Pond. — On Tennyson and Broiuning. 553 



careers we find the most curious points of likeness and un- 

 likeness. Had some mighty genius, competent for the task, 

 attempted to embody in the characters of two poets two 

 opposite tendencies in art and thought, he might have drawn 

 a Tennyson and a Browning. Like in their unhkeness, unhke 

 in their hkeness, the opposition in which they stand seems 

 the work rather of art than of nature. 



Examine briefly the career of each of them. Both have 

 hved long, both chose the office and function of the poet above 

 all others, both were poets pure and simple, neither of them 

 writing or publishing a word of prose. And yet the contrasts 

 are greater. Tennyson at once attained a recognition so full, 

 a success so complete, that every successive work which did 

 not surpass its predecessors was regarded as a failure. Brown- 

 ing, long without recognition, struggled to success by a series 

 of failures. Browning began by writing dramas, but aban- 

 doned the dramatic method for portraiture. Tennyson began 

 as a lyric and idyllic poet, but ended as a writer of drama. 

 And yet with neither were the dramas written good stage-plays 

 — successful, that is, upon the stage under ordinary conditions, 

 without the glamour of a gi'eat name to aid them. For many 

 years no one w^ould have thought of comparing Browning with 

 Tennyson except to the disparagement of the former ; but in 

 the last twenty years Browning's audience, "fit though few " 

 at first, has grown rapidly, and, if Tennyson has the larger 

 number on his side. Browning has the finer spirits. Tennyson 

 is admired. Browning worshipped ; the followers of the one 

 form a school, of the other a cult. To whom posterity will 

 assign the superiority I do not know, but this I am sure will 

 form part of the verdict : that, if Tennyson was the finer artist, 

 Browning w^as the more original thinker. 



I spoke of Tennyson as the finer artist. We have now to 

 contrast them from the point of view of art. For poetry is an 

 art, not of " sentimental caterwauling " as Huxley once said, 

 but of giving expression, in metrical form, to any thought 

 having relation in any way to man, in such a w^ay as to 

 enhance its beauty. I pointed out a few minutes ago how 

 Tennyson's early work arrested attention because of its 

 artistic beauty of expression. In exquisite finish no poet in 

 any literature has ever surpassed him. As an artist in metre 

 he is supreme ; more than that, his supremacy was at once 

 accepted. The insipid sentimentalities of the Byronics dis- 

 appeared at once, and the minor poets at once began to mould 

 themselves upon Tennyson. Henceforth, with such a master 

 to show them how it should be done, slipshod work was im- 

 possible. 



If we open a volume of Tennyson, we can hardly help 

 noticing how one form of poem predominates. " English 



