WORDSWORTH
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, on April 7th, 1770. His father, John Wordsworth, was the agent of Sir J. Lowther, who later became the first Earl of Lonsdale. At the age of eight the boy was sent to school at Hawkshead. The impressions of his boyhood period are related in the autobiographical poem, The Prelude, (written 1805, published 1850), and from this poetical record we discern how strong the influences of Nature were to shape and develop his imagination. Wordsworth's father died in 1783, leaving the family poorly provided for. The main asset was a considerable claim upon the Earl of Lonsdale, which that individual refused to pay. On his death, in 1802, the successor to the title and estates paid the amount of the claim in full with accumulated interest. In the interval, however, the Wordsworth family remained in very straitened circumstances. Enough money was provided by Wordsworth's guardians to send him to Cambridge University In 1787. He entered St. John's College, and after an undistinguished course graduated without honors in January, 1791. His vacations were spent chiefly in Hawkshead and Wales, but one memorable vacation was marked by a walking excursion with a friend through France and Switzerland, the former country then being on the verge of revolution.
Shortly after leaving the University, in November, 1791, Wordsworth returned to France, remaining there until December of the following year. During this period he was completely won over to the principles of the revolution. The later reaction from these principles constituted the one moral struggle of his life.
In 1793 his first work appeared before the public—two poems, entitled The Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. Coleridge, who read these pieces at Cambridge, divined that they announced the emergence of an original poetical genius above the horizon. Readers of the poems to-day, who are wise after the event, could scarcely divine as much. At about this period Wordsworth received a bequest of 900 pounds from Raisley Calvert, which enabled him and his sister Dorothy to take a small cottage at Racedown in Dorsetshire. Here he wrote a number of poems in which he worked off the ferment of his revolutionary ideas. These ideas can scarcely be said to have troubled him much in later years.
An important incident in his life, hardly second in importance to the stimulating companionship of his sister, was his meeting with Coleridge, which occurred probably towards the close of 1795. Coleridge, who was but little younger than Wordsworth, had the more richly equipped, if not the more richly endowed, mind. He was living at Nether Stowey, and in order to benefit by the stimulus which such a friendship offered, the Wordsworth's moved to Alfoxden, three miles away from Stowey (July, 1797). It was during a walking expedition to the Quantock Hills in November of that year that the poem of The Ancient Mariner was planned. It was intended that the poem should be a joint production, but Wordsworth's contribution was confined to the suggestion of a few details merely, and some scattered lines which are indicated in the notes to that poem. Their poetic theories were soon to take definite shape in the publication of the famous Lyrical Ballads (September, 1798), to which Coleridge contributed The Ancient Mariner, and Wordsworth some characteristic lyrical, reflective, and narrative poems. The excessive simplicity and alleged triviality of some of these poems long continued to give offence to the conservative lovers of poetry. Even to-day we feel that Wordsworth was sometimes the victim of his own theories.
In June of this same year (1798) Wordsworth and his sister accompanied Coleridge to Germany. They soon parted company, the Wordsworths settling at Goslar, while Coleridge, intent upon study, went in search of German metaphysics at Gottingen. Wordsworth did not come into any contract with German life or thought, but sat through the winter by a stove writing poems for a second edition of the Lyrical Ballads. April, 1799, found the brother and sister again in England. In December they settled down at Dove Cottage, Town End, Grasmere, and never, save for brief intervals, abandoned the Lake Country. In 1802, as has been said, a slight accession of fortune fell to Wordsworth by the settlement of the Lonsdale claim. The share of each of the family was 1,800 pounds. On the strength of this wind-fall the poet felt that he might marry, and accordingly brought home Mary Hutchinson as his wife.
The subsequent career of Wordsworth belongs to the history of poetry. Of events in the ordinary sense there are few to record. He successively occupies three houses in the Lake Country after abandoning Dove Cottage. We find him at Allan Bank in 1808, in the Parsonage at Grasmere in 1810, and at Rydal Mount from 1813 to his death in 1850. He makes occasional excursions to Scotland or the Continent, and at long intervals visits London, where Carlyle sees him and records his vivid impressions. For many years Wordsworth enjoys the sinecure of Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland (400 pounds a year), and on his resignation of that office in his son's favor, he is placed on the Civil List for a well deserved pension of 300 pounds. On Southey's death, in 1843, he is appointed Poet Laureate. He died at Grasmere on April 23rd, 1850.
Wordsworth's principal long poems are: The Prelude (1805 published 1850); The Excursion (1814); The White Doe of Rylstone (1815) and Peter Bell The Waggoner (1819). His fame rests principally on his shorter narrative poems, his meditative lyrics, including his two great odes, To Duty and On the Intimations of Immortality, and on the sonnets, which rank with the finest in the language. The longer poems have many fine passages exhibiting his powers of graphic description, and illustrating his mystical philosophy of nature.
Thomas Carlyle's description of Wordsworth is of interest: "For the rest, he talked well in his way; with veracity, easy brevity, and force, as a wise tradesman would of his tools and workshop, and as no unwise one could. His voice was good, frank, and sonorous, though practically clear, distinct, and forcible, rather than melodious; the tone of him, businesslike, sedately confident; no discourtesy, yet no anxiety about being courteous. A fine wholesome rusticity, fresh as his mountain breezes, sat well on the stalwart veteran, and on all he said and did. You would have said that he was a usually taciturn man, glad to unlock himself to audience sympathetic and intelligent, when such offered itself. His face bore marks of much, not always peaceful, meditation; the look of it not bland or benevolent so much as close, impregnable, and hard; a man multa tacere loquive paratus, in a world where he had experienced no lack of contradictions as he strode along. The eyes were not very brilliant, but they had a quiet clearness; there was enough of brow, and well-shaped; rather too much cheek ('horse face' I have heard satirists say); face of squarish shape, and decidedly longish, as I think the head itself was (its length going horizontal); he was large-boned, lean, but still firm-knit, tall, and strong-looking when he stood, a right good old steel-gray figure, with rustic simplicity and dignity about him, and a vivacious strength looking through him, which might have suited one of those old steel-gray markgrafs whom Henry the Fowler set up towards the 'marches' and do battle with the intrusive heathen in a stalwart and judicious manner."
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
Born, April 7, 1770, at Cockermouth, Cumberland.
Goes to Hawkshead Grammar School, 1778.
Sent by guardians to St. John's College, Cambridge, October, 1787.
Foreign tour with Jones, 1790.
Graduates as B.A. without honors, January, 1791.
Residence in France, November, 1791, to December, 1792.
Publication of The Evening Walk, and Descriptive Sketches, 1793.
Legacy from Raisley Calvert of 900 pounds, 1794.
Lives at Racedown, Dorsetshire, autumn of 1795 to summer of 1797.
Composes The Borderers, a tragedy, 1795-1796.
Close friendship with Coleridge begins in 1797.
Rents a house at Alfoxden, 1797.
Genesis of the Lyrical Ballads, 1797.
Lyrical Ballads published September, 1798.
German visit, September, 1798, to April, 1799.
Lives at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, December 21, 1799 to 1806, 1807-1808.
The Lonsdale debt of 8,500 pounds repaid, 1802.
Marries Mary Hutchinson, October, 1802.
Death by drowning of his brother, Captain John Wordsworth, 1805.
Lives at Coleorton, Leicestershire, 1806 to 1807.
Collected Edition of poems, 1807.
Lives at Allan Bank, Easedale, 1808 to 1810.
Lives at the Parsonage, Grasmere, 1810 to 1812.
Loss of two children and removal to Rydal Mount, Grasmere, 1813 to 1850.
Appointed distributor of stamps for Westmoreland (400 pounds a year), 1813.
The Excursion appears, July, 1814.
Honorary degree of D.C.L. from Oxford, 1839.
Resigns his office as distributor of stamps, 1842.
Receives a pension from Sir R. Peel of 300 pounds, 1842.
Appointed Poet Laureate, 1843.
Dies at Grasmere, April 23, 1850.
APPRECIATIONS
Coleridge, with rare insight, summarized Wordsworth's characteristic defects and merits as follows;
"The first characteristic, though only occasional defect, which I appear to myself to find in these poems is the inconstancy of the style. Under this name I refer to the sudden and unprepared transitions from lines or sentences of peculiar felicity (at all events striking and original) to a style, not only unimpassioned but undistinguished.
"The second defect I can generalize with tolerable accuracy, if the reader will pardon an uncouth and newly-coined word. There is, I should say, not seldom a matter-of-factness in certain poems. This may be divided into, first, a laborious minuteness and fidelity in the representation of objects, and there positions, as they appeared to the poet himself; secondly, the insertion of accidental circumstances, in order to the full explanation of his living characters, their dispositions and actions; which circumstances might be necessary to establish the probability of a statement in real life, when nothing is taken for granted by the hearer; but appear superfluous in poetry, where the reader is willing to believe for his own sake. . .
"Third; an undue predilection for the dramatic form in certain poems, from which one or other of two evils result. Either the thoughts and diction are different from that of the poet, and then there arises an incongruity of style; or they are the same and indistinguishable, where two are represented as talking, while in truth one man only speaks. . .
"The fourth class of defects is closely connected with the former; but yet are such as arise likewise from an intensity of feeling disproportionate to such knowledge and value of the objects described, as can be fairly anticipated of men in general, even of the most cultivated classes; and with which therefore few only, and those few particularly circumstanced, can be supposed to sympathize: in this class, I comprise occasional prolixity, repetition, and an eddying, instead of progression, of thought. . .
"Fifth and last; thoughts and images too great for the subject. This is an approximation to what might be called mental bombast, as distinguished from verbal: for, as in the latter there is a disproportion of the expressions to the thoughts, so in this there is a disproportion of thought to the circumstance and occasion. . .
"To these defects, which . . . are only occasional, I may oppose . . . the following (for the most part correspondent) excellencies:
"First; an austere purity of language both grammatically and logically; in short a perfect appropriateness of the words to the meaning. . .
"The second characteristic excellence of Mr. Wordsworth's works is—a correspondent weight and sanity of the thoughts and sentiments, won not from books, but from the poet's own meditative observations. They are fresh and have the dew upon them. . .
"Third; . . . the sinewy strength and originality of single lines and paragraphs; the frequent curiosa felicitas of his diction. . .
"Fourth; the perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions as taken immediately from nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy with the very spirit which gives the physiognomic expressions to all the works of nature. Like a green field reflected in a calm and perfectly transparent lake, the image is distinguished from the reality only by its greater softness and lustre. Like the moisture or the polish on a pebble, genius neither distorts nor false-colors its objects; but on the contrary, brings out many a vein and many a tint, which escape the eye of common observation, thus raising to the rank of gems what had been often kicked away by the hurrying foot of the traveller on the dusty high-road of custom. . .
"Fifth; a meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtle thought with sensibility; a sympathy with man as man; the sympathy indeed of a contemplator, rather than a fellow-sufferer or co-mate, but of a contemplator, from whose view no difference of rank conceals the sameness of the nature; no injuries of wind or weather, of toil, or even of ignorance, wholly disguise the human face divine. The superscription and the image of the Creator still remains legible to him under the dark lines, with which guilt or calamity had cancelled or cross-barred it. Here the Man and the Poet lose and find themselves in each other, the one as glorified, the latter as substantiated. In this mild and philosophic pathos, Wordsworth appears to me without a compeer. Such as he is; so he writes.
"Last and pre-eminently, I challenge for this poet the gift of imagination in the highest and strictest sense of the word. In the play of fancy, Wordsworth, to my feelings, is not always graceful, and sometimes recondite. . . But in imaginative power, he stands nearest of all writers to Shakespeare and Milton; and yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and his own."
These are the grounds upon which Coleridge bases the poetic claims of
Wordsworth.
Matthew Arnold, in the preface to his well-known collection of Wordsworth's poems, accords to the poet a rank no less exalted. "I firmly believe that the poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after that of Shakespeare and Milton, of which all the world now recognizes the worth, undoubtedly the most considerable in our language from the Elizabethan age to the present time." His essential greatness is to be found in his shorter pieces, despite the frequent intrusion of much that is very inferior. Still it is "by the great body of powerful and significant work which remains to him after every reduction and deduction has been made, that Wordsworth's superiority is proved."
Coleridge had not dwelt sufficiently, perhaps, upon the joyousness which results from Wordsworth's philosophy of human life and external nature. This Matthew Arnold considers to be the prime source of his greatness. "Wordsworth's poetry is great because of the extraordinary power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in the simple primary affections and duties; and because of the extraordinary power with which, in case after case, he shows us this joy, and renders it so as to make us share it." Goethe's poetry, as Wordsworth once said, is not inevitable enough, is too consciously moulded by the supreme will of the artist. "But Wordsworth's poetry," writes Arnold, "when he is at his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as Nature herself. It might seem that Nature not only gave him the matter for his poem, but wrote his poem for him." The set poetic style of The Excursion is a failure, but there is something unique and unmatchable in the simple grace of his narrative poems and lyrics. "Nature herself seems, I say, to take the pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises from two causes: from the profound sincereness with which Wordsworth feels his subject, and also from the profoundly sincere and natural character of his subject itself. He can and will treat such a subject with nothing but the most plain, first hand, almost austere naturalness. His expression may often be called bald, as, for instance, in the poem of Resolution and Independence; but it is bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur. . . Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of profound truth of subject with profound truth of execution, he is unique."
Professor Dowden has also laid stress upon the harmonious balance of Wordsworth's nature, his different faculties seeming to interpenetrate one another, and yield mutual support. He has likewise called attention to the austere naturalism of which Arnold speaks. "Wordsworth was a great naturalist in literature, but he was also a great Idealist; and between the naturalist and the idealist in Wordsworth no opposition existed: each worked with the other, each served the other. While Scott, by allying romance with reality, saved romantic fiction from the extravagances and follies into which it had fallen, Wordsworth's special work was to open a higher way for naturalism in art by its union with ideal truth."
Criticism has long since ceased to ridicule his Betty Foy, and his Harry Gill, whose "teeth, they chatter, chatter still." Such malicious sport proved only too easy for Wordsworth's contemporaries, and still the essential value of his poetry was unimpaired.
The range of poetry is indeed inexhaustible, and even the greatest poets must suffer some subtraction from universal pre-eminence. Therefore we may frankly admit the deficiencies of Wordsworth,—that he was lacking in dramatic force and in the power of characterization; that he was singularly deficient in humor, and therefore in the saving grace of self-criticism in the capacity to see himself occasionally in a ridiculous light; that he has little of the romantic glamor and none of the narrative energy of Scott; that Shelley's lyrical flights leave him plodding along the dusty highway; and that Byron's preternatural force makes his passion seen by contrast pale and ineffectual. All this and more may freely be granted, and yet for his influence upon English thought, and especially upon the poetic thought of his country, he must be named after Shakespeare and Milton. The intellectual value of his work will endure; for leaving aside much valuable doctrine, which from didactic excess fails as poetry, he has brought into the world a new philosophy of Nature and has emphasised in a manner distinctively his own the dignity of simple manhood.—Pelham Edgar.
REFERENCES ON WORDSWORTH'S LIFE AND WORKS
Wordsworth by F. W. H. Myers, in English Men of Letters series. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
Wordsworth by Walter Raleigh, London: Edward Arnold.
Wordsworth by Rosaline Masson, in The People's Books series. London: T. C. & E. C. Jack,
Wordsworthiana edited by William Knight. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
Essays Chiefly on Poetry by Aubrey de Vere, 2 volumes. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
Literary Essays by Richard Holt Hutton. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
Studies in Literature by Edward Dowden. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.
Aspects of Poetry by J. S. C. Shairp. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company.
Lives of Great English Writers from Chaucer to Browning by Walter S. Hinchman and Francis B. Gummere. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
Great English Poets by Julian Hill. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co.
The Greater English Poets of the Nineteenth Century by William Morton Payne. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
The Religious Spirit in the Poets by W. Boyd Carpenter, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co,
Landscape in Poetry from Homer to Tennyson by Francis T. Palgrave. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
A History of Nineteenth Century Literature by George Saintsbury. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
Personal Traits of British Authors by E. T. Mason. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
The English Poets edited by T. Humphrey Ward, Vol. iv. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
Selections from Wordsworth edited by Matthew Arnold in The Golden Treasury Series. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
Literary Studies by Walter Bagehot, Vol. ii. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
A Study of English and American Poets by J. Scott Clark. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Prophets of the Century edited by Arthur Rickett. London: Ward Lock and Co., Limited.
History of English Literature by A. S. Mackenzie. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
A Student's History of English Literature by William Edward Simonds. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
Poems of William Wordsworth edited by Edward Dowden. Boston: Ginn & Company.
Home Life of Great Authors by Hattie Tyng Griswold. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.
NOTES
MICHAEL
The poem was composed in 1800, and published in the second volume of the Lyrical Ballads in the same year. "Written at the Town-end, Grasmere, about the same time as The Brothers. The Sheep-fold, on which so much of the poem turns, remains, or rather the ruins of it. The character and circumstances of Luke were taken from a family to whom had belonged, many years before, the house we lived in at Town-end, along with some fields and woodlands on the eastern shore of Grasmere. The name of the Evening Star was not in fact given to this house, but to another on the same side of the valley, more to the north."
In a letter to Charles James Fox the poet says: "In the two poems, The Brothers and Michael, I have attempted to draw a picture of the domestic affections, as I know they exist among a class of men who are now almost confined to the north of England. They are small independent proprietors of land, here called 'statesmen' [i.e., estates-men], men of respectable education, who daily labor on their little properties. . . Their little tract of land serves as a kind of rallying point for their domestic feelings, as a tablet upon which they are written, which makes them objects of memory in a thousand instances, when they would otherwise be forgotten. The two poems that I have mentioned were written to show that men who do not wear fine clothes can feel deeply."
Edward Fulton in a A Selection of the Shorter Poems of Wordsworth (Macmillan) says: "The reason Wordsworth succeeds best in describing the type of character portrayed in Michael and The Brothers is, of course, chiefly because he knew that type best; but the fact that it was the type for which he himself might have stood as the representative was not without its effect upon him. His ideal man is but a variation of himself. As Dean Church puts it: 'The ideal man with Wordsworth is the hard-headed, frugal, unambitious dalesman of his own hills, with his strong affections, his simple tastes, and his quiet and beautiful home; and this dalesman, built up by communion with nature and by meditation into the poet-philosopher, with his serious faith and his never-failing spring of enjoyment, is himself.' Types of character wholly alien to his own have little attraction for him. He is content to look into the depths of his own heart and to represent what he sees there. His field of vision, therefore, is a very limited one: it takes in only a few types. It is man, in fact, rather than men, that interests him."
The poem Michael is well adapted to show Wordsworth's powers of realism. He describes the poem as "a pastoral," which at once induces a comparison, greatly to Wordsworth's advantage, with the pseudo-pastorals of the age of Pope. There the shepherds and shepherdesses were scarcely the pale shadows of reality, while Wordsworth's poem never swerves from the line of truth. "The poet," as Sir Henry Taylor says with reference to Michael, "writes in his confidence to impart interest to the realities of life, deriving both the confidence and the power from the deep interest which he feels in them. It is an attribute of unusual susceptibility of imagination to need no extraordinary provocatives; and when this is combined with intensity of observation and peculiarity of language, it is the high privilege of the poet so endowed to rest upon the common realities of life and to dispense with its anomalies." The student should therefore be careful to observe (1) the truth of description, and the appropriateness of the description to the characters; (2) the strong and accurate delineation of the characters themselves. Not only is this to be noted in the passages where the poet has taken pains openly to portray their various characteristics, but there are many passages, or single lines perhaps, which serve more subtly to delineate them. What proud reserve, what sorrow painfully restrained, the following line, for example, contains: "Two evenings after he had heard the news."
TO THE DAISY
COMPOSED 1802: PUBLISHED 1807
"This and the other poems addressed to the same flower were composed at Town-end, Grasmere, during the earlier part of my residence there." The three poems on the Daisy were the outpourings of one mood, and were prompted by the same spirit which moved him to write his poems of humble life. The sheltered garden flowers have less attraction for him than the common blossoms by the wayside. In their unobtrusive humility these "unassuming Common-places of Nature" might be regarded, as the poet says, "as administering both to moral and spiritual purposes." The "Lesser Celandine," buffeted by the storm, affords him, on another occasion, a symbol of meek endurance.
Shelley and Keats have many beautiful references to flowers in their poetry. Keats has merely a sensuous delight in their beauty, while Shelley both revels in their hues and fragrance, and sees in them a symbol of transitory loveliness. His Sensitive Plant shows his exquisite sympathy for flower life.
TO THE CUCKOO
COMPOSED IN THE ORCHARD AT TOWN-END 1802: PUBLISHED 1807
Wordsworth, in his Preface to the 1815 edition, has the following note on ll. 3, 4 of the poem:—"This concise interrogation characterises the seeming ubiquity of the cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of corporeal existence; the Imagination being tempted to this exertion of her power, by a consciousness in the memory that the cuckoo is almost perpetually heard throughout the season of spring, but seldom becomes an object of sight." The cuckoo is the bird we associate with the name of the vale of sunshine and of flowers, and yet its wandering voice brings back to him the thought of his vanished childhood. We have already noticed the almost sacred value which Wordsworth attaches to the impressions of his youth, and even to the memory of these impressions which remains with him to console his maturer life. The bird is a link which binds him to his childhood:
"And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again."
In other poems, especially in the Intimaticns of Immortality, he speaks of "the glory and the freshness of a dream," which hallowed nature for him as a child, and which grew fainter as the "shades of the prison-house began to close upon the growing Boy".
NUTTING
COMPOSED 1799; PUBLISHED 1800.
"Written in Germany; intended as a part of a poem on my own life, but struck out as not being wanted there. Like most of my schoolfellows, I was an impassioned Nutter. For this pleasure, the Vale of Esthwaite, abounding in coppice wood, furnished a very wide range. These verses arose out of the remembrance of feelings I had often had when a boy, and particularly in the extensive woods that still stretch from the side of Esthwaite Lake towards Graythwaite."
Wordsworth possessed in an unusual degree the power of reviving the impressions of his youth. Few autobiographical records are so vivid in this respect as his Prelude. In his famous ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, he dwells upon the unreflective exultation which in the child responds to the joyousness of nature, and with a profound intuition that may not be justified in the facts, he sees in this heedless delight a mystical intimation of immortality.
In the poem Nutting the animal exhilaration of boyhood is finely blended with this deeper feeling of mystery. The boy exultingly penetrates into one of those woodland retreats where nature seems to be holding communion with herself. For some moments he is subdued by the beauty of the place, and lying among the flowers he hears with ecstasy the murmur of the stream. Then the spirit of ravage peculiar to boyhood comes over him, and he rudely mars the beauty of the spot:
"And the shady nook
Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up
Their quiet being:"
Such wantonness seems to his maturer reflection a sacrilege, and even the boy was not insensible to the silent reproach of the "intruding sky."
TOUCH,—FOR THERE IS A SPIRIT IN THE WOODS. Many lines might be quoted from Wordsworth to illustrate his theory of the personal attributes of nature. In some of his more elevated passages nature in all her processes is regarded as the intimate revelation of the Godhead, the radiant garment in which the Deity clothes Himself that our senses may apprehend Him. Thus, when we touch a tree or a flower we may be said to touch God himself. In this way the beauty and power of nature become sacred for Wordsworth, and inspired his verse at times with a solemn dignity to which other poets have rarely attained.
The immanence of God in nature, and yet His superiority to His own revelation of Himself is beautifully expressed in some of the later verses of Hart Leap Well:
"The Being, that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves,
Maintains a deep and reverential care
For the unoffending creatures whom he loves."
Yet the life in nature is capable of multiplying itself infinitely, and each of her manifold divisions possesses a distinctive mood; one might almost say a separate life of its own. It is, in his ability to capture the true emotional mood which clings to some beautiful object or scene in nature, and which that object or scene may truly be said to inspire, that Wordsworth's power lies.
Wordsworth possessed every attribute necessary to the descriptive poet,—subtle powers of observation, ears delicately tuned to seize the very shadow of sound, and a diction of copious strength suggestive beyond the limits of ordinary expression. Yet purely descriptive poetry he scorned. "He expatiated much to me one day," writes Mr. Aubrey de Vere, "as we walked among the hills above Grasmere, on the mode in which Nature had been described by one of the most justly popular of England's modern poets—one for whom he preserved a high and affectionate respect [evidently Sir Walter Scott]. 'He took pains,' Wordsworth said; 'he went out with his pencil and note-book, and jotted down whatever struck him most—a river rippling over the sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory, and a mountain-ash waving its red berries. He went home and wove the whole together into a poetical description.' After a pause, Wordsworth resumed, with a flashing eye and impassioned voice; 'But Nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil and note-book at home, fixed his eye as he walked with a reverent attention on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that could understand and enjoy. Then, after several days had passed by, he should have interrogated his memory as to the scene. He would have discovered that while much of what he had admired was preserved to him, much was also most wisely obliterated; that which remained—the picture surviving in his mind—would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the scene, and done so in a large part by discarding much which, though in itself striking, was not characteristic. In every scene many of the most brilliant details are but accidental; a true eye for Nature does not note them, or at least does not dwell on them.'"
The student should learn to compare the descriptive methods of Coleridge and Wordsworth. See especially Lowell's note quoted on pp. 197-198; also see pp. 47 f.
INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS
This poem was composed at Goslar in 1799 as part of the first book of The Prelude (published in 1850). It was first printed in Coleridge's periodical The Friend, in December, 1809, with the instructive though pedantic title, "Growth of Genius from the Influences of Natural Objects on the Imagination, in Boyhood and Early Youth." It appeared in Wordsworth's poems of 1815 with the following title:—"Influence of Natural Objects in calling forth and strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth."
The opening verses of this poem are still another instance of the identification of God with nature. As Mr. Stopford Brooke writes, "we are here in contact with a Person, not with a thought. But who is this person? Is she only the creation of imagination, having no substantive reality beyond the mind of Wordsworth? No, she is the poetic impersonation of an actual Being, the form which the poet gives to the living Spirit of God in the outward world, in order that he may possess a metaphysical thought as a subject for his work as an artist."
The Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey contain the highest expression which Wordsworth has given to this thought, To the heedless animal delight in nature had succeeded a season in his youth when the beauty and power of nature "haunted him like a passion," though he knew not why. The "dizzy rapture" of those moods he can no longer feel. Yet,
"Not for this
Faint I nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."
In ll. 42-46, of The Influence of Natural Objects, we have an inimitable Wordsworthian effect. Into the midst of his wild sport the voice of Nature steals, and subdues his mind to receive the impulses of peace and beauty from without. We involuntarily think of the boy he has celebrated, his playmate upon Windermere, who loved to rouse the owls with mimic hootings, but
"When a lengthened pause
Of silence came and baffled his best skill,
Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind,
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake."
The Prelude, v. 379 f.
ELEGIAC STANZAS
COMPOSED 1805: PUBLISHED 1807.
Further references to John Wordsworth will be found in the following poems:—To the Daisy ("Sweet Flower"), Elegiac Verses in Memory of My Brother, When to the Attractions of the Busy World, The Brothers, and The Happy Warrior.
With lines 33-40, and 57-60, compare the Intimations of Immortality, ll. 176-187:—
"What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind."
A BRIEF HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE SONNET
The sonnet form was introduced into English poetry by Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey. Their experiments in the sonnet were published in Tottel's Miscellany in 1557, and were prompted by an admiration of Petrarch and other Italian models. Italy was almost certainly the original home of the sonnet (sonnet=Ital. sonetto, a little sound, or short strain, from suono, sound), and there it has been assiduously cultivated since the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth century Dante and Petrarch gave the form a European celebrity.
The Structure of the Sonnet.
Before saying anything of its development in English poetry, it is advisable to examine an admittedly perfect sonnet, so that we may gain an idea of the nature of this type of poem, both as to form and substance. Wordsworth's sonnet upon Milton (London, 1802) will serve our purpose (see page 187). By reference to it you will observe:—
(1) That the sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, and consists of fourteen lines—that number by repeated experimentation having been found the most appropriate for the expression of a single emotional mood.
(2) As an examination of the rimes will show (a b b a a b b a: c d d e c e), there is a natural metrical division at the end of the eighth line. The first eight lines in technical language are called the "octave," the last six lines are called the "sestet." The octave is sometimes said to consist of two quatrains, and the sestet of two tercets.
(3) There is not only a metrical division between the octave and the sestet, but the character of the thought also undergoes a subtle change at that point. It is to be understood, of course, that in the whole poem there must be both unity of thought and mood. Yet, at the ninth line, the thought which is introduced in the octave is elaborated, and presented as it were under another aspect. As Mr. Mark Pattison has admirably expressed it: "This thought or mood should be led up to, and opened in the early lines of the sonnet; strictly, in the first quatrain; in the second quatrain the hearer should be placed in full possession of it. After the second quatrain there should be a pause—not full, nor producing the effect of a break—as of one who had finished what he had got to say, and not preparing a transition to a new subject, but as of one who is turning over what has been said in the mind to enforce it further. The opening of the second system, strictly the first tercet, should turn back upon the thought or sentiment, take it up and carry it forward to the conclusion. The conclusion should be a resultant summing the total of the suggestion in the preceding lines. . . . While the conclusion should leave a sense of finish and completeness, it is necessary to avoid anything like epigrammatic point."
(4) An examination of the rimes again will show that greater strictness prevails in the octave than in the sestet. The most regular type of the octave may be represented by a b b a a b b a, turning therefore upon two rimes only. The sestet, though it contains but six lines, is more liberal in the disposition of its rimes. In the sonnet which we are examining, the rime system of the sestet in c d d e c e—containing, as we see, three separate rimes. In the sestet this is permissible, provided that there is not a riming couplet at the close.
(5) Again, with reference to the rime, it will be observed that the vowel terminals of the octave and the sestet are differentiated. Anything approaching assonance between the two divisions is to be counted as a defect.
(6) It is evident that there is unity both of thought and mood in this sonnet, the sestet being differentiated from the octave, only as above described.
(7) It is almost unnecessary to add that there is no slovenly diction, that the language is dignified in proportion to the theme, and that there is no obscurity or repetition in thought or phraseology.
These rules will appear to the young reader of poetry as almost unnecessarily severe. But it must be remembered that the sonnet is avowedly a conventional form (though in it much of the finest poetry in our language is contained), and as such the conventional laws attaching to all prescribed forms must be observed to win complete success.
Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton have lent the authority of their great names to certain distinct variations from the rigid Petrarchan type. The peculiarity of Spenser's sonnets is that the rime of the octave overflows into the sestet, thus marring the exquisite balance which should subsist between the two parts, and yielding an effect of cloying sweetness. Although the famous stanza-form which he invented in his "Faerie Queene" has found many imitators, his sonnet innovations are practically unimportant.
The Shakespearean sonnet, on the contrary, must be regarded as a well-established variant from the stricter Italian form. Though Shakespeare's name has made it famous, it did not originate with him. Surrey and Daniel had habitually employed it, and in fact it had come to be recognized as the accepted English form. Its characteristic feature, as the following sonnet from Shakespeare will show, was a division into three distinct quatrains, each with alternating rimes, and closed by a couplet. The transition of thought at the ninth line is usually observed:—
"When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."
It is Milton's merit that he rescued the sonnet from the snare of verbal wit in which the Elizabethans had involved it, and made it respond to other passions than that of love. His sonnets, as imitations of the Italian form, are more successful than the scattered efforts in that direction of Wyatt and Surrey. They are indeed regular in all respects, save that he is not always careful to observe the pause in the thought, and the subtle change which should divide the octave from the sestet.
After Milton there is a pause in sonnet-writing for a hundred years. William Lisles Bowles (1762-1850), memorable for his influence upon Coleridge, was among the first again to cultivate the form. Coleridge and Shelley gave the sonnet scant attention, and were careless as to its structural qualities. Keats, apart from Wordsworth, was the only poet of the early years of the century who realized its capabilities. He has written a few of our memorable sonnets, but he was not entirely satisfied with the accepted form, and experimented upon variations that cannot be regarded as successful.
There is no doubt that the stimulus to sonnet-writing in the nineteenth century came from Wordsworth, and he, as all his recent biographers admit, received his inspiration from Milton. Wordsworth's sonnets, less remarkable certainly than a supreme few of Shakespeare's, have still imposed themselves as models upon all later writers, while the Shakespearean form has fallen into disuse. A word here, therefore, as to their form.
The strict rime movement of the octave a b b a a b b a is observed in seven only of the present collection of twelve, namely, in the first sonnet, the second, the third, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, and the eighth. The rime formula of the octave with which Wordsworth's name is chiefly associated is a b b a a c c a. The sonnets in which this additional rime is introduced are the fourth, the ninth, the tenth, the eleventh and the twelfth.
As regards the transition from octave to sestet the following sonnets observe the prescribed law, namely, the second, third, sixth, seventh, and ninth. The seven remaining sonnets all show some irregularity in this respect. The first sonnet (Fair Star) with its abrupt enjambement at the close of the octave, and the thought pause in the body of the first line of the sestet, is a form much employed by Mrs. Browning, but rigorously avoided by Dante Gabriel Rossetti with his more scrupulous ideal of sonnet construction. This imperfect transition is seen again in the fourth, fifth, eighth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth sonnets. Its boldness certainly amounts to a technical fault in the two sonnets on King's College Chapel.
In the sestet we naturally expect and find much variety in the disposition of the rimes. The conclusion of the last sonnet by a couplet is most unusual in Wordsworth.
"IT IS NOT TO BE THOUGHT OF"
This sonnet was composed in September, 1802, first published in the
Morning Post in 1803, and subsequently in 1807.
WRITTEN IN LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1802:
PUBLISHED 1807
"This was written immediately after my return from France to London, when I could not but be struck, as here described, with the vanity and parade of our own country, especially in great towns and cities, as contrasted with the quiet, I may say the desolation, that the Revolution had produced in France. This must be borne in mind, or else the Reader may think that in this and the succeeding Sonnets I have exaggerated the mischief engendered and fostered among us by undisturbed wealth."
LONDON, 1802
This sonnet was written in 1803 and published in 1807.
"DARK AND MORE DARK THE SHADES OF EVENING FELL"
This sonnet was written after a journey across the Hambleton Hills, Yorkshire. Wordsworth says: "It was composed October 4th, 1802, after a journey on a day memorable to me—the day of my marriage. The horizon commanded by those hills is most magnificent." Dorothy Wordsworth, describing the sky-prospect, says: "Far off from us in the western sky we saw the shapes of castles, ruins among groves, a great spreading wood, rocks and single trees, a minster with its tower unusually distinct, minarets in another quarter, and a round Grecian temple also; the colours of the shy of a bright gray, and the forms of a sober gray, with dome."
"SURPRISED BY JOY—IMPATIENT AS THE WIND"
This sonnet was suggested by the poet's daughter Catherine long after her death. She died in her fourth year, on June 4, 1812. Wordsworth was absent from home at the time of her death. The sonnet was published in 1815.
"HAIL, TWILIGHT SOVEREIGN OF A PEACEFUL HOUR"
This sonnet was published in 1815.
"I THOUGHT OF THEE, MY PARTNER AND MY GUIDE"
This sonnet, which concludes "The River Duddon" series, is usually entitled "After-Thought". The series was written at intervals, and was finally published in 1820. "The Duddon rises on Wrynose Fell, near to 'Three Shire Stone,' where Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancashire meet."
"SUCH AGE, HOW BEAUTIFUL!"
This sonnet, published in 1827, was inscribed to Lady Fitzgerald at the time in her seventieth year.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Alfred Tennyson was born at Somersby, a small hamlet among the Lincolnshire wolds, on August 6th, 1809. His father, the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, the vicar of Somersby, was a man of large and cultivated intellect, interested in poetry, mathematics, painting, music, and architecture, but somewhat harsh and austere in manner, and subject to fits of gloomy depression, during which his presence was avoided by his family; he was sincerely devoted to them, however, and himself supervised their education. His mother, Elizabeth Fytche, the daughter of the Rev Stephen Fytche of Louth, was a kind-hearted, gentle, refined woman, beloved by her family and friends. Her influence over her sons and daughters was unbounded, and over none more so than Alfred, who in after life recognized to the full what he owed to his mother.
The family was large, consisting of twelve sons and daughters, of whom the eldest died in infancy. Alfred was the fourth child, his brothers Frederick and Charles being older than he. The home life was a very happy one. The boys and girls were all fond of books, and their games partook of the nature of the books they had been reading. They were given to writing, and in this they were encouraged by their father, who proved himself a wise and discriminating critic. Alfred early showed signs of his poetic bent; at the age of twelve he had written an epic of four thousand lines, and even before this a tragedy and innumerable poems in blank verse. He was not encouraged, however, to preserve these specimens of his early powers, and they are now lost.
Alfred attended for a time a small school near his home, but at the age of seven he was sent to the Grammar School at Louth. While at Louth he lived with his grandmother, but his days at school were not happy, and he afterwards looked back over them with almost a shudder. Before he was twelve he returned home, and began his preparation for the university under his father's care. His time was not all devoted to serious study, but was spent in roaming through his father's library, devouring the great classics of ancient and modern times, and in writing his own poems. The family each summer removed to Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast. Here Alfred learned to love the sea in all its moods, a love which lasted through his life.
In 1827, after Frederick had entered Cambridge, the two brothers, Charles and Alfred, being in want of pocket money, resolved to publish a volume of poems. They made a selection from their numerous poems, and offered the book to a bookseller in Louth, For some unknown reason he accepted the book, and soon after, it was published under the title, Poems by Two Brothers. There were in reality three brothers, as some of Frederick's poems were included in the volume. The brothers were promised 20 pounds, but more than one half of this sum they had to take out in books. With the balance they went on a triumphal expedition to the sea, rejoicing in the successful launching of their first literary effort.
In 1828 Charles and Alfred Tennyson matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where their elder brother Frederick had already been for some time. Alfred was a somewhat shy lad, and did not at once take kindly to the life of his college. He soon, however, found himself one of a famous society known as "The Apostles," to which belonged some of the best men in the University. Not one member of the "Apostles" at this time, but afterwards made a name for himself, and made his influence felt in the world of politics or letters. The society met at regular intervals, but Alfred did not take much part in the debates, preferring to sit silent and listen to what was said. All his friends had unbounded admiration for his poetry and unlimited faith in his poetic powers. This faith was strengthened by the award of the University Prize for English Verse to Alfred in June, 1829. He did not wish to compete, but on being pressed, polished up an old poem that he had written some years before, and presented it for competition, the subject being Timbuctoo. The poem was in blank verse and really showed considerable power; in fact it was a remarkable poem for one so young.
Perhaps the most powerful influence on the life of Tennyson was the friendship he formed while at Cambridge with Arthur Henry Hallam, the son of the historian, Henry Hallam. The two became inseparable friends, a friendship strengthened by the engagement of Hallam to the poet's sister. The two friends agreed to publish a volume of poems as a joint-production, but Henry Hallam, the elder, did not encourage the project, and it was dropped. The result was that in 1830, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, was published with the name of Alfred Tennyson alone on the title page. The volume was reviewed enthusiastically by Hallam, but was more or less slated by Christopher North in the columns of Blackwoods' Magazine. Tennyson was very angry about the latter review and replied to the reviewer in some caustic, but entirely unnecessary, verses.
In the same year Hallam and Tennyson made an expedition into Spain to carry aid to the rebel leader against the king of Spain. The expedition was not by any means a success. In 1831 Tennyson left Cambridge, without taking his degree, and shortly after his return home his father died. The family, however, did not remove from Somersby, but remained there until 1837. Late in 1832 appeared another volume entitled Poems by Alfred Tennyson. This drew upon the unfortunate author a bitterly sarcastic article in the Quarterly, written probably by its brilliant editor, John Gibson Lockhart. The result of this article was that Tennyson was silent for almost ten years, a period spent in ridding himself of the weaknesses so brutally pointed out by the reviewer.
In 1833, Arthur Henry Hallam died, and for a time the light of life seemed to have gone out for Alfred Tennyson. The effect of the death of Hallam upon the poet was extraordinary. It seemed to have changed the whole current of his life; indeed he is said, under the strain of the awful suddeness and unexpectedness of the event, to have contemplated suicide. But saner thoughts intervened, and he again took up the burden of life, with the determination to do what he could in helping others. From this time of storm and stress came In Memoriam.
From 1832 to 1842 Tennyson spent a roving life. Now at home, now in London, now with his friends in various parts of England. He was spending his time in finishing his poems, so that when he again came before the world with a volume, he would be a master. The circle of his friends was widening, and now included the greater number of the master-minds of England. He was poor, so poor in fact that he was reduced to the necessity of borrowing the books he wished to read from his friends. But during all this time he never wavered in his allegiance to poetry; he had determined to be a poet, and to devote his life to poetry. At last in 1842 he published his Poems in two volumes, and the world was conquered. From this time onwards he was recognized as the leading poet of his century.
In 1845, Tennyson, poor still, was granted a pension of 200 pounds, chiefly through the influence of his friend Richard Monckton Milnes, and Thomas Carlyle. There was a great deal of criticism regarding this pension from sources that should have been favorable, but the general verdict approved the grant. In 1847 appeared The Princess, a poem, which, at that time, did not materially add to his fame; but the poet was now hailed as one of the great ones of his time, and much was expected of him.
In 1850 three most important events in the life of Tennyson happened. He published In Memoriam, in memory of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam; he was appointed Poet Laureate, in succession to Wordsworth; and he married Emily Selwood, a lady to whom he had been engaged for seventeen years, but whom his poverty had prevented him from leading to the altar. From this time onwards the life of the poet flowed smoothly. He was happily married, his fame was established, his books brought him sufficient income on which to live comfortable and well. From this point there is little to relate in his career, except the publication of his various volumes.
After his marriage Tennyson lived for some time at Twickenham, where in 1852 Hallam Tennyson was born. In 1851 he and his wife visited Italy, a visit commemorated in The Daisy. In 1853 they removed to Farringford at Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, a residence subsequently purchased with the proceeds of Maud, published in 1855. The poem had a somewhat mixed reception, being received in some quarters with unstinted abuse and in others with the warmest praise. In the year that Maud was published Tennyson received the honorary degree of D.C.L., from Oxford. In 1859 was published the first four of the Idylls of the King, followed in 1864 by Enoch Arden and Other Poems. In 1865 his mother died. In 1869 he occupied Aldworth, an almost inaccessible residence in Surrey, near London, in order to escape the annoyance of summer visitors to the Isle of Wight, who insisted on invading his privacy, which, perhaps, more than any other he especially valued.
From 1870 to 1880 Tennyson was engaged principally on his dramas—Queen Mary, Harold, and Becket,—but, with the exception of the last, these did not prove particularly successful on the stage. In 1880 Ballads and Poems was published, an astonishing volume from one so advanced in years. In 1882 the Promise of May was produced in public, but was soon withdrawn. In 1884 Tennyson was raised to the peerage as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Farringford, after having on two previous occasions refused a baronetcy. In 1885 Tiresias and Other Poems was published. In this volume was published Balin and Balan, thus completing the Idylls of the King, which now assumed their permanent order and form. Demeter and Other Poems followed in 1889, including Crossing the Bar. In 1892, on October 6th, the poet died at Aldworth, "with the moonlight upon his bed and an open Shakespeare by his side." A few days later he was buried in Westminster Abbey, by the side of Robert Browning, his friend and contemporary, who had preceded him by only a few years.
Carlyle has left us a graphic description of Tennyson as he was in middle life: "One of the finest—looking men in the world. A great shock of rough, dusky dark hair; bright, laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face—most massive yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musically metallic—fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will grow to." To this may be added a paragraph from Caroline Fox: "Tennyson is a grand specimen of a man, with a magnificent head set on his shoulders like the capital of a mighty pillar. His hair is long and wavy and covers a massive head. He wears a beard and mustache, which one begrudges as hiding so much of that firm, powerful, but finely-chiselled mouth. His eyes are large and gray, and open wide when a subject interests him; they are well shaded by the noble brow, with its strong lines of thought and suffering. I can quite understand Samuel Lawrence calling it the best balance of head he had ever seen."
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
Born, August 6, 1809, at Somersby, Lincolnshire.
Goes to Louth Grammar School, 1816.
Publishes, along with his brother Charles, Poems by Two Brothers, 1827.
Goes to Trinity College, Cambridge, 1828.
Forms friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam, 1828.
Wins Vice-Chancellor's Gold Medal for his poem Timbuctoo, 1829.
Publishes Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, 1830.
Makes an expedition to the Pyrenees with Arthur Henry Hallam, 1830.
Leaves Cambridge, owing to the illness of his father, 1831.
Visits the Rhine with Arthur Henry Hallam, 1832.
Publishes Poems by Alfred Tennyson, 1832.
Arthur Henry Hallam dies, 1833.
Removes from Somersby to High Beech in Epping Forest, 1837.
Publishes Poems in two volumes, 1842.
Granted a pension of 200 pounds from the Civil List, 1845.
Publishes The Princess, 1847.
Publishes In Memoriam, 1850.
Appointed Poet Laureate, 1850.
Marries Miss Emily Selwood, 1850.
Tours southern Europe with his wife, 1851.
Hallam Tennyson born, 1852.
Writes Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, 1852.
Takes up his residence at Farringford in the Isle of Wight, 1853.
Lionel Tennyson born, 1854.
Writes The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1855.
The University of Oxford confers on him the degree of D.C.L., 1855.
Publishes Maud and Other Poems, 1855.
Purchases Farringford, 1856.
Publishes Idylls of the King, 1859.
Writes his Welcome to Alexandra, 1863.
Publishes Enoch Arden, 1864; The Holy Grail, 1869.
His mother dies, 1865.
Purchases land at Haslemere, Surrey, 1868, and begins erection of
Aldworth.
Publishes Queen Mary, 1875; the drama successfully performed by Henry
Irving, 1876.
Publishes Harold, 1876.
His drama The Falcon produced, 1869.
Seeks better health by a tour on the Continent with his son Hallam, 1880.
Publishes Ballads and Other Poems, 1880.
His drama The Cup successfully performed, 1881.
His drama The Promise of May proves a failure, 1882.
Raised to the peerage as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Farringford, 1884.
Publishes Becket, 1884.
His son Lionel dies, 1885.
Publishes Tiresias and Other Poems, 1885. This volume contains Balin and Balan, thus completing his Idylls of the King.
Publishes Demeter and Other Poems, 1889.
Dies at Aldworth, October 6, 1892, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
The Death of Oenone is published, 1892.