When the plaintive Pessimist ("'proud of the title,' as the Living Skeleton said when they showed him") tells us that "not to have been born is best," we may answer with Ulysses -"Life piled on life Were all too little."The Ulysses of Tennyson, of course, is Dante's Ulysses, not Homer's Odysseus, who brought home to Ithaca not one of his mariners. His last known adventure, the journey to the land of men who knew not the savour of salt, Odysseus was to make on foot and alone; so spake the ghost of Tiresias within the poplar pale of Persephone.
The Two Voices expresses the contest of doubts and griefs with the spirit of endurance and joy which speaks alone in Ulysses. The man who is unhappy, but does not want to put an end to himself, has certainly the better of the argument with the despairing Voice. The arguments of "that barren Voice" are, indeed, remarkably deficient in cogency and logic, if we can bring ourselves to strip the discussion of its poetry. The original title, Thoughts of a Suicide, was inappropriate. The suicidal suggestions are promptly faced and confuted, and the mood of the author is throughout that of one who thinks life worth living:-"Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly long'd for death.
'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant;More life, and fuller, that I want."
This appears to be a satisfactory reply to the persons who eke out a livelihood by publishing pessimistic books, and hooting, as the great Alexandre Dumas says, at the great drama of Life.
With The Day-Dream (of The Sleeping Beauty) Tennyson again displays his matchless range of powers. Verse of Society rises into a charmed and musical fantasy, passing from the Berlin-wool work of the period ("Take the broidery frame, and add A crimson to the quaint Macaw")into the enchanted land of the fable: princes immortal, princesses eternally young and fair. The St Agnes and Sir Galahad, companion pieces, contain the romance, as St Simeon Stylites shows the repulsive side of asceticism; for the saint and the knight are young, beautiful, and eager as St Theresa in her childhood. It has been said, I do not know on what authority, that the poet had no recollection of composing Sir Galahad, any more than Scott remembered composing The Bride of Lammermoor, or Thackeray parts of Pendennis.
The haunting of Tennyson's mind by the Arthurian legends prompted also the lovely fragment on the Queen's last Maying, Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, a thing of perfect charm and music. The ballads of Lady Clare and The Lord of Burleigh are not examples of the poet in his strength; for his power and fantasy we must turn to The Vision of Sin, where the early passages have the languid voluptuous music of The Lotos-Eaters, with the ethical element superadded, while the portion beginning -"Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin is in parts reminiscent of Burns's Jolly Beggars. In Break, Break, Break, we hear a note prelusive to In Memoriam, much of which was already composed.
The Poems of 1842 are always vocal in the memories of all readers of English verse. None are more familiar, at least to men of the generations which immediately followed Tennyson's. FitzGerald was apt to think that the poet never again attained the same level, and Iventure to suppose that he never rose above it. For FitzGerald's opinion, right or wrong, it is easy to account. He had seen all the pieces in manuscript; they were his cherished possession before the world knew them. C'est mon homme, he might have said of Tennyson, as Boileau said of Moliere. Before the public awoke FitzGerald had "discovered Tennyson," and that at the age most open to poetry and most enthusiastic in friendship. Again, the Poems of 1842 were SHORT, while The Princess, Maud, and The Idylls of the King were relatively long, and, with In Memoriam, possessed unity of subject.
They lacked the rich, the unexampled variety of topic, treatment, and theme which marks the Poems of 1842. These were all reasons why FitzGerald should think that the two slim green volumes held the poet's work at its highest level. Perhaps he was not wrong, after all.