printed in this first volume. For the rest an acquaintance with the poetry of the world such as few schoolboys can boast is plentifully exhibited in the mottoes prefixed to most of the verses. The Latin poets, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, are laid under contribution; Milton, Gray, Byron, Scott, and Moore among English poets; and occasional prose authors are represented-in short, a goodly company-among which, of course, the English writers, and Byron in. particular, predominate. The boys, and it is significant when we attempt to fix for ourselves the place which the future will assign to Alfred Tennyson-the boys were cradled into poetry by the best poets of the world. The determination to be poets preceded any true poetic faculty, and in Alfred's case we must regard that determination, leading as it did to lifelong, indefatigable labour in the effort to obtain an artist's command over his medium, an artist's mastery in technique, as in large measure the power which, joined with the true poetic vision of later years, made him the poet he eventually became. The versification and metrical movement of this early verse are, of course, entirely derivative; Byron's Hebrew Melodies and Moore's Irish Melodies supply much of the inspiration. The boys had indeed, as Coleridge said of Alfred, "begun to write poetry without very well understanding what metre was," and this volume is composed of a series of imitative metrical essays. Imitative they are, however, in a catholic spirit, no one model being exclusively followed. The only notice of the book in which the brothers "crossed the Rubicon" together, as they expressed it in the preface, appeared in The Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review (May 19, 1827). "This little volume," remarked the writer, "exhibits a pleasing union of kindred tastes, and contains several little pieces of considerable merit." In the first year of his Cambridge residence Tennyson was a candidate for the Chancellor's Medal in English Verse-the subject Timbuctoo. Among his rivals were Monckton Milnes and Arthur Timbuctoo, Hallam. Hallam's poem, composed in the and the terza rima of Dante, may be read in the "Poems" of volume of his Remains in Verse and Prose, 1830. published in 1834. Tennyson's poem is now accessible in Messrs. Macmillan's edition of Poems by Two Brothers, to which it forms a natural conclusion. The exercises were submitted to the University Examiners in April, and upon June 12, 1829, the following announcement appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle and Journal: "On Saturday last the Chancellor's Gold Medal for the best English poem by a resident undergraduate was adjudged to Alfred Tennyson, of Trinity College." This |