6 INTRODUCTION
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875, Queen Mary: A Drama ; in 1877, Harold: A Drama ; in1880, Ballads and Other Poems. Tennyson’s Muse has been productive of a body of lyric, idyllic,metaphysical, and narrative or descriptive poetry, the choicest,rarest, daintiest, and of the most exquisite workmanship of anythat the century has to show. In a strictly dramatic direction hecan hardly be said to have been successful. His Queen Mary isbut little short of a failure as a drama, and his Harold but apartial success. With action proper he has shown but littlesympathy, and in the domain of vicarious thinking and feeling,in which Robert Browning is so pre-eminent, but little ability.But no one who is well acquainted with all the best poetry of thenineteenth century will hesitate to pronounce him facile princeps in the domain of the lyric and idyllic; and in these departments of poetry he has developed a style at once individual and, in anartistic point of view, almost ‘‘faultily faultless”—a style whichmay be traced from his earliest efforts up to the most completeperfection of his latest poetical works. The splendid poetry he has given to the world has been theproduct of the most patient elaboration. No English poet, withthe exception of Milton, Wordsworth, and the Brownings, everworked with a deeper sense of the divine mission of poetry thanTennyson has worked. And he has worked faithfully, earnestly,and conscientiously to realize the ideal with which he appears tohave been early possessed. To this idea he gave expression intwo of his early poems, entitled The Poet and The Poet's Mind ;and in another of his early poems, The Lady of Shalott, is mys-tically shadowed forth the relations which poetic ggnius shouldsustain to the world for whose spiritual redemption it labors, andthe fatal consequences of its being seduced by the world’s tempta-tions—the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and thepride of life. Great thinkers and writers owe their power among men, notnecessarily so much to a wide range of ideas, or to the originalityof their ideas, as to the intense vitality which they are able toimpart to some one comprehensive, fructifying idea, with which,through constitution and the circumstances of their times, theyhave become possessed. It is only when a man is really pos-sessed with an idea (that is, if it does not run away with him) INTRODUCTION q that he can express it with a quickening power, and ring allpossible changes upon it. What may be said to be the dominant idea, and the mostvitalized, in the poetry of Alfred Tennyson? It is easily noted,It glints forth everywhere in his poetry. It is, that the completeman must be a well-poised duality of the active and the passiveor receptive; must unite with an “ all-subtilizing intellect,” an“‘all-comprehensive tenderness ” ; must ‘‘ gain in sweetness andin moral height, nor lose the wrestling thews that throw theworld.” [Thus far Dr. Corson, of Cornell University, in his Introduc-tion to The Two Voices and A Dream of Fair Women, poemsedited by him for Maynard’s English Classic Series. | THE PRINCESS : The Princess was first printed in 1847, and the fifth and defini-tive edition was published in 1853. At the time of its first publi-cation, the movement in favor of woman’s rights was in great danger, because of the absurd length to which it had been carried 3by ill-advised and short-sighted reformers, of defeating its own peends. The general public did not, as a rule, see the importance i and significance of the agitation underlying the absurdities andviolence which had become incorporated with the movement.‘< If women ever play such freaks,” wrote Tennyson to Mr. Daw-~son in a letter expressing the poet’s appreciation of the latter’s“* Study of ‘ The Princess,’ ” ‘‘the burlesque and the tragic mightgo hand in hand,” and this remark is significant of the poet’s method in the attempt to point out the true life of woman. The poem is, igas its sub-title implies, miscellaneous in subject-matter and intreatment. If, as Dr. Van Dyke thinks, this is its most serious — ~defect, yet it is a defect that is all but inevitable; for the subje bitounof woman’s rights could not, at that time, be discussed in all | =seriousness and gain the hearing which it must gain to accom-plish its end; for the poem is essentially didactic. That Tennysonrecognized the dangers of the mock-heroie style is evident frompassages in the Prologue and Conclusion which are more definitely —pointed out in the notes. Professor Wallace has instanced a passage from Gonite's Sys-tem of Positive Polity as an admirable summary of the teaching acf the poem: a “Viewed thus, marriage is the most elementary, and yet themost perfect, mode of social life. It is the only association inwhich entire identity of interests is possible. In this union, tothe moral completeness of which the language of all civilizednations bears testimony, the noblest aim of human life is realized,as far as it ever can be. For the object of human existence, asshown in the second chapter, is progress of every kind; progressin morality, that is to say, in the subjection of self-interest tosocial feeling, holding the first rank. Now this unquestionableprinciple, which has been already indicated in the second chapter, _ ae
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