Februahy 1, 1887.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



i -J 



^" ILLUSTRATED M.4GAZINE ^ 

 1ENCE,UTERATURE.& 



LONDOX: FEBRUART 1, 1887. 



TENNYSON'S JUBILEE JEREMIAD. 



OCKSLEY HALL." and again " Locksley 

 Hall after Sixty Years " — in round num 

 bers : — say since the time when the bene 

 ficent reign of the " first gentleman in 

 Europe " came to an end, and the dignified 

 sway of " our gallant sailor king," the 

 father of many Fitzes, begixn. Our poet 

 laureate, once peer of all the poets of 

 his time — now a peer of the realm — has anticipated the 

 year of Jubilee, as in duty bound, with many rhymed Hnes 

 presenting the progress of his country during the fifty years 

 (and a few ye;irs for William) over whose passage men are 

 to rejoice this year of Jubilee. 



Sad to say, the poet of the bay-leaved shen-y cask, called 

 on to bless the beneficent half century, seems more inclined 

 to curse. He hints plainly — nay, more than plainly — that 

 chaos has replaced cosmos. Whether there has been some- 

 thing " rotten in the state of Denmark," something wrong 

 about the " beneficent sway " business, or whether (those 

 being right who think that if England does well or if 

 England does ill, is a matter altogether in England's 

 own hands) England has not done so well for herself 

 lately as she might, or whether, lastly, the new-old peer 

 has found that all which glitters is not gold, certainly the 

 poet laureate condemns the past half century and its 

 products in terms by no means mild or measured. C'arlyle 

 with his Niagara-and-After screech was calm and compli- 

 mentary compared with Tennyson. It is not a mere 

 cataract, but cataclysmic chaos he sees ; it is all " a 

 sickening game," the " old dark ages back without the 

 faith or hope," an age when " author, atheist, essayist, 

 novelist, realist, and rhymester " 



Rip their brother's vices open, strip their own foul passions bare — 

 Down with reticence, down with reverence—" Forward ! " — naked 

 let them stare ; 



the " budding rose of boyhood " is " fed with drainage of the 

 sewer," " our maidens' fancies wallow in the troughs of 

 Zolaism " : in fine, the year of Jubilee finds us all in what 

 a less elegant orator would call " a devil of a state." Surely 

 if all this elegantly described, sickening, chaotic, foul, sewer- 

 like, trough-wallowing abomination is real, our best pro- 

 vision for this year of Jubilee would be a goodly store ot 

 sackcloth and ashes. If our calm and gentle, purely writing 

 poet laureate is right, the less JubOee oi-ators say about 

 " beneficent sway " the better. If there has been sway at all, 

 Tennyson assures us it has not been beneficent. If there 

 has been beneficence there can have been no appreciable 

 sway. If Tennyson is right, what considerable reason for 

 celebrating a Jubilee remains'! A nation can hardly be 

 expected to rejoice because fifty years have passed since the 

 " sailor king " left his fine Fitz-family fatherless. It can only 



be because those fifty years have been years of progi-ess, due 

 in some way or other to influences emanating from Balmoral, 

 that we are going to rejoice — though, of course, celebrations 

 of any sort must be a pleasant change for the weary drudges 

 whom Tennyson holds in such contempt. But if our pro- 

 gress has been backwards, as he says, where does the rejoicing 

 come in ? 



Why does our keen-sighted and even keener-nostrilled 

 poet-peer see all this misery, this chaos, these foully-staring 

 naked passions, these sewer-fed boys and trough-wallowing 

 girls, where other men see in the same half eentui-y the 

 usual mixture of good, bad, and indiflerent in the niition, 

 with some progress and especially a steady advance towards 

 sober freedom? \Miy does he find "poor old heraldry" 

 (which we could so well spare). " poor old history" (though 

 history, at least, can hardly die), and " poor old poetry " 

 (and very poor some old poetry is to be sure) — 



. . . Passing hence 

 In the common deluge drowning old political common sense, 



(which might have, at least, kept one of its extra feet on 

 dry gi'ound) ? The whole trouble seems to lie in the exten- 

 sion of the suffrage by " tonguesters," who — 



Teach their flattered kings that only those who cannot read can 

 rule. 



These tonguesters, unnamed, it is, who — 



Pluck the mighty from their seat, but set no meek ones in their 



place, 

 Pillory wisdom in their markets, pelt their ofiEal at her face. 



(Is tins Zolaism ? one wonders.) When it comes to ask- 

 ing who are the mighty who have been plucked down, our 

 poet is wisely silent. He does not even tell us what meek 

 ones might have been set in their place, but were not. Even 

 when we ask, naturally, what these new electors have done 

 to move his wrath, or how " the realm-ruining party " (is it, 

 then, only a pai-ty matter after all 1) have done ill, we get 

 only some " Goosey-gander " rhymes about a cat and a lion : 

 and after all the lion is but a carnivorous brute, while the cat, 

 according to a poet who was more than the peer of all poets, 

 is a harmless, necessary creature. Finalh', however, we 

 come on the real trouble : — 



Russia bursts our Indian barrier. Shall we fight her? shall we 



yield? 

 Pause before you sound the trumpet ! Hear the voices from the 



field ! 

 Those three hundred millions, under one imperial sceptre now. 

 Shall we hold them ? Shall we loose them ? Tahe the suffrage of 



the plough ! 



All this, indeed, is very, very sad. Russia is an evil empire, 

 we all know — a portentous power : and our imperial rule in 

 India is a sacred charge. We may be a sewage-swallowing, 

 trough-wallowing set at home, but we are purifying and 

 ennobling our three hundred millions of Indians out yonder 

 — otirs, we know not why, and care not to ask how. His- 

 tory, arm-in-arm with heraldry, stirs poor old poetry to 

 tell us we must sound the trumpet, and with pure and holy 

 hands (casually armed with swords and repeating rifles) 

 drive off those hordes of murderous, land- seizing Russians, 

 needing only our sedulous scratching to be shown for the 

 Tartars they are. But alas ! before we can do all this for 

 the benefit of — of — ah well, of Christianity and — and per- 

 haps commerce, and to spread enlightenment, and so forth, 

 and so forth — we are obliged, unfortunate that we are, to 

 " hear the voices of the field," and " take the suffrage of the 

 plough." Manifestly this is unfair and wrong. We may 

 take our soldiers from the plough and drain the life blood of 

 the field. What are the serfs for, but that ? When, how- 

 ever, men begin to talk of hearing the drudges' voices — and 

 alas 1 poor fellows, how indistinctly they often speak (mere 



