CHAPTER XXI DICKENS, BROWNING, AND TENNYSON

It is impossible to wander round the Poets' Corner without a longing that the Abbey could claim as her own all the great singers and seers who have made the literature of our country. Chaucer and Spenser indeed we have, with other writers of the Elizabethan and Stuart periods; but many familiar names are missing altogether, or marked only by a bust or slab. John Philips, Matthew Prior, John Gay, and Thomas Campbell—these were the last poets buried in Westminster for many a long day. Shakespeare, Milton, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Burns, Keble, Wordsworth, Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Kingsley, Ruskin, have monuments, and so we have their names; but how many a one is there for whom we look in vain in this national temple of honour. Langland, Herrick, Herbert, Sidney, Pope, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Bunyan, Sir Thomas More, Defoe, and Swift are unknown English writers so far as the Abbey is concerned.

Towards the latter end of the nineteenth century, however, there came a change. Macaulay and Grote, historians, were both buried within its walls, and when Charles Dickens died in 1870, Dean Stanley at once suggested Westminster to his family, who declined the offer. Then there appeared an article in the Times declaring that the Abbey was the one place worthy to receive so distinguished a writer. Still his family hesitated, and at last only consented on the condition that the ceremony should be entirely private. So it came to pass that, one evening after dark, when the Abbey was closed, a grave was dug in the Poets' Corner close to Thackeray's bust, and in the early summer morning the funeral took place in solitary simplicity. But in a few hours the news had spread, and before the day was over thousands of persons had been to take a last look at the grave of the writer they loved, many of them the very poorest people, who yet brought with them a few flowers or some other humble token of remembrance.

There was no aspect of their life he had not understood and sympathised with, for his boyhood's days had been spent in their midst. His father, unable to pay his debts, had been cast into prison at Marshalsea, so the Dickens family had settled in the neighbourhood, little Charles supporting himself by pasting labels on to blacking-pots, and making the acquaintance of all those queer people and odd characters with whom his writings have taught us to be familiar. "David Copperfield" is to a great extent an autobiography of Charles Dickens himself, who started life "a prey to the cruel chances of the London streets, and who, for all the care that was taken of him, might easily have become a little robber or vagabond, but for the mercy of God," to use his own words. However, brighter days were in store for him, for the elder Dickens managed to get clear of his debts and became Parliamentary reporter to the Morning Herald; and Charles, after a few years at school, during which he had managed to learn as much as was possible, decided to take up newspaper work, though in many ways stage life was what attracted him most. "I was always an actor and a writer from a mere baby," he said.

Fortunately regular work was offered him on the staff of the Morning Chronicle, and before long he had made his name as the "best Parliamentary reporter in the Peers' Gallery." From henceforward he determined that writing should be his career, and under the name of Boz he launched a book of Sketches, "illustrating everyday life and everyday people," into the world. The sketches were just what they claimed to be, but it was a master-hand that had drawn them, and these everyday people were described with such a perfect touch that the general public, delighted and greatly entertained, at once set the young author on a pedestal of popularity.

The "Pickwick Papers," which followed shortly afterwards, increased his reputation and established his position. Here was a writer bubbling over with a fresh, keen sense of humour, and in every page of his book the humour came out, never strained or forced, always natural, kindly, and infectious. From "Pickwick" he turned to quite a different style, for in "Oliver Twist" he gave to the world a brilliant picture of the "dregs of life." The subject was sad enough, and Dickens, before all things a truthful writer, did not seek to conceal anything, and yet so wonderful was his sympathy with all humanity, even the most degraded, that he never failed to recognise goodness and nobleness however deep down they might be hidden away. He saw below the surface, and in all that he wrote he forced his readers to think the better of mankind. Dickens went on from one success to another; he thoroughly understood his public and his own line, and his great heart was so full, so responsive, so in tune with the tender emotions which belong to all men and women in common, that he never grew stale or dull. Master alike of pathos and of humour, he appealed direct to the hearts of his readers. "Nicholas Nickleby," "The Old Curiosity Shop," "Martin Chuzzlewit," "The Christmas Books," "Dombey & Son," "David Copperfield," "Bleak House," and "The Tale of Two Cities," in their turn won for him countless friends and admirers from every class of life in England and in America, for all his characters were living people, and though he never moralised or lectured, he always purified and uplifted.

"Do not harden your hearts," was his message to the world. "Sympathise, pity, help, understand, love. Laugh if you will, so long as you laugh not in scorn; but love always, love everywhere."

A gravestone in Westminster is his only monument there, but that was by his own desire. To a great crowd assembled in the Abbey on the Sunday after his funeral, Dean Stanley read aloud these words from his will, "sacred words," he said, "which come with a new meaning and a deeper force, because they come from the lips of a lost friend, because they are the most solemn utterance of lips now for ever closed in the grave":—

"'I direct that my name be inscribed in plain English letters on my tomb.... I conjure my friends on no account to make me the subject of any monument, memorial, or testimonial whatever. I rest my claims to be remembered of my country upon my published works, and to be remembered of my friends upon their experience of me in addition thereto.... And I exhort my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teaching of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man's narrow construction of its letter here or there.'"

It was in this "broad spirit" of Christ's Teaching that Dickens lived and wrote. He tore down the veil that hid the lives of the poor and suffering from the lives of the rich and prosperous. The remembrance of those dark sights and scenes of his boyhood never passed away from him. "They pierce through my happiness, they haunt me day and night," he said. He could never rest till he had lifted up his voice in the cause of those "little ones" whom he loved and in whom he could recognise so much that was beautiful and true. Kindness, tenderness, sympathy, generosity, and divine pity, these were the stones with which he built up his monument, and they are stones which shall endure through the ages to come, a glorious memorial of him "who loved, with a rare and touching love, his friends, his country, and his fellow-men."

Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson, the greatest poets of our generation, lie side by side, underneath Chaucer's monument, and to both of them was given a stately public funeral, which showed how honoured a place they held in the hearts of their countrymen. For more than fifty years Browning had been writing, and only very slowly, very gradually had he made his way in the public favour. He was not, except on occasions, a sweet singer; his rhymes did not flow gracefully and easily; his thoughts were great, but his words were clumsy; to himself what he taught was as clear as the day, but to his readers it was often sadly confused and hard to understand. Nor did he ever aim at winning popularity or success. He wrote more for the future than for the present, and he was quite content to wait.

"Were you never discouraged," a friend asked him once, "at the indifference of the public, and the enmity of the critics?"

"Never," was his emphatic answer.

And his reward came while he was still there to appreciate and rejoice, not after death as is so often the guerdon of him who sees what is hidden from his fellows. He set up a standard of thought and feeling, and slowly but steadily he saw the public coming up to that standard, and marching onward more hopefully, more bravely, more confidently. His life story is simply told. He was born in Camberwell, and most of his education was obtained at the London University. His father was a bank clerk, who hated the routine of office work, and had a perfect passion for books. He read in season and out of season, he was a familiar figure at all the old book-stalls, he knew many languages, and had a mind literally stored with treasures of culture and learning. Robert soon showed he had inherited the same love of books, and when he was fourteen coaxed his mother till, after some difficulty, she got him copies of the poems written by Keats and Shelley. "Those two poets came to me as two nightingales," he has told us, and from henceforward his mind was practically made up. He, too, would be a poet, and as if to begin a suitable course of training, he set himself to read and master the whole of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. His father put no hindrances in his way, on the contrary he promised him every assistance, and an aunt came forward with offers of money, so firmly did she believe in the talents of her nephew. It was at her expense that his first book, "Pauline," was published anonymously, and though a very small public appreciated the work, here and there a friendly critic was found brave enough to say that the author, whoever he was, though he must not look for popularity or expect to make a sensation, was certainly a poet. "Paracelsus" followed, the story of a man who desired knowledge above all else, and who in the search for knowledge forgot to seek for love, hope, fear, and faith, those nobler qualities that give to life its true note and character; but at the time this shared the same fate as "Pauline," and was little appreciated. Then he tried his hand at dramatic writing, producing first "Stafford" and afterwards "The Blot in the Scutcheon," and though Dickens wrote enthusiastically concerning the latter, "This play has thrown me into a perfect passion of sorrow.... It is full of genius, natural and great thoughts, profound yet simple, and beautiful in its vigour," Browning contented himself with saying, "A pitfull of good-natured people applauded it." Then, with the buoyant hopefulness which was part of him, he added, "Failure will not discourage me from another effort: experience is yet to come, and earnest endeavour may yet remove many disadvantages."

And he continued to write. In 1844, being then thirty-two, he met Elizabeth Barrett, the invalid poetess with whose work he was already familiar, and from the first his heart went out to her. For some time she steadily refused to listen when he talked of marriage, on account of her ill health. But his persistence wore down her half-hearted resistance, especially as her happiness in the knowledge of his love proved a good doctor, and she showed signs of growing stronger. Her father, who seems to have objected to any of his daughters marrying, had made up his mind that Elizabeth would never leave home, and it was certain he would never have given his consent. So with some misgivings Miss Barrett consented to her lover's entreaties. They were married privately; he took her abroad, and in her newly found joy she rallied surprisingly. To the end of her life she was fragile, and it was never possible for her to stand side by side with him through all the daily ups and downs, but the sympathy between them was as complete as their love for each other was beautiful, and in spite of the many new responsibilities it laid upon him, his marriage with this rare mind brought a daily increasing happiness to the poet. From this time forward much of his time was spent in Italy, for the sake of his wife; but when in 1861, with her death, "the light of his life went out," he returned to London and lived here till the end, always working, always genial, drawn more and more into an ever-widening circle of friends, as the greatness of his mind and genius became known and appreciated. Active to the last, he died in 1889, while on a visit to Venice. But England claimed him as her own, and so strong was the feeling as to the Poets' Corner being the only place where he could be buried, that his son consented, in spite of the fact that Mrs. Browning slept under the blue skies of Italy.

It would be quite impossible now to talk of Robert Browning's poems by name; they are too many in number and too deep in thought to be lightly dealt with. But we can try to understand what it is that has made him so great a figure in English literature, why it is that he has left so powerful an influence on his age.

First of all he was a great teacher, he was a seer, as every true poet must be if his work is to live.

    "To know the heart of all things was his duty;
    All things did speak to him to make him wise,
    And with a sorrowful and conquering beauty,
    The soul of all looked grandly from his eyes.
    He gazed on all within him and without him,
    He watched the flowing of Time's steady tide,
    And shapes of glory floated all about him,
    And whispered to him, and he prophesied."
    

He looked on life as a great whole, part to be lived here, part to be lived beyond the grave, but each part belonging to the other. He believed that over all, guiding all and through all, was the Divine Power.

    "God's in His Heaven:
    All's well in the world."
    

He knew that human nature must work its way upwards by struggling bravely on through the darkness, certain of victory at last, because good and not evil was the all-conquering force. And so, while he was full of hope and full of confidence, his understanding and his sympathies were boundless.

Courage! unfailing, confident courage! is the refrain of which he never wearies. Aspire towards the highest; be your best; love for love's sake and not for reward; work your hardest; fight valiantly to the end; never listen to despair; never lessen your efforts. It is the struggle and the striving that makes life worth living, for—

    "Life is probation, and this earth no goal
    But starting-point of men."

Nor is there such a thing as failure to those who aspire rightly.

    "A man's reach should exceed his grasp,
    Or what's a Heaven for?"

And again—

    "Then welcome each rebuff
    That turns earth's smoothness rough,
    Each sting that bids nor sit, nor stand, but go!
    Be our joys three parts pain,
    Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
    Learn, nor account the pang: dare, never grudge the throe."
    

The power and the love of God, the possibilities within the reach of every man, and the unalterable certainty of the life beyond, these beliefs made it impossible for Browning to sing in any but a hopeful strain, and it is for this that we owe him our deepest debt of gratitude. For he always encourages us, he always inspires us, he always sends us on our way cheered by his own strong faith.

Sometimes, it is true, his verse is rough and rugged, often he is so absorbed in the sense of what he says that he cares very little how he says it, but every poem he wrote holds so many precious things that it is worth while wading through difficult places to get at them. And as he himself once said, "With care for a man or a book, most obstacles can be overcome."

Many a poem could I give to show you that Browning could pour out sweet music when he wrote of certain subjects. Here is one of his most charming songs—"Home Thoughts from Abroad":—

    "Oh to be in England now that April's there,
    And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning unaware,
    That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
    Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
    While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
    In England—now!
    And after April, when May follows,
    And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows!
    Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
    Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
    Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge,—
    That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
    Lest you think he never could recapture
    The first, fine, careless rapture!"
    

On the day of his death there was published the last volume of his poems, and it had been a great pleasure to him to hear with how much interest they were expected. For more than fifty years he had waited, and at last his message to his generation was being understood. He had been "ever a fighter," and now, as he stood facing that "one fight more, the best and the last," which was at hand, he had still one fine marching song to send back to his fellow-men.

"Never say of me that I am dead," he had asked of a friend not long before.

    "No work begun shall ever pause for death!
    Love will be helpful to me more and more
    In the coming course, the new path I must tread."

So when those who loved him read the words that told how Robert Browning had died at Venice, having lived more than his threescore years and ten, they turned for their comfort to his last stirring message, and remembered him as he had wished to be remembered—

    "At the midnight, in the silence of the sleep time,
    When you set your fancies free,
    Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned—
    Low he lies, who once so loved you, whom you loved so.
    Pity me?
    Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
    What had I on earth to do
    With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
    Like the aimless, hopeless, did I drivel
    Being who?
    One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
    Never doubted clouds would break,
    Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong could triumph.
    Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
    Sleep to wake!
    No, at noonday, in the bustle of men's work time,
    Greet the unseen with a cheer.
    Bid him forward, breast and back, as either should be.
    'Strive and strive!' cry Speed—fight on, fare ever
    There as here."
    

Three years after Browning's death a crowd of over eleven thousand persons filled Westminster to every corner, on the day when our other great poet, Alfred Tennyson, was borne here, to remain for ever "a citizen of the Abbey." His coffin, fitly draped with the union Jack, because some of his finest lines had been called out by the thought of Empire, Flag, and Queen, was surrounded by all the most noteworthy men of the day as it was carried slowly through the aisles, "down the avenue of those men, princes and peers by right of intellect divine." Tennyson, like Browning, had written a last message to the world, but his was not a marching song. Instead it breathes of perfect peace, of the joy which came to him, "who throughout the night had trusted all to Him that held the helm, and then saw face to face, full flushed and glorious with the new morning's glow, the Pilot whom he had trusted."

    "Twilight and evening bell,
    And after that the dark!
    And may there be no sadness of farewell
    When I embark;
    For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
    The flood may bear me far,
    I hope to see my Pilot face to face
    When I have crost the bar."

These thoughts of his filled the Abbey with a sense of their restfulness; then there thundered out from thousands of voices the familiar hymn—

    "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!"

and the words recalled to many a mind that Vision of which the clear-souled poet had sung, the Gleam he had so faithfully followed, until now it had surely led him right up to the presence of God.
LORD TENNYSON.
LORD TENNYSON.

Alfred Tennyson had been born at a country vicarage in Lincolnshire in the year 1809, and had begun to scribble verse almost as soon as he could write. When he was eight he produced such lines as—

    "With slaughterous sons of thunder rolled the flood,"

which he thought "very grand" at the time; at twelve he wrote a poem of six thousand lines, and at fourteen a drama. He was not the sort of boy likely to be very happy at school, and he had, as he described it, "to shout his verses to the skies." But to his brother he was wont to say many a time, "Well, Arthur, I mean to be famous." He went to Cambridge, and when Thompson, that shrewd observer, afterwards Master of Trinity, saw him walk into the hall, "six feet high, broad-chested, strong-limbed, his face Shakespearean and with deep eyelids, his forehead ample, crowned with dark wavy hair, his head firmly poised," he remarked, "That man must be a poet!"

In 1829 he won the University Prize Poem on the not very inspiring subject of Timbuctoo, and soon afterwards published a volume of short poems, which was warmly welcomed and admired by his friends, one of whom, Arthur Hallam, remarked, "Tennyson will be the greatest poet of our generation." But the general public cared little for poetry, and preferred novels, so that Tennyson was thought to have scored quite a success when three hundred copies of his book had been sold.

In 1833 there fell on him a stunning blow. Arthur Hallam, the friend whom he had loved with an intense love, who was so full of exceptional promise that every one with whom he came in contact believed the greatest future was in store for him, died quite suddenly, and to Tennyson it seemed as if from henceforth the very light of his life had been snatched from him. Dark were the years that followed, rendered more so by the fact that the young poet was very poor and saw no chance of being able to marry the woman he loved. But gradually, as he "faced the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life" (to use his own words), a fuller understanding and a wider view opened out before him. Sorrow and work together led him out of the valley. He produced several volumes of short poems, each one showing more certainly his great poetic sense, his gift of using musical and beautiful language, and each one, too, making it clear from the subjects he chose, and his way of dealing with them, that he himself, like the poet of whom he wrote—

    "Saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill,
    ... Thro' his own soul,
    The marvel of the Everlasting Will
    An open scroll,
    Before him lay."
    

Then came "The Princess," a longer work and a most delightful one, in which Tennyson, many years in advance of public opinion, pleaded the cause of women's education, and showed that "Woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink together;" and though "distinct in individualities," they must be "self-reverent each, and reverencing each," if they would in all their powers dispense the harvest, "sowing the To-be."

In 1850 he published his greatest work, "In Memoriam," the poem which came straight from his own heart, and went as straight to the hearts of all who ached under some crushing, desolating blow. It told of his love for his dead friend, and how this very love led him onwards and upwards, away from his own selfish sorrow, away from despair and darkness, till with this larger hope there came faith in God and faith in man; the certainty that good must be the final goal of ill; the conviction that Love was the great power working in all and through all, destined in the end to conquer all. "In Memoriam" has been rightly called "the triumph of a great love." The work brought him fame if not fortune, and at last he was able to marry her "who brought into his life," he said, "the peace of God." A year later he was made Poet Laureate, and settled down to a quiet country life at Farringford. "Maud," and some of his war poems, "The Ode to the Duke of Wellington," and "The Charge of the Light Brigade," were included in his work of the next few years, and then came what he considered the most ambitious thing he had attempted, "The Idylls of the King." The old mysterious story of King Arthur and his knights had fascinated many a poet before him, and the romance of it all laid full hold on his imagination. Nay, more than this, for he saw beyond the fragmentary story, and each one of the characters, under his hand, stands out in a new light. Arthur, Galahad, Percival, Bedivere, Lancelot, Guinevere, Enid, and Elaine—how real they all become to us! How intensely vivid are the scenes unfolded before our eyes, how great and noble are the ideals of the true chivalry as distinguished from the false, towards which Tennyson leads us, reverence for conscience, faithfulness to duty, pure-heartedness, love of truth, fear of sin, courtesy, gentleness, courage, pity, and forgiveness.

"A poet must teach, but not preach," Tennyson once said, and I think it is in these legendary stories of "The Idylls," told in the beautiful language of which he was master, that the poet has given some of his greatest lessons, and has held up his loftiest ideals to the age in which he lived. After "The Idylls" came some dramas, and many short poems, "Enoch Arden," perhaps, being the one best liked by the large public Tennyson could now command. But even to touch on the short poems is impossible here, so many and so varied are they; some, soul-stirring and patriotic, as "The Defence of Lucknow" or "The Revenge;" some, poems of nature; some, coloured with the quaint, north-country humour he knew so well; some, exquisite little word-pictures. His last volume of all was published in 1889, and it included "Merlin and the Gleam," an allegory of the ideals he had set before himself as a poet. He, as the old man, talks to the young mariners just about to set out. He tells of the Gleam which shines for every one who will see it; which calls, which beckons on through wilderness, desolate hollows, and wraiths of the mountain; past warbles of water and cataract music of falling torrents; by rolling of dragons and over the level of pasture and ploughland. Onwards, ever onwards, it leads. To follow it is to live, to die in the search for it is happiness, for the Gleam can never fail.

    "Through the magic
    Of Him that is mighty,
    Who taught me in childhood,
    There on the border
    Of boundless Ocean
    And all but in Heaven
    Hovers the Gleam."

So to the young mariners, he, the old magician, gives his parting word of counsel—

    "Down to the haven,
    Launch your vessel
    And crowd your canvas,
    And, ere it vanishes
    Over the margin,
    After it, follow it,
    Follow the Gleam."

"I want to go down to posterity," Tennyson once said, "as a poet who uttered nothing base." And the criticism which he declared was "the best and tenderest praise that came to cheer his old age," was the remark of a girl who said, "When I read his poems, I always rise determined to be better."

Much might be said about the perfect music of his poetry; the richness of his imagination; the faultless ear he had for words; the crystal clearness of his style; his power to see beauty and, having seen it, to shape it; his sympathy, his sensitive understanding, and his lofty ideals. His claim to greatness is based on all that and still more. Out of the depths of his pure soul he gazed on all things lovely, just, true, pure, and of good report; and translating these into language easy to be understood, he led those who listened to him along the Road Beautiful, till they too stood with him on

    "The heights of life, with a glimpse of a height that is higher."