womanly work of women. It is not so. We have gained a wider view. To be, indeed, a true wife, such as Tennyson has drawn on the lips of the Prince; or to be a sweet and noble mother, one Not learned, save in gracious household ways, -to be these noble creatures at home, and to build up children into noble life-this, indeed, is the work of womanhood done not only at home, but for the State and for humanity at large. No higher work in the world exists than that of motherhood, forming children into true and loving men and women. But this does not cover all. In our complex and crowded society, there are thousands of women who have no home, who are not wives and mothers, but who are hungry to become themselves, to realise themselves in work, to live outside of themselves in the life and movement of the whole. These scarcely come into Tennyson's outlook at the end of The Princess. For these, the education in knowledge and the training of their powers to all kinds of work which Ida established in her college are necessary, but with a clear considera tion of sexual difference. This work is, however, to be carried out on other principles than those which Ida. laid down-in union with man, with as large a training in the just use of the emotions, in the just expansion of the imagination, in a true sight of the beautiful, and in the wise development of the ideal and the spiritual, as in the accurate knowledge of science and history, of law and literature. And then, the work of the world lies open to woman, to do in a different way from man, but with the same ends, and in the same cause-the cause of the happiness, the goodness, and the love of humanity. When that is possible-when we shall have applied to all the problems of society the new and as yet unused elements which exist in womanhood-all results will be reached twice as quickly as they are now reached, all human work will be twice as quickly done. And then, perhaps, some new poet will write a new Princess. CHAPTER VII IN MEMORIAM HE history of the writing of In Memoriam is well ΤΗ known. If an immortal fame can comfort Arthur Hallam, who was so soon bereft of the brightness of the earth, then he is consoled in his high place for the loss of human life; for surely while the language of England lasts, so long will In Memoriam be read and Arthur Hallam be remembered. Thirty years ago, I made a pilgrimage to the little church near Clevedon, where the Hallams rest, and saw the graveyard, the yews, and the marble tablet glimmering in the church. It was then a lonely quiet place, in a furrow of the sandy slopes, not a house standing near it ; and fifty yards from it, but hidden from view, the broad estuary of the Severn filled with the tide. I heard the water wash the feet of the low cliffs as it passed by. Sorrow and death, peace that passeth understanding, the victory of the soul, seemed present with me; and the murmuring of the Severn became, as I dreamed, the music of eternal love, into whose vast harmonies all our discords are drawn at last. I felt, it seemed, the impression of the place. I knew afterwards that it was the impression of the poem that I gave to the place. And this indeed is the lasting power of In Memoriam. It is a song of victory and life arising out of defeat and death; of peace which has forgotten doubt; of joy whose mother was sorrow but who has turned his mother's heart into delight. The conquest of love-the moral triumph of the soul over the worst blows of fate, over the outward forces of Nature, even over its own ill-that is the motive of the poems which endure, which, like the great lighthouses, stand and shine through the storms of time to save and lead into a haven of peace the navies of humanity. We are flooded to-day with poems of despair, with verse which boasts that it describes the real when it describes the base, which takes the vulture's pleasure in feeding on the corruption of society, and prophesies, when it lifts its dripping beak from the offal, that to this carcasscomplexion the whole of humanity will come at last. Tennyson himself has painted the class : We are men of ruin'd blood, Therefore comes it we are wise! Virtue !--to be good and just Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust, Mixed with cunning sparks of hell. The art and the temper that produce the poetry of despair and vileness will not last; and it is a comfort to think of this when we are greatly troubled with the stenches of what they falsely call the real. The poetry of the soul's defeat withers in the mind of the race. The poet himself who writes it withers away. Had In Memoriam been only wailing for loss it would have perished, even if its work had been better than it is; but since it tells of loss passing into love, since it describes death entering into life, it is sure to live, and would do so even if its work had been less excellent. Of course I do not mean that inartistic work, if its motive be a victorious one, will live. I write of artists and their work, not of those who are not artists. The poetic work of those that are not artists, of whatever temper it be, is bound to perish. But In Memoriam is a work of art, done by a man whose natural gift had been polished by study, and carefully trained by steady practice till it rejoiced in its own power. Its subject impassioned its writer, and the subject was simple, close to the heart of man. As the poem moved on, the subject expanded, and the sorrow spoken of passed from the particular into the universal. The victory over the evil of sorrow made a similar passage. The poet's personal conquest of pain became the universal conquest of the human race. This expansion of the subject ennobled the poem, and the triumphant close secured and established its nobility. It will last when all its detractors and their criticisms are together dust. It was published in 1850. The collected poems were published in 1842, The Princess in 1847; but the sub |