it not miraculous, could I stretch forth my hand, and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand, and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the miracle lies in miles of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch forth my hand at all; that I have a free force to clutch aught therewith?"15 With Carlyle the whole world is all miracle. Whatever one may think of this conception and its implications, the conception itself gives a unified attitude toward the world, and the author of it possesses the constructive and creative mind. But Tennyson, even in such an impassioned and freedom ringing poem as "De Profundis" feels that he must stand with one foot on "changeless law" and with the other on freedom. In English poetry Tennyson is the great compromiser between many views, the great mediator between facts and visions, between materialistic truth and religious truth, between personal freedom and impersonal law.

15 "Sartor Resartus,' Bk. III, Chap. VIII.

CHAPTER VIII

TENNYSON: ART AND LAW.

This principle of mediation had a wide influence on Tennyson's art ideals and art powers. It produced, for example, a large number of phrases and compound words that attempt to state a medium position and that are characteristically Tennysonian. Such as, "finite-infinite," "numerable-innumerable," "mystic middle state," "new things and old co-twisted," "half-reveal and half-conceal," "not like to like but like in difference," "the falsehood of extremes," "changed by still degrees,” “not swift nor slow to change," "manhood fused with female grace," "in my grief a strength reserved," "souls that balance joy and pain," "oh, sweet and bitter in a breath," "I falter where I firmly trod," "and faintly trust the larger hope," "equal-poised control," "man can half-control his doom," and this list might be indefinitely enlarged.

This mediating principle not only produced Tennysonian phrases that attempt to express both sides of a truth at once, but it had a moulding power on the larger aspects of his thought, and produced certain mechanical qualities of style. The incident in which an English statesman in the interests of conservatism, quoted the passage which speaks of England as a land of settled government, "where freedom broadens slowly down from precedent to precedent," and in which he was answered by another

statesman, who, in the interests of liberalism, quoted the passage which speaks of Victorian statesmen "who knew the seasons when to take occasion by the hand and make the bounds of freedom wider yet,"-this incident illustrates the balanced way in which Tennyson expresses the opposite sides of a subject and yet "avoids the falsehood of extremes." He sings the deeds of war, but is an advocate of peace. He expresses the "calm despair and wild unrest" that alternately possessed his heart at the death of his friend, yet he counts it "crime to mourn for any over-much." He would offset meditation with action, and would balance religious fervor with skeptical wisdom. It is very difficult to state his views on any subject, because there are so many modifications to make. And a large part of Tennyson's practice of polishing his verse, was the practice of making it say more precisely the qualifying and compromising thing he had in mind. This practice, which, on the mental side, is mechanical rather than spontaneous, accounts in a large measure for the mechanical qualities of style in his work of which many readers complain. Take, for instance, the following stanza from the eighty-fifth poem of "In Memoriam:"

I woo your love: I count it crime

To mourn for any overmuch;

I, the divided half of such

A friendship as had master'd Time.

The poetry that qualifies the amount of mourning one is to allow himself, and that divides a friendship into two equal parts, certainly tends to be mechanical rather than spontaneous and creative.

There is, perhaps, no phrase more common in Tennyson than the phrase "more and more" with its numerous variations. Everything in the universe is produced

by slow degrees, and Tennyson doubts not that "through the ages one increasing purpose runs." It follows that nothing in the world can be static, and also that nothing can be suddenly transformed. This scientific conception has a powerful influence on Tennyson's ethics of art. By this principle he cannot send his characters as deeply into the valley of soul making as he otherwise could. A character is not made, or should not be made, in the instant, by some powerful birth-pang. This is not the way of "changing by still degrees." A character may give vent to wild and almost hysterical passion, but he does not come out of a critical experience radically different from what he was at entering, except by slow degrees. Though the progress of individuals and of mankind depends on the miracle of man's free-will, yet the miracle must work itself out by an orderly progression. It is pleasing to the fancy to perceive lines of progression radiating everywhere through the universe, and the scientific mind can enjoy the poetry that reflects these progressions. Yet the ultimate effect of this conception is to limit the art powers of the imagination. It tends, for instance, to hamper the imagination when it is engaged in creating a great character undergoing a sudden and profound spiritual transformation.

But this principle of mediating between the fact of scientific materialism and the fact of mystical and religious faith had a deeper influence on Tennyson's art than the influences we have thus far been considering. Tennyson, we have seen, was a genuine mystic who found the substance of faith in the miracle of free-will and in the direct personal experience it can have of God. But in his efforts to meet the scientific facts and not ignore the scientific postulates of his day, he surrendered the external world of nature to mechanical law, and the world

of plant and animal life as well as the outer world of man to the same law for the most part, although he recognized that God had begun to fulfill himself in all the doings of man. And in this surrender he was robbed of much poetical material for the expression of his mystical nature.

In the case of Wordsworth we have seen that all this was appropriated to use in his poetry. Although Wordsworth renounced the highest mystical experiences which go beyond the power of concrete representation, he found that everywhere in all the world of eye and ear there were living pulsations. Joining these to the power of memory and the moral idea, he constructed a new synthesis, investing it with the mystery of vital movement and literally producing a creation. This creation has at once solid substance and intense idealizations. "All the mighty world of eye and ear-both what they half-create and what perceive," all the highest powers of man, all the simplest qualities of a child, go into the making of this synthesis. Wordsworth made all these forces subservient to his experiences in the immediate present; so that this half-objective and half-created world, possessing deep correspondences of the inner and the outer life, and shot through with mystical tendencies, was not a mere fanciful fabrication but was in substance the very breath of his life, the very stuff of his being. If Wordsworth is robbed of this synthesis he is robbed of the props upon which his life and experience rest. Wordsworth was a genuine mystic poet.

It would naturally be supposed that Tennyson, who was equally susceptible to mystical and religious influences and who was as inveterate a lover of nature as Wordsworth, would make a somewhat similar constructive or creative use of the mystical experiences in the realm of external nature, that he would use the objects