that need not vex their spirits. The the labors of the men of science should duke's memory lives in his wife's ever create any material revolution, direct pages; and the ambition to which the or indirect, in our condition, and in the duchess pleaded guilty1 may be fully impressions which we habitually receive, satisfied. Such a tribute as this from the poet will sleep then no more than at Charles Lamb is in itself sufficient lit-present; he will be ready to follow the

erary immortality: "Where a book is at once both good and rare; where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes

steps of the man of science, not only in

those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest discoveries of the chemist,

We know not where is that Promethean the botanist, or mineralogist will be as

proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be which they are contemplated by the folfamiliar to us, and the relations under lowers of the respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when what is now called

science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of

man.

That he who wrote these words so little heeded once, so golden now, was debarred from seeing the time he thus prophesied, a time when to the student of nature, and the nature poet, the mere act of living is a joy, was a loss not to him only; it was a loss to the human race. For, deep as was Tennyson's love of nature, it was not a passion so absorbing as Wordsworth's. What might not he for whom there was in very truth "a spirit in the woods," he who could draw Even from the meanest flower that blows Thoughts that do often lie too deep for

IN the essay upon "Tennyson as a Nature Poet," contributed by me to this series,1 restrictions of space made it impossible for me to touch upon the poet's relations to nature as she now stands revealed to us by the new cosmogony of growth. This, I feel, made my study of the subject incomplete. For, in criticising Tennyson, it is, of course, necessary to remember that his life, though beginning in the early years of the present century, extended into its latest decade. It was his privilege to see the time which what might not he have done to make the marvels of this new cosmogony as Wordsworth prophesied and never saw - the greatest time the world has yet precious to the heart of man as it is to known, when science, in exercising a man's intelligence? If a flower was a power mightier than that of all the fascinating and a beloved thing to him fabled wands of all the fabled magiwho believed, what we now know to be cians of old, has in very truth lent "the air it breathes," what would that literally true, that " every flower enjoys new seeing" to human eyes. said Wordsworth in the preface to the second edition of his poems,

1 LIVING AGE, No. 2557, p. 28.

"If,"

tears

same flower have been to him if he could have spent, as the humblest student of Nature can now spend, an entire morning over a single blossom,

tracing its ancestry step by step, while | wealth. we prize most though they the surrounding floras and faunas which would be as ignorant of "The Excurthe flower's ancestors knew would have sion" as of the doctrines of the latest passed before the eyes of the poet's fervid political and social reformer who delighted imagination, lapping his soul looks upon his parochial reforms as the in a dream of wonder and beauty such final cause of the existence of an inas it was not given to him to know ? finite universe - they would have a Standing upon the chalk cliffs that look greater book than even "The Excuracross the Channel, Wordsworth, had sion" to read or the blue-books of the he lived in our time, would still have English Parliament - they would have, been blest with all the proud visions in common with the human race, the that blessed him as a patriotic poet; he book of the starry heavens. Not but would still have seen as Tennyson saw that Wordsworth was, by the power of Drake, still have seen Blake, sweeping mere instinct, if not of knowledge, the green waves free of their country's more in touch with nature than was foes; but also he would have been any other man in the England of his blessed with sights undreamed of by time. The only other human soul on poets of his time. He would have this planet that loved nature better seen as Tennyson saw the wonderful than he was that of Dorothy, his sispictures of the chalk formations-pic-ter, that sister of whom it is impossible tures called up by the white and gleam- for any student of nature to think or ing bastions of the coast; he would speak without emotion. None but have read as Tennyson read the story these two knew what it is so easy now of the deposit of those minute shells, to know, that the truest nature-poet is to count which by millions instead of not necessarily he who can most faithunits would require more centuries fully render nature as a picture, nor than in his time were supposed to have even he who can depict nature as a elapsed since the world arose out of great interpreter of man's soul, but he chaos. Gazing at the patch of stars who can confront her as she exists reflected in the beloved mirror of Win- apart from the human story, as she dermere, he would have felt all the existed when man was but a far-off rapture he used to feel at their un- dream of hers. Many a lovely verse of speakable loveliness, but also he would Wordsworth's shows that he knew this, have felt the still higher rapture which and I long to quote some of them here, Tennyson felt when gazing at the stars but must not. Yet, with all his passion from Aldworth or Farringford - the for nature, so enslaved by authority of rapture of knowing that the illimitable antiquated tradition was the poetic art universe is all made of the same simple of his time that Wordsworth spent his elements as those around us here, as long life among the Lakes, thinking proved by the spectroscope, and that that he could hold true converse with consequently life is probably every- nature and still remain comparatively where. Thoughts would have come to ignorant of the rudiments of natural him as they came to Tennyson that, science even under the system of Linamong the billions of orbs revolving næus. And here I come upon that around the millions of suns, there are which troubles every Wordsworthian probably other planets inhabited by who is also an evolutionist: as regards reasoning beings, between us and the vitality of nature-poetry based upon whom there is this sublime interest in the old knowledge, how long will it common we have the selfsame book last? Is the lovely poetry of "The to read the book of nature. He Excursion," "The Prelude," etc., to would have felt that, if the quaint become antiquated and unsatisfactory? fancy about the canal-makers in Mars Upon whatsoever cosmogony built, were really more than a quaint fancy, great poetry which deals with man's they, though they would have no life is likely to be immortal; there knowledge of much of the intellectual seems to be a perennial vitality in

his

process.

Here, as in my previous essay, I

to see

poetry whose material is human passion | an entirely different kind, judging from and human conduct. Yes. though in his recent discussion of the great suba large degree conduct, and in some ject of man in relation to the cosmic degree passion, are and must be based upon man's conception of nature conception of what kind of universe he finds himself in-poetry, which faith-leave all living poets undiscussed. Tenfully depicts man at any given period, nyson among foremost poets was not will surely survive; until the very only the first, but the only one, structure of man's mind has undergone that the birth of the new cosmogony changes so vast that they cannot be was the birth of an entirely new epoch, confronted by the most vigorous cosmic an entirely new chapter in the human imagination of our own period, such story. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes in poetry, I say, will surely survive. But America, and the parable-writer, Dr. the first business of the nature-poet is Gordon Hake, showed (as has been with the great mother herself, to whom pointed out by Mr. Earl Hodgson in man, with all his passions and aspira- his preface to "The New Day" of tions, was once a pleasant dream of the future; to whom man, with all his passions and aspirations will some day be a dream, pleasant or otherwise, of the past.

Not, of course, that any poet could pass into the temper of Darwin, to whom the proper study of mankind was nature.

the last-mentioned poet) a recognition of the dawn, but neither of these poets achieved distinction. Tennyson was the first to foresee that the effect upon pure literature worked by this great revolution in the history of the human mind contained within itself the seeds of a universal revolt against the dominance of all the old tyrannies along all the old lines of thought-a revolt compared with which that of the French Revolution against the ancien régime was as insignificant as the revolt of provincial children in a provincial school.

No doubt it was not wholly his wideeyed intelligence that made him the most advanced of nineteenth-century poets. During a large portion of his life he lived at a time when the fireballoon of the French Revolution had burnt itself out and left the "advanced thinkers" and the "advanced poets without a luminary. Meantime nature, who had been yearning to grow an organism capable of turning round and looking at her with eyes that could guess at her dreams, had grown at last Darwin, Spencer, Wallace, and Huxley.

There is a danger to some of the various faculties of man in a too close and exclusive study of nature-a study which is so fascinating that it may well tend in some degree to isolate the student's soul from the heart of man. For the bond of brotherhood seems to widen till at last it takes in not only the higher animals, but all the members of the animal kingdom — takes in even the vegetable world, whose grand and mysterious function it is to turn inorganic matter into organic life. The mind of the student of nature is apt to form the habit of looking upon human life as a spectacle, as a tragi-comedy acted in a dream, amusing at one moment, saddening at the next, and as evanescent as the picture the moon looked down upon during the ages that produced the coal formations. Original In so far as the French Revolution temperament, however, has no doubt a was anything more than a revolt of good deal to do with this mood; if the the Third Estate against the burden of study of nature had this effect upon corvées and feudal dues a revolt which Darwin, leading him to turn away from might never have grown into a great poetry altogether, its effect upon an- revolution had the harvest of 1788 been other great naturalist perhaps the fat instead of lean its heart-thought widest and strongest intelligence now was that of the Contrat Social. It is in the world - seems to have been of scarcely exaggeration to say that the

central sophism of Rousseau's book, | of the universe that have preceded it the sophism which vitalized the litera- is so fundamental that the phrase ture of the French Revolution, and has" modern literature" must next cenbeen the foundation, in some form or tury have an entirely different meaning another, of so much of the "advanced" from what it has hitherto borne; the literature of the nineteenth century, is ancient or mythological literature of about as far removed from the new the Western world, which began with epoch as though it had been formulated the Homeric poems, will be considered by Hesiod, or by whatsoever poet it to have closed with the decade precedwas who gave us the "Theogony." ing that in which literature accepted Indeed, the latest commentator upon as its heart-thought the doctrine of the that poem, Mr. W. F. Cornish, has new epoch — that of nature's growth. actually been just telling us that the For so soon as the popular imaginatitle Oɛoyovía does not properly mean tion has entirely accepted the idea that the generation or origin of the gods," the emancipation of man, so far as it but the "being begotten of or by has at present gone, has been an emangods," and "a consideration of the cipation from the chains of " ape and process according to which man gets tiger," rather than from the chains of to being god-begotten." If he is right maleficent gods and miscreant kings, in this fancy of his, the message to the or of that composite ogre of manyhuman race of the Ocoyovía is actually million-man-power called Society nearer to the new cosmogony of growth than Rousseau's resuscitation of sophisms that were hoary before ever Genesis was written. For, instead of saying with Rousseau and the French Revolutionists that "man was born free and is everywhere in chains," the new teaching says that man is yet scarcely born at all.

soon as it has entirely accepted the idea that man, everywhere born in chains, is only just beginning to shake them off

then, of course, the more "advanced" is any poet whose system is in harmony with the advanced ideas of the French Revolution, the more antiquated will his work seem. Upon several occasions it was my privilege to converse with Tennyson upon this most interesting subject. One of these occasions lives in my memory with an especially vigorous life. I had been endeavoring to support the thesis that among past English poets Shakespeare was the only one who by instinct sympathized with the temper of the new epoch now dawning. I had been saying that Shakespeare, having learnt as much as he could learn of the terrene drama, in which man plays undoubtedly the leading part, having learnt all that he could learn in an exhaustive study of man in London, went down to Stratford-on-Avon to learn as much as the imperfect science of his time would allow him to learn from the coneys and squirrels and dappled deer of the Warwickshire woods; that, although it is manifestly pardonable in any poet to take too seriously the human race, a race for whose ears his rhymes are made, it was only on occasion that Shakespeare fell into the mistake of

over - estimating this or that social that the only thing which threatened structure of man's in a universe where to paralyze his artistic function was there is so much of the wonderful. I the overwhelming revelation of astronhad been saying that, save at moments omy, is so vigorously impressed on my when the impulse of his dramatic imag- memory that as I recall it here I seem ination was upon him, he never fell to smell the very perfume of the suninto the mistake into which poets like warmed heather trod out by our feet; Shelley and Hugo and other high- I seem to see the luxuriant, basking minded dreamers are apt to fall-the ferns, and that favorite hound of his mistake of supposing that the universe leaping through them, making little is so entirely enclosed in man that the dusty whirlwinds as he moved; I seem little economies of one nation or parish to hear the birds in the bushes too. are of greatly more importance than the little economies of another nation or parish, whether the nation or parish be composed of Englishmen, of Irish-ment are progressive, as truly progresmen, of Caucones, or of Zamzummin the mistake of supposing that nature who teaches the ant "there's no laboring in winter”-nature who takes as deep an interest in the work of

The singing masons building roofs of gold as ever she took in the work of human masons, even of those mighty workers who built Westminster Abbey-is so deeply concerned with the doings of man that the stars have to be neglected. The moment the wings of his imagination were folded for rest his philosophical intellect resumed its sway, and although there was no scientific doctrine of evolution to enlighten him, he by many a gird at the "fool of nature seems to have known that man, notwithstanding all the nobility of his spiritual side, is on the other side "the paragon of animals" highly developed by circumstances over which he had only partial control; seems to have known that although in many things the social economies in which man moves are superior to those of the bees, they are not so in all ways; and that it is when we study the royalties and aristocracies of other gregarious animals which are entirely functional, rational, and philosophic, it is when we study the economies of a beehive, that the humor of man's civilization softens its pathos and its tragedy. The way in which Tennyson then began to speak of the littleness of all human ambition confronted by the workings of infinite nature, the way in which he told me

It was then that I saw clearly what I had long guessed, that he belonged to that class of poets who by tempera

sive, perhaps, as those fervid ones who followed the French Revolution, belonged to that class of poets who, having in some cases the knowledge, in other cases the instinct, to see how man's upward movement towards his slow as well as how long has been present position, and how slow and how long probably will be his upward. movement in the future, do not consider change and progress to be convertible terms, and do not consider the ideals of any particular civilization Assyrian, Babylonian, Hellenic, Chinese, English, French, or German-to be absolute and final, but only relative to the particular civilization itself.

I saw, in short, that he was one of those philosophical poets who, studying the present by the light of the past, and finding that all civilization is provisional, do not look upon every change in the social structure as being necessarily mischievous, yet who see that every new scheme of society which the doctrinaire formulates fails to strike at human nature down to the roots; see that round every human fibre are woven the old sophisms which originally aided in man's development have been keeping him back for ages-the sophisms which are the basis not only of every civilization, but of almost every Utopian dream, from Plato to Sir Thomas More and Campanella.

At a time so revolutionary as this, when it seems to be impossible to find the proper place of any thinker without first inquiring as to the standpoint from