Tennyson is perhaps the most picturesque of all English poets. If we compare him with Spenser, for example, with whom he has considerable affinity, we shall be all the more struck with the truth and completeness of background and surroundings which he gives to his figures, and that too by a few magical touches which set the whole vividly before our minds, while the older poet, picturesque as he too is in a certain sense, too often endeavours to conjure up impossible scenery by long enumeration of details. Tennyson is incapable of the carelessness of observation and description which we find in Spenser. He sees the scene with unsurpassable accuracy and with the eye of an artist, and is able to grasp its essential features and sum them up for us in phrases which have all the effect of a revelation. Of such descriptions in the idylls with which we are concerned we may note especially that of Geraint sleeping with Enid sitting, beside the couch, of Geraint's entrance into the court of Earl Yniol's ruined castle, of Enid sleeping

:

'With her fair head in the dim yellow light

Amid the dancing shadows of the birds,'

and of Enid weeping beside the way over the wounded and unconscious Geraint. With a view to this characteristic it is worth while to pay special attention to the similes of the poem. Like Virgil's, they are pictures, each complete itself, however slightly sketched, and have a degree of living accuracy in representing the forms and colours of nature, which no ancient poet even conceived of, and hardly any modern poet has attained to the same extent as Tennyson. Often too we shall

observe, as in Virgil, a singular aptness of detail, which invites us to apply the comparison more closely than at first we should be disposed to do, and shows with what artistic care they have been elaborated, simple as they may seem to be. Of the picturesque simile there are many examples in these idylls,

e.g., Marriage of Geraint, 76

arms on which the standing muscle sloped, As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, Running too vehemently to break upon it,'

334:

734

'So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint ;
And made him like a man abroad at morn
When first the liquid note beloved of men
Comes flying over many a windy wave

To Britain, and in April suddenly

Breaks from a coppice gemm'd with green and red,' etc.

'Then, as the white and glittering star of morn
Parts from a bank of snow, and by and by

Slips into golden cloud, the maiden rose,
And left her maiden couch, and robed herself,'

Geraint and Enid, 170:

:

'for as one,

That listens near a torrent mountain-brook,
All thro' the crash of the near cataract hears
The drumming thunder of the huger fall
At distance, were the soldiers wont to hear
His voice in battle,'

467:

'But at the flash and motion of the man
They vanish'd panic-stricken, like a shoal
Of darting fish, that on a summer morn
Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot
b

686:

Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand,
But if a man who stands upon the brink
But lift a shining hand against the sun,
There is not left the twinkle of a fin
Betwixt the cressy islets white in flower;'

'a splendid silk of foreign loom,
Where like a shoaling sea the lovely blue
Play'd into green, and thicker down the front
With jewels than the sward with drops of dew,
When all night long a cloud clings to the hill,
And with the dawn ascending lets the day

Strike where it clung: so thickly hung the gems.'

These instances may suffice as illustrations of the poet's peculiar wealth of apt and picturesque comparison, and they are but a few of the many examples which might be found of picturesque simile or metaphor (for metaphor is but compressed simile) in the two idylls of Geraint. By a reviewer of the first four Idylls of the King, speaking of 'Mr. Tennyson's extraordinary felicity and force in the use of metaphor and simile,' it was well said:-'With regard to this particular and very critical gift, he may challenge comparison with almost any poet, either of ancient or modern times. . . Metaphor lies by metaphor as thick as shells upon their bed, yet each individually with its outline as well drawn, its separateness as clear, its form as true to nature, and with the most full and harmonious contribution to the general effect.' (Quarterly Review, Oct., 1859.)

The same critic writes:- Mr. Tennyson practices largely, and with extraordinary skill and power, the art of designed and limited repetitions.

These

repetitions tend at once to give more definite impressions of character, and to make firmer and closer the whole tissue of the poem.' This is in fact one of the most marked features of Tennyson's style, and the poems before us are full of examples of it. It must be noted, however, that though the effect is often produced by the repetition of precisely the same form of words, it depends perhaps still more often upon a certain monotony of structure and of rhythm. Take for example the following lines of the May Queen :

'O sweet is the new violet, that comes beneath the skies,

And sweeter is the young lamb's voice to me that cannot rise, And sweet is all the land about, and all the flowers that blow, And sweeter far is death than life to me that long to go.'

The wonderful power and beauty of this climax is almost entirely due to the repetition of the same structure;1 and throughout Tennyson's poetry, especially

1 It need hardly be said that this method of heightening the effect is familiar in all poetry, and, indeed, in one form or another, it is perhaps the most characteristic outward difference between poetry and prose. The Hebrew parallelism is only a particular development of it, and both rhyme and alliteration are due to the same craving for recurrence which finds satisfaction in repetition of the same words or of the same form of structure. Good examples of this last may be found in Milton, e.g. Paradise Lost, 4, 641 ff. :—

'Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun,
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful evening mild; then silent night

in the more lyrical parts of it, in The Lotos-eaters, Locksley Hall, Maud, we find this characteristic one of the most prominent features of his style. Examples of it are found rather more sparingly in the Idylls of the King, but here too we recognise it, and especially in those of the idylls which were published first. We may take as examples in The Marriage of Geraint the passage beginning,

'Forgetful of his promise to the King,' 11. 50-54,

'For though ye won the prize of fairest fair ;
And tho' I heard him call you fairest fair' etc.

Also Geraint and Enid, 579-589:

'So for long hours sat Enid by her iord,
There in the naked hall, propping his head,
And chafing his pale hands, and calling to him.
Till at the last he waken'd from his swoon,
And found his own dear bride propping his head,
And chafing his faint hands, and calling to him;
And felt the warm tears falling on his face;
And said to his own heart, "She weeps for me:
And yet lay still, and feign'd himself as dead,
That he might prove her to the uttermost,
And say to his own heart, "She weeps for me."'

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With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon,
And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train :
But neither breath of morn when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds; nor rising sun
On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers;
Nor grateful evening mild; nor silent night
With this her solemn bird; nor walk by moon,
Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet.'