Richard Herne Shepherd

“ The readers of Tom Jones, and, of Fielding's other novels, must indeed, in any case, be confined to the male sex.
Concerning Smollett our feeling is very different. For Humphrey Clinker we might, indeed, pardon him; but in Peregrine Pickle his obscenity is wholly inexcusable. Surely the full extent of depravation in this book is unknown, or it would not take a place in so many libraries. What a hero for a novel is Peregrine! Is he brave, noble, just in any particular throughout the book? Is he not debased, selfish, sensual in every incident in which he takes a part? ”

“ The misfortune is, that he has begun to write verses without very well understanding what metre is. Even if you write in a known and approved metre, the odds are, if you are not a metrist yourself, that you will not write harmonious verses; but to deal in new metres without considering what metre means and requires, is preposterous. What I would, with many wishes of success, prescribe to Tennyson—indeed without it he can never be a poet in art—is to write for the next two or three years in none but one or two well-known and strictly defined metres ”

“ We must go back to apology for the less happy efforts of a poet who in his best things has hardly fallen short of the large utterance of the Elizabethan dramatists, the pastoral simplicity of Wordsworth, the subtlety and fire of Shelley, and the lyrical tenderness of Tennyson. ”

“ Copies of "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical," in the original boards and in good condition, are now increasingly rare, and command a high price. Two exceptionally interesting copies have come under my observation. The first was an uncut copy bearing on the title-page the neat and minute autograph of Robert Southey. On a fly-leaf belonging to, or attached, to the volume, was written in the author's autograph the draught of an original unpublished sonnet on Cambridge, which has since seen the light in the second edition of "Tennysoniana," in Notes and Queries, and elsewhere. ”

“ The height of purity and the abyss of obscenity honoured and disgraced the same age. Which of the two had the choice of the 'merry monarch' in whose reign they were published, it is not difficult to imagine. I should rate, however, both his merriment and his taste at very small value, and happily another prince, "Prince Posterity," has long since reversed his decision.
In turning, for a moment, from Rochester to Milton, we emerge from a pestilential atmosphere into purest air. ”

“ In the first song a lover, standing on the slope of a hill, perceives the window of his mistress, shining like a jewel in the distance. In a beautiful and melodious soliloquy he calls upon the lights and shadows, the winds and clouds, which are all pursuing one direction the house of his love. ”

“ I hope the limitation will be observed, and then, I think, these tales will find few readers on this side of the Channel.
It will be seen that I am by no means one of those who consider that no harm may be derived from the perusal of an impure book, unless the impurity be already inherent in the reader's mind. Moreover, the question of contagion aside, we have nothing to do with these diseased forms of literature. Literature, fulfilling its noble and real office, seeks, like the Spirit of Truth, to lead us into all truth. ”

“ A genuine poet has deep responsibilities to his country and the world, to the present and future generations, to earth and heaven. He, of all men, should have distinct and worthy objects before him, and consecrate himself to their promotion. It is thus that he best consults the glory of his art, and his own lasting fame. Mr. Tennyson has a dangerous quality in that facility of impersonation on which we have remarked, and by which he enters so thoroughly into the most strange and wayward idiosyncrasies of other men. ”

“ A mock-Britannia, whose stage-ermine drapes
A sham, of selfish frothiness upblown,
The truest lover of his land is not
The tap-room patriot of the pipe and pot.
"'Forgot himself'? Ay, in a nobler sort
Than sordid self-regard can understand. ”

“ Of the opening poems addressed to the four Seasons, we may say that the first three, though marred here and there by irregularities of metre, have a wealth of imagery and felicity of expression worthy of some of the finest things in Keats and Shelley and Tennyson. [1] There are lines too in them which stand out rememberable for ever, and haunt the ear with their melody. ”

“ Again: as Wouvermans is sunk in complete selfishness, and, with entire satisfaction, paints men occupied in no higher employments than those of drinking, smoking, and card-playing; so Smollett never rises, and seeks not to rise, from the slough of filth in which he wallows.
Poor Fielding! He seems to me, of all the great writers with whom I am acquainted, to have stood so peculiarly alone. Other literary men have had friends numerous and kind among their own brethren. Even Savage had a companion—and what a companion!—in his dreary night-walks. But Fielding had few friends and no companions. ”

“ There is no weak Miltonic or Wordsworthian echo in his blank verse: it is all his own, or, indeed, if he ever reminds us of anybody, it is of Shakespeare. Some of his lines hare the true ring of the master. [1]
Although, however, rhyme is, as Milton insisted, no necessary adjunct of good poetry, it may be a very pleasing ornament. Wordsworth notices somewhere in his preface to the "Lyrical Ballads," the exquisite pleasure derived from rhyme when a poem has all the logical and orderly sequence of prose. Perhaps no poet has ever been more happy in his rhymes than Tennyson. ”

“ He was born in London, in the Annus Mirabilis, 1666; he himself, perhaps, not one of its least wonders, and, at any rate, destined to excel their poet in his dramatic walk. For Dryden's comedies have no other resemblance to those of Vanbrugh but their lax morality. I have not deemed it worth while to devote here any especial notice to them, and I have so high an opinion of him as a poet (Milton himself confessed Dryden to be a good verse-writer) , that I do not wish to drag his delinquencies before the public gaze. ”

“ To all collectors of the first editions of the works of Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, Ruskin, Charles Lamb, Carlyle, and Swinburne the name of Richard Herne Shepherd is a household word. He may be said to have invented that class of bibliography which modern book collectors most esteem. A considerable amount of excellent work was also done anonymously by Shepherd for John Camden Hotten, William Pickering, George Redway, and other publishers. ”

“ A few months after Arthur Hallam's death, Milnes published a small volume of poems in the dedication of which "To Henry Hallam, Esq.," we find the following tribute to Arthur's memory: "If I have ever entertained pleasurable anticipations connected with the publication of any production of my mind, they have owed not a little to the thought that I should thus be enabled to give, in my humble way, an open testimony to the affectionate admiration with which I regarded one whom I loved with the truth of early friendship, and you with a parent's passion. ”

“ I have just been reading the new poems of Tennyson. Much has he thought, much suffered, since the first ecstasy of so fine an organization clothed all the world in rosy light. He has not suffered himself to become a mere intellectual voluptuary, nor the songster of fancy and passion, but has earnestly revolved the problems of life, and his conclusions are calmly noble. In these later verses is a still, deep sweetness ”

“ We admit the charm of the captivating page, the ceaseless interest with which, once and again, through long sunny hours of summer, under the shade of venerable trees or overlooking clear waters, we read it, and are lost to all else but its perusal: if, however, we look for anything more than mere amusement, we find it wanting. ”

“ The allusion appeared to indicate a deep and probably recent study of the Sonnets of Shakespeare.
On examining these poems anew, which I did with great minuteness and attention, I found my supposition fully corroborated. I discovered a large number of coincidences of idea and even of expression not exactly to be called imitations, and still less plagiarisms, in the later, but which seemed to me to prove that his mind was at the time so imbued with the spirit of the elder poet as to render some unconscious echoes almost unavoidable. ”

“ To transform the rich creations of a poet's fancy into ribaldry and jest—to metamorphose the harmonious expression of his grandest thoughts into clownish barbarism,—^this surely is offence enough against good taste. But it is not alone good taste which here receives a shock. Every opening which the original might give, or seem to give, for licentious description is seized upon; every page is more or less mud-bespattered. ”

“ Andrews, in a little book on "Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible," has collected together all the passages from his writings in which allusions are made to Holy Scripture. A not less interesting collection might be made from the works of Tennyson; and in these days, when men are quarrelling in no very Christian mood about the letters of a book of which they too often forget the spirit, it might be instructive to remark the kind of interpretation our greatest living poet gives us of it. ”

“ I recognise in him an unflinching champion of right exposing and battling with much sickening wrong: the true ore everywhere pierces and glistens through the incrustation of baser matter. The apostolical hint concerning some classes of evildoers, "It is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret," although it has happily in our own day received a more general recognition, was too little regarded in that of Swift, Even the high intentions of satire are no longer held to be an excuse for the introduction of impure thoughts. ”

“ There is no finer ear, nor more command of the keys of language."
Tennyson's early command of blank-verse, as evinced in "Timbuctoo" and in "The Lover's Tale," is indeed wonderful: blank verse being perhaps the most difficult and unmanageable of all measures. The poet having no longer the factitious aid of rhyme, must depend for effect upon the variety of his cadences and pauses. His verse must read like good prose, and yet be without baldness. ”

“ Johnson, being asked on one occasion whether a good life of Rochester had been written, replied, not perhaps without a latent meaning beyond that which appears on the surface,—"Why, sir, we have a good death, but there is no life." ”

“ His fame spread rapidly to America, where his poems were reprinted. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lowell, Margaret Fuller, and Edgar Poe added their tribute of admiration, "I am not sure," says the last-named, "that Tennyson is not the greatest of poets. The uncertainty attending the public conception of the term 'poet' alone prevents me from demonstrating that he is. Other bards produce effects which are, now and then, otherwise produced than by what we call poems, but Tennyson an effect which only a poem does. ”

“ Sterne was, in the strictest sense of the word, a Pantagruelist; he imitated the style, and borrowed many of the thoughts of Rabelais, Verville, and the other early writers of that school. But his obscenity often consists as much in what is implied as in what is said. "There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has something that were better away, a latent corruption, a hint as of an impure presence." [15] Wherever we turn we are met by the anguis in herba. With this covert filth his works begin and end. ”

“ For the story of Enid (the first Idyll) , the poet is indebted to Lady Charlotte Guest's "Mabinogion," [4] the narrative in which he has followed pretty closely, down even to minute details. It is the same and yet how different! It is interesting to trace the homely prose of the old narrative in Tennyson's magnificent setting; and perhaps no more signal instance could be given of a poet's transmutation of all he touches into pure gold. It was in this way that Shakespeare dealt with the old chroniclers and romancists; seldom himself inventing the story—only telling it in his own way. ”

“ Leaving my luggage at one of the two little inns, I walked to the house, with lines from 'Maud' chiming in my mind. 'The dry-tongued laurel' shone glossily in the sun, the cedar 'sighed for Lebanon' on the lawn, and 'the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea' glimmered afar. ”

“ And they came to a high road, which they followed till they saw a vast forest, and they went towards it, and they saw four armed horsemen come forth from the forest. When they had beheld them, one of them said to the other, 'Behold, here is a good occasion for us to capture two horses and armour, and a lady likewise; for this we shall have no difficulty in doing against yonder single knight, who hangs his head so pensively and heavily.' And Enid heard this discourse, and she knew not what she should do through fear of Geraint, who had told her to be silent. ”

“ In England, after the death of Sterne, the school of Pantagruel gradually died out, nor has it since re-arisen in any very threatening shape. Our literature and, I hope, our lives are purer than those of our ancestors. Yet these works, read and admired by them in a less cultivated age, still, unfortunately, retain their place in our libraries ”

“ We are deprived, not only of a beloved friend, of a delightful companion, but of a most wise and influential counsellor in all the serious concerns of existence, of an incomparable critic in all our literary efforts, and of the example of one who was as much before us in everything else, as he is now in the way of life. ”

“ IN MEMORIAM AND SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.
"Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore,
Where thy first form was made a man;
I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can
The soul of Shakespeare love thee more."
CHAPTER IV.
IN MEMORIAM AND SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.
It is a remarkable fact that throughout the poems of Tennyson, Shakespeare is mentioned no fewer than six times. [1] First, he is placed among the "choice paintings of wise men" in "The Palace of Art," as—
"Shakespeare bland and mild." ”

“ We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any very good reason, that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period after the great generation of poets which is now passing away. The age seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner; for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should least expect it—namely, in a prize poem. ”

“ Let a man ask for it two or three times without getting it, he will take to something else; and his curiosity, unless founded on something more substantial than a wish to see what others are looking at, and a disposition to be pleased with what others praise, will die away. If, on the other hand, a new edition be perseveringly demanded, and when it comes, be eagerly bought, we may safely conclude that the work has something in it of abiding interest and permanent value ”

“ An essay 'On the Genius of Alfred Tennyson' sent it to the grave. The superhuman—nay, supernatural—pomposity of that one paper incapacitated the whole work for living one day longer in this unceremonious world. The solemnity with which the critic approached the object of his adoration, and the sanctity with which he laid his offerings on the shrine, were too much for our irreligious age. The 'Essay on the Genius of Alfred Tennyson' awoke a general guffaw, and it expired in convulsions. ”

“ My dear Sir, I have maintained in these Essays that a Theology which does not correspond to the deepest thoughts and feelings of human beings cannot be a true Theology. Your writings have taught me to enter into many of those thoughts and feelings. ”

“ The delineations of the trustful infant, the praying mother, the dying lamb, are as good as anything of the kind can be; while those of the supposed author's emotions as he gazes on 'Christians with happy countenances,' or stands by the Christian grave, or realizes again, with a mixture of self-admiration and self-reproach, the 'unsunned freshness of his strength,' when he 'went forth in quest of truth,' are of a higher order, and are more powerfully, though no less gracefully finished."—Westminster Review, January, 1831. ”

“ In 'Dora,' 'Locksley Hall,' 'The Two Voices,' 'Morte d'Arthur,' I find my own life, much of it, written truly out." [14]
No great reputation, however, has been without its assailants little spirits who do their best or worst to undermine the fame they can never hope themselves to reach, and Alfred Tennyson was not more fortunate than the rest. ”

“ And thereupon Geraint was troubled in his mind, and he called his squire; and when he came to him, 'Go quickly,' said he, 'and prepare my horse and my arms, and make them ready. And do thou arise,' said he to Enid, 'and apparel thyself; and cause thy horse to be accoutred, and clothe thee in the worst riding dress that thou hast in thy possession. And evil betide me,' said he, 'if thou returnest here until thou knowest whether I have lost my strength so completely as thou didst say. ”

“ But Tennyson has not made the post a sinecure in his case. While eschewing Birthday Odes, and the like, he has, as we shall see, on various national occasions, produced a series of noble patriotic poems, in his capacity of Laureate, which have given a new significance to the office; while the spectacle of a Court leading a beautiful and pure family life, and setting a bright example to all the families of the nation, has given him opportunity for exercising it without suspicion of adulation or insincerity. ”

“ We reluctantly close our scanty extracts with another fine simile:
"There be some hearts so airy-fashioned,
That in the death of Love, if e'er they loved,
On that sharp ridge of utmost doom ride highly
Above the perilous seas of Change and Chance;
Nay, more, hold out the lights of cheerfulness ”

“ Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers yellow'd with their age
Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:"
Sonnet 17.
Tennyson.
"The herald melodies of spring."
In Memoriam, xxxviii. 2.
Compare this Sonnet with "In Memoriam" lxxv.-lxxvii.
Shakespeare. ”

“ Those who care to study pedigrees will find, on referring to Burke's "Dictionary of the Landed Gentry," that our Poet can claim descent from a very ancient family—the D'Eyncourts of the Norman times, whose name has, by royal licence, been resumed by an elder branch of the house.
Early in the year 1827 we find Alfred Tennyson and his elder brother Charles together at the Louth grammar-school, and preparing for the press a volume of juvenile poems, written from the age of fifteen upwards. ”

“ As the hopes which I have expressed in this volume are more likely to be fulfilled to our children than to ourselves, I might perhaps ask you to accept it as a present to one of your name, in whom you have given me a very sacred interest. ”

“ In the fifth song is that beautiful comparison with the wrens, which gives its second title to the poem. The lover calls his mistress the Queen of the Wrens, and he wishes to be the King of the Queen of the Wrens.
In the sixth song the lover, after dwelling upon the surpassing excellence of his mistress, debates within himself whether he shall let her know of his love, and make his declaration personally or by letter, and at last decides to adopt the latter course. ”

“ The first flush of popularity cannot be trusted. Admiration is contagious, and means often little more than sympathy with the general feeling—the pleasure of being in the fashion. A book which is praised in all the reviews thousands will not only buy, but be delighted with ”

“ It would also be interesting to trace the influence of the great poets of antiquity on Tennyson's writings: of his classical scholarship abundant proofs might be adduced. In his earliest volume there are quotations from Cicero, Claudian, Horace, Lucretius, Ovid, Sallust, Tacitus, Terence, and Virgil; the incidental allusions to ancient history and mythology in his later works are numerous, and his two translations from the eighth and eighteenth books of the "Iliad" display a critical knowledge of Greek, rare even among professed scholars. ”