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or, again, where the excessive obscurity is justified by what it condenses,

His credit thus shall set me free;

And, influence-rich to soothe and save,
Unused example from the grave

Reach out dead hands to comfort me.

(lxxx.)

It is possible that the hint for In Memoriam may have been derived from Petrarch's beautiful series of Sonnets and Canzoni dedicated to the memory of Laura de Sade, so nearly parellel is much in these poems with what is found in In Memoriam. Nor have Shakespeare's Sonnets— a kindred record of passionate friendship between two young men-been without their influence on the poem. The measure in which the poem was written was not Tennyson's invention, as till 1881 he supposed. In the exact form which it assumes in In Memoriam it has not hitherto been traced higher than Ben Jonson, Underwoods, xxxix., and in the Chorus in the second act of Catiline, but by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in one of his poems,1 it was carried to a point of musical perfection so fine as, at times, to be scarcely distinguishable from Tennyson's rhythm.

1 Ode upon a Question moved whether Love should continue for ever. See Poetical Works (edit. Collins), pp. 92-98.

far

By the poets of the eighteenth century it was frequently used, and the examples given by Mr. Bradley are very from exhausting the examples which might be cited, if it were worth citing them.

As a contribution to theological thought and to philosophy-and on its first appearance it was hailed as a momentous contribution to both-In Memoriam has a very wasting hold on life. Perhaps nothing can make us realise more vividly the pace at which we have been advancing during the last few years than the perusal of this poem. What five-and-twenty years ago were paradoxes in it, or truths at which orthodoxy shuddered, have now become platitudes in every household and in every pulpit. Few would go to it for illumination and guidance; to few now would it be as it once was, an "oracle" or a "bible." And yet it will be long before it loses its fascination. In very musical language it expresses articulately and beautifully what many thousands think and feel on matters which deeply concern and affect them, and are indeed of the last importance to us. It is a very voice from the heart and soul of man. We may perhaps think that its power is not equal to its charm, that it practically leaves us where it found us, that it furnishes faith with no new supports and truth with no new documents. And yet it is a republication of the essential truths of the New Testament addressed and adapted to this age. It is a re-promulgation and vindication of the Gospel of Love, marshalling to the support of that Gospel what responds to it in the hopes and affections of human nature and what may be deduced in favour of it from instinct and experience. Taking its stand on Wordsworth's axiom,

We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love,
And e'en as these are well and wisely fixed,
In dignity of being we ascend,

it combats those who would live, as those who hold science paramount would live, by analysis, verification, and knowledge. Even to those who do not take the poem so seriously-let us not envy them-it still remains a most pathetic expression of emotions, sentiments, and truths which, as long as human nature remains the same, and as long as calamity, sorrow, and death are busy in the world, must be always repeating themselves.

The poem appeared anonymously in 1850, and no very important alterations were made in it in subsequent editions. Section lix. was added in the fourth edition, 1851, and xxxix. was added in 1872. What slight alterations have been made are recorded in the notes. The text of the present edition is that of 1860.

IN

MEMORIAM

A. H. H.

OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII

STRONG Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.

5

10

1. The word "Love" used, as Tennyson explained (Life, i. 312), in the sense in which it is used by St. John in his First Epistle, chap. iv. 8, 9. Cf. (repeated passim through the poem) 1 Pet. i. 8, "Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable." Cf., too, Byron, Childe Harold, canto iv. st. cxxi. :

O Love, no habitant of earth thou art,
An unseen seraph, we believe in thee.

5. The universe, i.e. earth and the solar system, half light, half shade. Bradley appositely compares Will Waterproof: This whole wide earth of

light and shade."

7, 8. The characteristic attitude in the ancient epics of a conqueror, the Greek επεμβαίνειν.

With these opening stanzas may be compared Herbert (Love) :-
Immortal Love, Author of this great frame,

Sprung from that beauty that can never fade,
How hath man parcell'd out Thy glorious name,
And thrown it on the dust that Thou hast made.

Again, Id., The Temper, 26, 27:

Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust,
Thy hands made both, and I am there.

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