humankind. The new earnestness and excitement of the world compelled him to conceive of his work with the same intensity as Wordsworth when, writing under the enrapturing and fresh enthusiasm of humanity and buoyant with youthful vigour, he came at first to Grasmere. Wordsworth paints his soul, its outlook and its energy, in undying lines at the end of The Recluse; and the comparison of these (which I commend to my readers) with Tennyson's verses on The Poet is full of delightful interest.

In that poem, Tennyson lays down, and out of his own inward experience, what he conceived himself to be, and how he conceived his work; and he never abandoned, betrayed, or enfeebled his conception. It is a remarkable utterance for so young a man, weighty with that steadiness of temper which, if it diminished spontaneity in his art, yet gave it a lasting power.

The poet in a golden clime was born,

With golden stars above;

Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,

The love of love.

That is the beginning, and the first needs of the poet's nature could scarcely be better expressed. Then he speaks of the clear insight into God and man which is the best gift of the poet.

He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill,

He saw thro' his own soul.

The marvel of the everlasting will,

An open scroll,

Before him lay.

Then his thoughts, blown like arrow-seeds over the whole world with melodies and light, take root, and become flowers in the hearts of men, till high desires are born, and truth is multiplied on truth,

And thro' the wreaths of floating dark upcurled,

Rare sunrise flow'd.

And in that sunrise, Freedom clothed in wisdom came upon Man, and shook his spirit, and ruined anarchies and oppressions. This was Tennyson's youthful conception of his work, and we should never forget it when we read his poetry, though we are tempted sometimes to think that he forgot this last part of it himself. I quote the final verses, and from the book of 1830. Their note is new. Their power, in contrast with the light verse that was contemporary with them, is the revelation of a poetic resurrection :

And Freedom rear'd in that august sunrise

Her beautiful, bold brow,

When rites and forms before his burning eyes
Melted like snow.

There was no blood upon her maiden robes
Sunn'd by those orient skies;

But round about the circles of the globes

Of her keen eyes

* And in the bordure of her robe was writ
Wisdom-a name to shake

Hoar anarchies, as with a thunder-fit.
And when she spake,

• Recast in 1842.

And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame

Wisdom, a name to shake

All evil dreams of power-a sacred name.

Her words did gather thunder as they ran,
And as the lightning to the thunder
Which follows it, riving the spirit of man,
Making earth wonder,

So was their meaning to her words. No sword

Of wrath her right arm hurl'd,

But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word She shook the world.

THRI

published the little book of 1833, containing thirty

new poems. In this second volume he wrought still further at the new veins he had struck, and turned their ore into finer shapes. But he not only developed work he had already begun; he found fresh and different veins of poetry, opened these also, and made out of their gold new creations full of the spirit of youth hastening to a greater excellence. Evolution then of the subjects discovered in 1830-creation of new subjects in 1833these are the matter of this chapter.

But first, it is well to mark how the artist, as artist, grows. He cannot cease inventing; new things, new forms spring up under his hand; ever uncontent because the unattainable of Beauty lures him on. "If thou givest me," cries Beauty in his heart, "a thousand shapes, there are yet a million more which thou mayest invent for me, and yet I shall not be exhausted." He who feels that allurement and hears that cry has the art

ist's temper; he who can embody what he feels and hears, in ever varying forms, till old age touch him with inability, is the artist. He moves "from well to better, daily self-surpast," till he has no more power. We know when his power is lessening, for then he begins to repeat himself. We know that it still exists, however feebly, when, in the midst of repetitions, new things now and then appear.

And it is one of the happy things in Tennyson's career, that even till he was past eighty years of age, this creativeness-that is, this power of being inflamed with the love of Beauty and animated by her into creation-did not altogether die. In the very last volume he published there appeared a poem called The Gleam, which, if it was written shortly before the book was issued, was a new and beautiful blossom on his ancient tree. Those who, walking in an English park, have come upon an oak, broken off short by age or storm and hollow within, but whose rugged gnarls send forth leaves as delicate as those of its childhood, must have often thought, "There is the image of the great artist in his old age, of the great musician, the great painter, the great poet"; and though Tennyson does not stand among the very mightiest, yet he had this singular and noble power of fresh creation in old age.

We are sure to find this creativeness in his youth. It appeared, as we have seen, in 1830, and I have discussed some forms of it in the previous chapter. Two forms of it, however, I omitted-one, the drawing of " charac