Chapter 1

--BOYHOOD--CAMBRIDGE--EARLY POEMS.

The life and work of Tennyson present something like the normal type
of what, in circumstances as fortunate as mortals may expect, the
life and work of a modern poet ought to be. A modern poet, one says,
because even poetry is now affected by the division of labour. We do
not look to the poet for a large share in the practical activities of
existence: we do not expect him, like AEschylus and Sophocles,
Theognis and Alcaeus, to take a conspicuous part in politics and war;
or even, as in the Age of Anne, to shine among wits and in society.
Life has become, perhaps, too specialised for such multifarious
activities. Indeed, even in ancient days, as a Celtic proverb and as
the picture of life in the Homeric epics prove, the poet was already
a man apart--not foremost among statesmen and rather backward among
warriors. If we agree with a not unpopular opinion, the poet ought
to be a kind of "Titanic" force, wrecking himself on his own passions
and on the nature of things, as did Byron, Burns, Marlowe, and
Musset. But Tennyson's career followed lines really more normal, the
lines of the life of Wordsworth, wisdom and self-control directing
the course of a long, sane, sound, and fortunate existence. The
great physical strength which is commonly the basis of great mental
vigour was not ruined in Tennyson by poverty and passion, as in the
case of Burns, nor in forced literary labour, as in those of Scott
and Dickens. For long he was poor, like Wordsworth and Southey, but
never destitute. He made his early effort: he had his time of great
sorrow, and trial, and apparent failure. With practical wisdom he
conquered circumstances; he became eminent; he outlived reaction
against his genius; he died in the fulness of a happy age and of
renown. This full-orbed life, with not a few years of sorrow and
stress, is what Nature seems to intend for the career of a divine
minstrel. If Tennyson missed the "one crowded hour of glorious
life," he had not to be content in "an age without a name."

It was not Tennyson's lot to illustrate any modern theory of the
origin of genius. Born in 1809 of a Lincolnshire family, long
connected with the soil but inconspicuous in history, Tennyson had
nothing Celtic in his blood, as far as pedigrees prove. This is
unfortunate for one school of theorists. His mother (genius is
presumed to be derived from mothers) had a genius merely for moral
excellence and for religion. She is described in the poem of Isabel,
and was "a remarkable and saintly woman." In the male line, the
family was not (as the families of genius ought to be) brief of life
and unhealthy. "The Tennysons never die," said the sister who was
betrothed to Arthur Hallam. The father, a