death, which became the chief means of transforming the dainty and sentimental trifler of the poems of 1830 into the "sage and serious poet" of the subsequent volumes. When In Memoriam was given to the world, it appeared as a connected work, and not as a series of fragmentary lyrics. But to make it a connected work was not Tennyson's original intention. The sections were written, he says, at many different places, and as the phases of his intercourse with Hallam came to his memory and suggested them. "I did not write them with any view of weaving them into a whole, or for publication, until I found that I had written so many. 29 1 The sections composing the poem were written at intervals between the spring of 1834 and 1850, the year of its publication-“ some in Lincolnshire, some in London, Essex, Gloucestershire, Wales, anywhere where I happened to be" (Life, vol. i. p. 305). The Life enables us to assign dates, or approximate dates, to many of the sections. Those earliest in order of composition were ix., xxx., xxxi., lxxxv., xxviii. (Life, vol. i. p. 109). Section xcviii. must have been written in the spring of 1836 (Ibid. p. 148). Sections c.-ciii. refer to the removal of the Tennysons from Somersby in 1837, and civ.-v. to their settlement at High Beech, Epping Forest. Section lxxxvi. was written at Barmouth in 1839 (Ibid. p. 313), and possibly some of the other sections in the same key see lxxxviii., lxxxix., xci., cxv., cxvi., cxxi., cxxii. 'By Christmas 1841 the poem had made much progress; for Edmund Lushington says, "The number of memorial poems had rapidly increased," adding that he heard for creed, can be nothing better than a vain and portentous shadow projected from the selfish darkness of unregenerate man."-P. 136. "The great error of the Deistical mode of arguing is the assumption that intellect is something more pure and akin to Divinity than emotion."-P. 135. 1 Life, vol. i. p. 304. the first time vi. and li. (Ibid. p. 202-3). We also learn that "the sections about evolution," presumably liv., lv., lvi., cxviii., cxx., had been written before the publication of Chambers's Vestiges of Creation, in 1844 (Ibid. p. 223). In the summer of 1845 further progress had been made, and the Epilogue had been written (Ibid. p. 203). Section cxxvii. appears to refer to the events of 1848. If Canon Rawnsley be correct (see Memories of the Tennysons, p. 121), cxxi. was composed shortly before the poems were published. The fragmentary way in which In Memoriam was composed is indicated in the titles orginally applied to it by Tennyson. It is sometimes spoken of as "Memorial Poems," sometimes as "the Elegies," sometimes as "Fragments of an Elegy." It is clear, then, that In Memoriam was composed, like the Idylls of the King, after a purely fragmentary fashion, and that the idea of weaving the fragments into a connected whole and giving them unity was an afterthought. The poet has certainly been more successful with his lyric fragments than with his epic, though, like the Idylls, his work retains, in spite of all his efforts to give it unity, too evident traces of the manner in which it was composed. And how has this unity been attained, and in what way is the poem to be regarded as a connected whole? It is an important question, for though its charm as lyric poetry is in no way dependent on the relation of its parts to its whole, its power and its deeper significance are essentially dependent on its unity. This unity Tennyson indicated when he called the poem "The Way of the Soul" (Life, vol. i. p. 393), and has explained more fully in saying that "it was meant to be a kind of Divina Commedia, ending with happiness. . . . The different moods of sorrow as in a drama are dramatically given, and my conviction that fear, doubts, and suffering will find answer and relief only through Faith in a God of Love. 'I' is not always the author speaking of himself, but the voice of the human race speaking thro' him. After the Death of A. H. H., the divisions of the poem are made by First Xmas Eve (xxviii.), Second Xmas (lxxviii.), Third Xmas Eve (civ. and cv., etc.).”1 It is on these indications from the author that we must take our stand, and the analysis of the general scheme becomes easy. The poem falls, then, into four cycles.2 CYCLE I 1.-XXVIII.-XXX. The note here till the arrival of Christmas is pure elegy, when the cloud of grief is darkest. As throughout the poem Nature and Nature's phenomena, penetrated subjectively with the emotions of the mourner, become symbols of the dominant mood, the monotonous gloom of the Yew-tree (ii.) and the desolate house in the drizzling dawn (vii.) are here the symbol. The sections group themselves as the divisions suggested to Mr. Knowles indicate Then comes Christmas, and with it the dawn of hope. 1 Life, vol. i. p. 305. 2 In an article contributed to the Nineteenth Century for Jan. 1893, 'Aspects of Tennyson, II.," Mr. James Knowles tells us that Tennyson himself divided the poem into nine groups: (1) from stanza ? (section) i. to viii., (2) from ix. to xx., (3) from xxi. to xxviii., (4) from xxix. to xlix., (5) from 1. to lviii., (6) from lix. to lxxi., (7) from lxxii. to xcviii., (8) from xcix. to ciii., (9) from civ. to cxxxi. And into those groups the poem may obviously be divided from a lyrical point of view, but hardly from a philosophical or theological point of view, as the second Christmas, one of the essential stages in the spiritual significance of the poem, is ignored. It is therefore better to accept the division given in the Life as the authentic one, though the division given by Mr. Knowles may be incorporated. The key, if we may use the expression, to this cycle is given us in xxx. :— A rainy cloud possess'd the earth, CYCLE II XXXI.-LXXVIII. Grief, having now passed out of its passionate stage, and the cloud, though not lifted, lightened, finds again its symbol in the Yew-tree, not all mere gloom now; for its gloom is kindled at the tips, (xxxix.) even though it passes into gloom again. (Ibid.) Then follow a series of poems, partly speculative, partly elegiac. What is the present state of the dead? If the soul be not immortal, of what avail is life? Fears that the severance wrought by death may be final: the possible relation of the dead to the living: the hopelessness of deducing from Nature any presumption that the soul can be immortal. Can it be that the spirit of the dead friend can have any memories of his life on earth, any care for him who is left behind? Though the foolish world see no good in sorrow, yet out of sorrow emerges divine wisdom. Then, in storm and rain, comes in the anniversary of his friend's death, and sadly the mourner thinks of the life that Fame's wreath might have crowned -but what is fame, of what avail? Then comes Christmas, and he can even ask whether sorrow may not wane, whether regret may not die. Again the key The silent snow possess'd the earth, CYCLE III (lxxviii.) LXXIX. CIV.-CV. In this cycle grief, softened and tranquillised, finds solace and strength in memories and hopes; and the appeal to the new-year to hasten its coming (lxxxiii.), as well as the symbolic picture of the second anniversary of the death (xcix.), not now "lifting" its "burthen'd brows thro' clouds that drench the morning star," as in lxxii., but murmuring in the foliaged eves ( A song that slights the coming care, (xcix.) strike the keynotes. Vivid memories of the past rise up before the mourner, and the truth of what he had felt even in the depth of his sorrow, that 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all, (xxvii.) now comes more nearly home to him. Human love has become sublimed into spiritual love, and the possibility of soul communing with soul, "spirit" with "spirit," "ghost" with "ghost," is contemplated, and in the wonderful 95th section that communion is, or seems to be, held. The cycle concludes with the exquisite lyric sections in which the poet takes leave of the scenes especially associated with the memory of his dead friend. Then, preceded by the vision symbolising new prospects and fuller life, comes the |