It is a remarkable fact that throughout the poems of Tennyson, Shakespeare is mentioned no fewer than six times.[1] First, he is placed among the "choice paintings of wise men" in "The Palace of Art," as—
"Shakespeare bland and mild."
Second, his epitaph is quoted as a motto to those stanzas, full of burning indignation, on the poet's fate, in which occur the lines—
"He gave the people of his best: His worst he kept: his best he gave:My Shakespeare's curse on clown and knave[2]Who will not let his ashes rest."
Third, in the opening stanza of the lines entitled "The New Timon and the Poets"—
"We know him out of Shakespeare's art, And those fine curses that he spoke,The old Timon, with his noble heart, That strongly loathing, greatly broke."
Fourth, in the Prologue to "The Princess"—
"This were a medley! we should have him back Who told the Winter's Tale to do it for us."
Fifth, in the Sonnet addressed to Macready on his retirement from the stage in 1851:
"Farewell, Macready; moral, grave, sublime.Our Shakespeare's bland and universal eyeDwells, pleased, thro' twice a hundred years, on thee."
And sixth and last Shakespeare is mentioned in the stanza of "In Memoriam"[3] quoted above, which leads me to the subject of the present paper.
"In Memoriam" has often been compared with Shakespeare's Sonnets and with "Lycidas;" but the lines that stand at the head of this paper always seemed to me to point to a closer relation with Shakespeare than has yet been noticed. The transcendent love for a beautiful soul, "passing the love of women," of which the soul of Shakespeare was capable, is hinted at, and the poet declares that even this love cannot surpass his for his friend. The allusion appeared to indicate a deep and probably recent study of the Sonnets of Shakespeare.
On examining these poems anew, which I did with great minuteness and attention, I found my supposition fully corroborated. I discovered a large number of coincidences of idea and even of expression not exactly to be called imitations, and still less plagiarisms, in the later, but which seemed to me to prove that his mind was at the time so imbued with the spirit of the elder poet as to render some unconscious echoes almost unavoidable.
The most important of these parallel passages I will now proceed to lay before the reader, leaving him to verify them and to draw his own conclusions on the matter.
"Who will believe my verse in time to come, If it were fill'd with your most high deserts? Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tombWhich hides your life and shows not half your parts.If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say 'This poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.' So should my papers yellow'd with their age Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue, And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage And stretched metre of an antique song:"Sonnet 17.
Tennyson.
"The herald melodies of spring." In Memoriam, xxxviii. 2.
Compare this Sonnet with "In Memoriam" lxxv.-lxxvii.
"Lord of my love, to whom in vassalageThy merit hath my duty strongly knit To thee I send this written embassage, To witness duty, not to show my wit." Sonnet 26.
Till slowly worn her earthly robe,Her lavish mission richly wrought,Leaving great legacies of thought,Thy spirit should fail from off the globe;
What time mine own might also flee,As link'd with thine in love and fate."In Memoriam,lxxxii. 8-10.
"Her care is not to part and prove;She takes, when harsher moods remit,What slender shade of doubt may flit,And makes it vassal unto love."In Memoriam, xlviii. 2.
"Let this sad interim like the ocean beWhich parts the shore, where two contracted new Come daily to the banks, that when they seeReturn of love, more bless'd may be the view;Or call it winter, which being full of care,Makes summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more rare."Sonnet 56.
"Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray, And hide thy shame beneath the ground." In Memoriam, LXXII. 7.
"That out of distance might ensue Desire of nearness doubly sweet; And unto meeting when we meet, Delight a hundredfold accrue." In Memoriam, cxvii. 2.
—"All the courses of the suns." In Memoriam, cxvii. 3.
"Shall he for whose applause I strove, I had such reverence for his blame, See with clear eye some hidden shameAnd I be lessen'd in his love?" In Memoriam, LI. 2.
"Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,To do more for me than mine own desert, And hang more praise upon deceased I Than niggard truth would willingly impart. O lest your true love may seem false in this, That you for love speak well of me untrue." Sonnet 72.
"There rolls the deep where grew the tree.O earth, what changes hast thou seen!There where the long street roars, hath beenThe stillness of the central sea."In Memoriam, CXXIII. 1.
"Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,One set slow bell will seem to tollThe passing of the sweetest soulThat ever look'd with human eyes."In Memoriam, LVII. 3.
"Love but play'd with gracious lies,Because he felt so fix'd in truth."In Memoriam, CXXV. 2.
"Which shall be readBy village eyes as yet unborn."In Memoriam, CONCLUSION).
Shakespeare.
"Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;My bonds in thee are all determinate.For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?And for that riches where is my deserving?The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,And so my patent back again is swerving.Thyself thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking;So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,Comes home again, on better judgment making.Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,In sleep a king, but waking no such matter."Sonnet 87.
"There can live no hatred in thine eye,Therefore in that I cannot know thy change;In many's looks the false heart's historyla writ, in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange:
Tennyson.
Compare this 87th Sonnet with "In Memoriam," LXII.[4]
"The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil His want in forms for fashion's sake,
"Three winters coldHave from the forests shook three summers' pride,Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'dIn process of the seasons have I seen,Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'dSince first I saw you," &c.Sonnet 104.
Tennyson.
Will let his coltish nature break At seasons thro' the gilded pale: ****"Nor ever narrowness or spite, Or villain fancy fleeting by, Drew in the expression of an eye Where God and Nature met in light." In Memoriam, CXI. 2, 5.
"I do not therefore love thee less." In Memoriam, CXXX. 2.
"The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well, Thro' four sweet years arose and fell, From flower to flower, from snow to snow. "And we with singing cheer'd the way, And, crown'd with all the season lent, From April on to April went, And glad at heart from May to May." In Memoriam, XXII. 1, 2.
"Sweet human hand and lips and eye." In Memoriam, CXXIX. 2.
"Defying change To test his worth." In Memoriam, XCV. 7.
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast." In Memoriam, CXVIII. 7.
"Two spirits of a diverse love Contend for loving masterdom." In Memoriam, CII. 2.
And yet the resemblance lies more in the whole tenour and spirit of the poems than in any particular passages, and I recommend the reader to consider those I have here brought together with the two books open before him, and see if he cannot trace out other points of similarity for himself.
xxi. 7."And unto one her note is gay,For now her little ones have ranged;And unto one her note is changed, Because her brood is stol'n away."
xxiv. 3. "Hath stretch'd my former joy so great?"
xxvi. 4.
"So might I find, ere yet the morn Breaks hither over Indian seas, That Shadow waiting with the keys, To cloak me from my proper scorn."
xxxvii. 3. "I am not worthy but to speak"
ib. 5. "(And dear as sacramental wine"
The Section which now stands as xxxix. (" Old warder of these buried bones") was added in the pocket-volume edition.
xliii. 3. "But that still garden of the souls"
ib. 4. "And love would last as pure and whole"liii. 2."And dare we to this doctrine give, That had the wild oat not been sown, The soil, left barren, had not grown," &c.
The Section which now stands as lix. ("O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me?") was added in the fourth edition, 1851.
lxii. 1. "So be my love an idle tale,"
lxvii. 4. "And in the chancel like a ghost."
lxxi. 2."So bring an opiate treble strong, Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong That thus my pleasure might be whole;"
lxxii. 4. "From hill to hill, yet look'd the same"
lxxviii. 4. "No single tear, no type of pain"
LXXXVIII. 2. "Thy spirits in the dusking leaf"
LXXXIX. 3. "And dusky purlieus of the law."
C. I. "I wake, I rise: from end to end"
cx. 2. "To flicker with his treble tongue."
cxi. 1. "To who may grasp a golden ball,"
ib. 4. "So wore his outward best, and join'd"
CXIII. 3. "A life in civic action warm."
ib. 5. "With many shocks that come and go,"
cxiv. 7. "And knowledge, but from hour to hour."
CXVI. 3.
"The dear, dear voice that I have known, Will speak to me of me and mine :"
cxviii. 5. "And, crown'd with attributes of woe,"
cxxii. 1. "And strove to burst the folded gloom,"
CXXIV. 6. "And what I seem beheld again,"
cxxvi. 3. "That moves about from place to place, And whispers to the vast of space Among the worlds, that all is well."
cxxvii. 3. "But woe to him that wears a crown,"
ib. 4. "And the vast Æon sinks in blood."
cxxviii. 5. "To make old baseness[7] picturesque,"
↑ Not counting the quotation from "Measure for Measure," prefixed to the poem of "Mariana," in the volume of 1830. Arthur Hallam speaks of this poem as "last, but, oh, not least—we swear by the memory of Shakespeare, to whom a monument of observant love has here been raised by simply expanding all the latent meanings and beauties contained in one stray thought of his genius."—Englishman's Magazine, ubi suprà.
↑This third line, however, originally stood thus: "My curse upon the clown and knave."
↑It is remarkable that this section immediately follows the stanza quoted at the head of this chapter.
↑"In Memoriam." London: Edward Moxon, 1850. The Introductory Stanzas are dated 1849. After which comes the following inscription: "In Memoriam A. H. H., Obiit MDCCCXXXIII."
↑Probably a misprint. It is corrected in the second edition.
↑This is presumably a misprint, and is corrected in the second edition to "bareness."
