ARTHUR H. HALLAM. "PRESENS imperfectum, - perfectum, plusquam perfectum FUTURUM." GROTIUS. "The idea of thy life shall sweetly creep Into my study of imagination; And every lovely organ of thy life Shall come apparelled in more precious habit More moving delicate, and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of my soul, Than when thou livedst indeed." MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. In the chancel of Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, rest the mortal remains of Arthur Henry Hallam, eldest son of our great philosophic historian and critic, and the friend to whom In Memoriam is sacred. This place was selected by his father, not only from the connexion of kindred, being the burial-place of his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham Elton, but likewise "on account of its still and sequestered situation, on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel." That lone hill, with its humble old church, its outlook over the waste of waters, where "the stately ships go on," was, we doubt not, in Tennyson's mind, when the poem, "Break, break, break,” which contains the burden of that volume in which are enshrined so much of the deepest affection, poetry, philosophy, and godliness, rose into his "study of imagination" — "into the eye and prospect of his soul.”* * The passage from Shakspere prefixed to this paper, contains probably as much as can be said of the mental, not less than the affectionate conditions, under which such a record as In Memoriam is produced, and "Break, break, break, On thy cold grey stones, O sea! And I would that my tongue could utter may give us more insight into the imaginative faculty's mode of working, than all our philosophizing and analysis. It seems to let out with the fulness, simplicity, and unconsciousness of a child - "Fancy's Child" - the secret mechanism or procession of the greatest creative mind our race has produced. In itself, it has no recondite meaning, it answers fully its own sweet purpose. We are not believers, like some folks, in the omniscience of even Shakspere. But, like many things that he and other wise men and many simple children say, it has a germ of universal meaning, which it is quite lawful to bring out of it, and which may be enjoyed to the full without any wrong to its own original beauty and fitness. A dew-drop is not the less beautiful that it illustrates in its structure the law of gravitation which holds the world together, and by which "the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong." This is the passage. The Friar speaking of Claudio, hearing that Hero "died upon his words," says — "The idea of her life shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination; And every lovely organ of her life Shall come apparelled in more precious habit More moving delicate, and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of his soul, We have here expressed in plain language the imaginative memory of the beloved dead, rising upon the past, like moonlight upon midnight, 66 The gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme." This is its simple meaning — the statement of a truth, the utterance of personal feeling. But observe its hidden abstract significance -it is the revelation of what goes on in the depths of the soul, when the dead elements of what once was, are laid before the imagination, and so breathed upon as to be quickened into a new and higher life. We have first the Idea of her Life all he remembered and felt of her, gathered into one vague shadowy image, not any one look, or action, or time, — then the idea of her life creeps is in before he is aware, and SWEETLY creeps - it might have been softly or gently, but it is the addition of affection to all this, and bringing in another sense, and now it is in his study of imagination what a place! fit for such a visitor. Then out comes the Idea, more particular, more questionable, but still ideal, spiritual every lovely organ of her life then the clothing upon, the mortal p tting on its immortal, spiritual body - shall come apparelled in more precious habit, more moving delicate this is the transfiguring, the putting on strength, the poco più the little more which makes immortal, - more full of life, and all this sub the eye and prospect of the soul. "O well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! That he sings in his boat on the bay! "And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill! But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, "Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me." Out of these few simple words, deep and melancholy, and sounding as the sea, as out of a well of the living waters of love, flows forth all In Memoriam, as a stream flows out of its spring all is here. "I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me," "the touch of the vanished hand the sound of the voice that is still," - the body and soul of his friend. Rising as it were out of the midst of the gloom of the valley of the shadow of death, "The mountain infant to the sun comes forth Like human life from darkness;" and how its waters flow on! carrying life, beauty, magnificence, shadows and happy lights, depths of blackness, depths clear as the very body of heaven. How it deepens as it goes, involving larger interests, wider views, "thoughts that wander through eternity," greater affections, but still retaining its pure living waters, its unforgotten burden of love and sorrow. How it visits every region! "the long unlovely street," pleasant villages and farms, "the placid ocean-plains," waste howling wildernesses, grim woods, nemorumque noctem, informed with spiritual fears, where may be seen, if shapes they may be called – "Fear and trembling Hope, Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton, now within hearing of the Minster clock, now of the College bells, and the vague hum of the mighty city. And over head through all its course the heaven with its clouds, its sun, moon, and stars; but always, and in all places, declaring its source; and even when laying its burden of manifold and faithful affection at the feet of the Almighty Father, still remembering whence it came, "That friend of mine who lives in God, To which the whole creation moves." It is to that chancel, and to the day, 3d January 1834, that he refers in poem xv. of In Memoriam. "Tis well, 'tis something, we may stand Where he in English earth is laid, ""Tis little; but it looks in truth As if the quiet bones were blest This young man, whose memory his friend has consecrated in the hearts of all who can be touched by such love and beauty, was in nowise unworthy of all this. It is not for us to say, for it was not given to us the sad privilege to know, all that a father's heart buried with his son in that grave, all "the hopes of unaccomplished years;" nor can we feel in its fulness all that is meant by "Such A friendship as had mastered Time; The all-assuming months and years But this we may say, we know of nothing in all literature to compare with the volume from which these lines are taken, since David lamented with this lamentation: "The beauty of Israel is slain. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither rain upon you. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love for me was wonderful." We cannot, as some have done, compare it with Shakspere's sonnets, or with Lycidas. In spite of the amazing genius and tenderness, the never-wearying, allinvolving reiteration of passionate attachment, the idolatry of admiring love, the rapturous devotedness, displayed in these sonnets, we cannot but agree with Mr. Hallam in thinking "that there is a tendency now, especially among young men of poetical tempers, to exaggerate the beauties of these remarkable productions;" and though we would hardly say with him, "that it is impossible not to wish that Shakspere had never written them," giving us, as they do, and as perhaps nothing else could do, such proof of a power of loving, of an amount of attendrissement, which is not less wonderful than the bodying forth of that myriad-mind which gave us Hamlet, and Lear, Cordelia, and Puck, and all the rest, and indeed ex |