VICTORIAN VERSE MACAULAY. 477. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859) was born at Rothley Temple, Leicester, and died at Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, Kensington. He was buried in the Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey He was a most insatiable reader and a brilliant and versatile writer. History, biography, essays, all flowed from his untiring pen. A trip to Italy inspired a book of poems, Lays of Ancient Rome, 1842,—ringing, martial verse, of a healthy robust order. This book with a few other battle-pieces shows his power to grasp and retain the purely picturesque side of historic character and incident, and complete his contribution to our poetry. (See Int. Eng. Lit. 407 et seq.) THE BATTLE OF IVRY. Ivry, a village in France where the battle was fought, March 14, 1590, between Henry of Navarre, the champion of Protestantism, and the forces of the Roman Catholic League" (see Motley's United Netherlands, Vol. III. Ch. XXIII)-6. Rochelle A fortified seaport town of France, a stronghold of the Huguenots. 478.-15. Appenzel's stout infantry. Appenzel is a double Canton in Switzerland, one half of which is stanchly Protestant, while the other half is Roman Catholic. The people use a peculiar dialect and wear a distinctive dress. In this passage the Roman Catholics are obviously meant.—Egmont's Flemish spears. Count Philip of Egmont, a foremost man in the Spanish army, who commanded a body of Flemish troopers. -16 Lorraine, etc. Henry of Lorraine, Duke of Guise, spy and agent of Philip II. of Spain.-Mayenne, Duke of Mayenne, lieutenant-general for the League.-17. Truncheon, a commander's staff.-19. Coligni, i.e., Gaspard de Coligni, the great commander who had espoused the cause of the Huguenots and who was murdered on the Eve of St. Bartholomew by the Roman Catholics. The remembrance of that horrible massacre always inspired the opposite party to renewed action.-31. Oriflamme. The banner of France, a red flag on a golden staff (or gold, flamme = a flag). = = Allemagne = 479.-35. Guelders. A Dutch province half Protestant and half Roman Catholic.-Almayne Germany, used sometimes in the broad sense of the land on the Continent within which the Germanic nations are dominant, hence Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, etc.-42. D'Aumale. Charles de Lorraine, duke D'Aumale, an ardent partisan of the League. 480.-Lord of Rosny. Maximilian de Bethune Sully, Marquis and Duke of Rosney. He fought with the squadron which met Egmont's first onset, and received seven wounds.55. Cornet. The standard of a troop of cavalry.-64. Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles. An allusion to the moneys received from the Spanish conquest of Mexico. pistole was a common name in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere for coins of differing values. TENNYSON. OF Th A REESE LIER UNIVERS' OF 481. ALFRED TENNYSON, in whose verse the deepest life of Victorian England has found its most comprehensive, artistic, and perhaps most enduring expression, was born at the village of Somersby, Lincolnshire, in 1809. He belonged to a family distinguished by physical vigor and a poetic temperament. Tennyson was "the fourth of twelve children, . . . most of them more or less true poets, and of whom all except two have lived to 70 and upwards." Tennyson entered Cambridge in 1828; here he became intimate with Arthur H. Hallam, whose early death was the occasion of In Memoriam. A book of juvenile verse, written in conjunction with his brother Charles, entitled Poems by Two Brothers, appeared in 1826. In 1829 he gained the University prize by his poem of Timbuctoo, and in 1830 he published his first independent venture, Poems Chiefly Lyrical. A similar collection appeared in 1833, and then, after an interval of silent growth, the collected poems of 1842, which placed him beyond all question among the greatest English poets of his time. In 1850 he published In Memoriam, probably the most thoughtful and original of his poems, and succeeded Wordsworth in the Laureateship. During the latter half of his life Tennyson's strength was largely given to the Idylls of the King, a poem (or series of poems) on the Arthurian legend, and to his dramas, the most important of which deal with English historical themes. The first instalment of the Idylls appeared in 1859, while Balin and Balan, the last of the twelve Idylls which comprise the completed work, was not published until 1885. Tennyson's work as a dramatist dates from Queen Mary, 1875. Tennyson, like Browning, worked to the end of a long life. He died at his home in Farringford, Isle of Wight, in 1892. LOCKSLEY HALL. Lockslay Hall first appeared in the volume of poems published in 1842. Tennyson says of it: "The whole poem represents young life, its good side, its deficiencies, and its yearnings." He tells us further that " Locksley Hall' is an imaginary place (tho'the coast is Lincolnshire), and the hero is imaginary." (Alfred Lord Tennyson: a Memoir, by His Son, I. 195.) But the poem represents not merely young life in general, but a young man at a time when the youth of England was stirred by the marvels of invention and of scientific discovery. More than forty years after the publication of this poem Tennyson wrote a sequel, Locksley Hall Sixty Year After-a poem which represents not merely the changed attitude of the hero toward science and democracy, but the changed feeling of the time. The two poems are, as Hallam Tennyson says, descriptive of the tone of the age at two distant periods of his [Tennyson's] life," and should be carefully compared. (See Hallam Tennyson's Memoir of his father, II. 329.) 483.-35-41. Many a morning, etc. These lines are a good example of the natural background forming a setting in accord with man's mood or feeling. We have seen how love first came in the beauty and life of springtime, but the moorland which the lovers delighted in together becomes dreary," and the shore "barren," after one of them has proved faithless. It may be that this changed aspect of nature is due to what Ruskin has named "the pathetic fallacy" (Modern Painters, Pt. IV. Ch. XII), that is, that man is apt to color his surroundings with the tone of his own feelings; or Tennyson may have chosen to select a season when nature is dreariest for the disappointed hero's return. In either case he has heightened the effect. 485.-59-63. Cursed be, etc. Tennyson's general attitude was conservative, but on two points he held very positive and radical views. He was impressed with the dangers of the modern money-getting spirit, and he protested in many poems against allowing a worship of wealth and social position to prevent an otherwise desirable marriage (see Aylmer's Field and Maud). In The Miller's Daughter, on the other hand, he shows us love, triumphant over social differences, resulting in a happy married life. 486.-76. That a sorrow's crown of sorrows, etc. When we compare the original (Inf. V. 121): Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice (There is no greater pain than to recall a happy time in wretchedness), we cannot but notice that Dante's lines gain by their simplicity, a strength which Tennyson's lose by their ornateness. Indeed simplicity is not one of the distinctive merits of Tennyson's style. (See Int. Eng. Lit. 473.) 487.-100-107. Every door is barr'd with gold, etc. Tennyson felt very strongly, especially in his later years, that England was becoming more and more a slave to wealth. It was not only the door of marriage that was "barr'd with gold," but other doors as well, and even the honor of the nation could be sullied by a love of greed. Note how this danger is pointed out in To the Queen (an epilogue to The Idylls of the King, and cf. also Maud). 488.-117-127. Men, my brothers, etc. The system of railroad transportation in England dates from about 1830. The electric telegraph was patented in 1837. The increased application of those two great forces, steam and electricity, meant an inevitable change in the social conditions of England. (See Int. Eng. Lit 402.)-121. Argosies. Cf. note on Keats' Eve of St. Agnes, 268. 489.-127-131. Till the war-drum, etc. Tennyson believed to the last that universal peace could only be attained through war. (Cf. Epilogue to The Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava, and a more direct parallel of this passage in Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (11. 166-175). See, also, H. Tennyson's Memoir, I. 400.)—135, 136. Slowly comes a hungry people, etc. This is but one of many passages in which Tennyson expresses distrust of the power of the rising democracy. The Palace of Art: "The people here, a beast of burden slow, Toil'd onward, prick'd with goads and stings; The heads and crowns of kings." Cf. in Cf., also, the allusion to the French Revolution in Locksley Hall Sixty Years After: "France had shown a light to all men, preach'd a gospel, all men's good; Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood," 489-90.-137-143. Yet I doubt not thro' the ages, etc. We find this idea of Evolution, as a law working in nature, for good and with a purpose, expressed again and again throughout Tennyson's work. Take, for example, the following passage from In Memoriam, LIV: "Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill," etc. Cf. also, sections LV. and LVI. of that poem. The unimportance of the individual in comparison with the working out of this cosmic process, suggested in 1. 142, and "the individual withers," etc., recurs more fully in In Mem., LV. "Are God and Nature then at strife, 491.-157-184. Or to burst all links of habit, etc. The following picture of a life of pure physical enjoyment and freedom from a civilized man's responsibilities strongly suggests The Lotus-Eaters. In that poem the wanderers yield to the same temptation here presented, to lead a life of dreamful ease in the exquisite tropical land before them; here the hero turns away from the lower life, and his cry is "Forward! forward!" "Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." Tennyson also suggests the natural reaction of an over-civilization toward a primitive life in his stanzas beginning: "You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease.” 492.-182. Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change. Tennyson tells us: "When I went by the first train from Liverpool to Manchester (1830), I thought that the wheels ran in a groove. It was black night and there was such a vast crowd round the train at the station that we could not see the wheels. Then I made this line." (Memoirs, I. 195.) ULYSSES. 493. This poem, published in 1842, is a contrast-study to The Lotus-Eaters. There we see Ulysses and his comrades yielding to the enchantments of a land that offered a life of perfect rest and peace. Here the desire is all for action. We learn through Hallam Tennyson (Memoirs, I. 196) that Ulysses |