SEVENTEEN years were occupied in the composition of In Memoriam. The poem made its appearance anonymously in the month of June 1850. It could be attributed to only one living poet, and, despite a rigid silence maintained by the author, critics and readers were unanimous in assigning it to Alfred Tennyson. Apart from its greatness as a literary work, In Memoriam is the most interesting of all the Laureate's productions, because it is essentially a personal revelation. Through this poem we become acquainted with the man himself. He was the less reserved because originally it was not his intention to publish to the world those words, which like weeds, were to G "wrap him o'er Like coarsest clothes against the cold." There was a use in measured language for him. His great grief needed vent; the bitter waters of sorrow flowed forth in verse. Yet words "half reveal And half conceal the soul within," and the student of In Memoriam, though discovering much, must not delude himself that all the mystery of that clouded life can be learnt. The poem gives. us an understanding of Tennyson as a mourner only, and we can trace the course of his thoughts during a long period of darkness and doubt. Those thoughts lead us onward to light, hope, and cheerfulness, and they show how a great soul was saved from the wreck of despair. As the poet Coleridge beautifully expresses it— Sometimes 'Tis well to be bereft of promised good, The Poet Laureate was a type of the age. He touched every note in the gamut of belief. His creed underwent much modification and change. He alternated between denials and affirmations, acceptances and rejections, faith and despair. But with all his successive hopes and fears, his dismay and his doubts, his wavering convictions, assents and dissents, he was always craving after the highest good and searching for the surest truth. Man cannot seize the robes of purity and excellence at once. He will follow phantoms and be deluded by imposture; and he has to profit by experience and pass through ordeals before the best opens unto him. Never to be satisfied until he has gained the topmost pinnacles and can gaze with purified vision upon the light, is his duty and his privilege. Tennyson's training, and the influences to which he was early subjected, inclined him from the first towards religion. His father and grandfather were clergymen, his mother was a woman of simple, fervent piety, his favourite brother was a man of most orthodox views. Tennyson's own acquaint ance with the Bible was remarkable. His poems contain upwards of four hundred and fifty Scriptural references and parallelisms. He was imbued and permeated with Bible lore and Bible language. Some of his poems are veritable sermons-Aylmer's Field, Sea Dreams, The Two Voices, Flower in the Crannied Nook. Yet such was his latitude and such the varying state of his mind that he was claimed as a Christian and decried as a materialist and agnostic. This is due to the fact that Tennyson revealed, not concealed, his progressions from stage to stage; he has left the traces of his wandering along a winding way. Detesting ready-made dogmas and despising second-hand opinions, he threaded his course through a labyrinth of doubt and bewilderment, and only towards the end found the clue to happiness and the solution of mystery. Hard and cold doctrine does not suffice; the heart must have its hopes. The Two Voices is an argument so skilfully conducted that to which side the balance inclines is not easy to determine. The poet saw two roads to travel, and knew not which to choose. There was a battle royal in his mind between reason and temptation. Only appeal to the man's better self bidding him "be of better cheer" brought him to a decision. He could "see the end and know the good," a "hidden hope" stirred within him, and he felt Although no tongue can prove, That every cloud that spreads above Robert Browning lifted the argument into a higher sphere and gave a richer view of and a fuller insight into the operations and manifestations of the Divine Will There shall never be one lost good! What was shall live as before; Doubts may be resolved for a while, but they will recur. To thinking minds this is inevitable. Tennyson convinced himself that it was a marvel "how the mind was brought to anchor by one gloomy thought," but in his old age he still asked What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns? Lies upon this side, lies upon that side, truthless violence mourn'd by the Wise, Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular torrent of lies upon lies; Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet, Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat ; Innocence seethed in her mother's milk, and Charity setting the martyr aflame; Thraldom who walks with the banner of Freedom, and recks not to ruin a realm in her name. Spring and Summer and Autumn and Winter, and all these old revolutions of earth; All new-old revolutions of Empire-change of the tide-what is all of it worth? What the philosophies, all the sciences, poesy, varying voices of prayer? All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that is filthy with all that is fair? What is it all, if we all of us end but in being our own corpse-coffins at last, Swallow'd in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown'd in the deeps of a meaningless Past? What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a moment's anger of bees in their hive? Questioning is natural and legitimate; one of man's privileges is to doubt, and, in doubting, to investigate. There is no virtue in blind acquiescence, no profit in a faith not understood. Oliver Wendell Holmes has summed up all in the words, "I claim the right of knowing whom I serve, Else is my service idle; He that asks My homage asks it from a reasoning soul. To crawl is not to worship." Children may accept dogmas; men must know why. To one who told him "doubt was devil-born," the poet replied I know not; one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, It is a principle in music that the sweetest harmony is derived from discords. And, on the same principle, we have learnt the wise and comforting truth from Tennyson that there is more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds. Doubt brings us step by step to the cross-roads, where we may once and for all choose between darkness and light. Who never fights can never win; "who never doubted never half believed." Whatever form of faith is rejected or accepted, we have an assurance that "his can't be wrong whose life is in the right." While "perplext in faith," we may still be "pure in deed"; but greater still is the satisfaction and complete is the triumph when purity of life is fitted to perfection of faith-faith which satisfies and fortifies, faith which stimulates like a cordial, faith which is made fruitful by sunshine and dew. Doubt is at length resolved into steadfast belief like the nebulous mist which concentrates into the round and shining star. A score of short, disconnected, and separate poems serve as prelude to Tennyson's majestic religious work, In Memoriam. These, like the prelude to a sonata, hint of the greater theme to follow, and lead into the proper key. The hatefulness of human pride and the impossibility of human independence are enforced in The Palace of Art; the holiness of mercy is preached in Sea Dreams, while in St Simeon Stylites we learn that true religion is not fierce, and does not bid us live unlovely lives. Aylmer's Field exposes the evils of worldliness, and holds up to scorn those who devote themselves to Sowing hedgerow texts and passing by, And dealing goodly counsel from a height In St Agnes' Eve and Sir Galahad we find invocations to purity, but in poems which preceded and followed In |