Tennysoniana/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
MAUD AND OTHER POEMS, 1855.[1]
A portion of the poem of "Maud" having appeared, as we have already seen, in a Miscellany, as far back as 1837, it seems highly probable that the original draught of the work is of much earlier date than its first publication. In that case the passages relating to the Crimean War must have been an afterthought made to fit into the poem, perhaps hardly to its advantage. However that may be, "Maud" excited no small amount of animadversion on its appearance; the critics joined in a chorus of dispraise,[2] and one wretched poetaster published an "Anti-Maud."[3] A defender came forward with a little work entitled: "Tennyson's 'Maud' Vindicated; an Explanatory Essay. By R. J. Mann, M.D. Jarrold and Sons, St. Paul's Churchyard."
The following extract from a letter of Mr. Tennyson's to Dr. Mann has been made public:
"No one with this Essay before him can in future pretend to misunderstand my dramatic poem,[4] 'Maud:' your commentary is as true as it is full."
In a small anonymous volume of Poems, entitled "Ionica,"[5] another defender came forward with some lines of considerable merit, entitled "After reading 'Maud,' September, 1855."
The poem of "Maud" was considerably enlarged in the new edition of 1856. In the edition of 1859 it was divided into two, and subsequently, into three parts. The other contents of the volume are:
"The Brook; An Idyl."
"The Letters."
"Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington."
"The Daisy," written at Edinburgh.
"To the Rev. F. D. Maurice."[6]
"Will."
"The Charge of the Light Brigade."
- ↑ The first edition contains only 154 pages, of which one hundred are occupied by "Maud."
- ↑ See especially "Blackwood's Magazine," Sept. 1855; "National Review," Oct. 1855; "Ed. Rev." Oct. 1855.
- ↑ "Anti-Maud, by a Poet of the People" (second edition, enlarged. London: L. Booth, 1856), pp. 30. See also "Vindiciæ Pacis," addressed to Alfred Tennyson, Esq., in a volume entitled "Modern Manicheism, Labour's Utopia, and other Poems" (London: J. W. Parker and Son, 1857), pp. 145-150.
- ↑ In the latest editions the poem is entitled "Maud: a Monodrama."
- ↑ Smith, Elder, and Co. (1858), pp. 61-64.
- ↑ Maurice had already dedicated his "Theological Essays" to Tennyson, as follows:"To Alfred Tennyson, Esq., Poet Laureate."My dear Sir, I have maintained in these Essays that a Theology which does not correspond to the deepest thoughts and feelings of human beings cannot be a true Theology. Your writings have taught me to enter into many of those thoughts and feelings. Will you forgive me the presumption of offering you a book which at least acknowledges them and does them homage?
"As the hopes which I have expressed in this volume are more likely to be fulfilled to our children than to ourselves, I might perhaps ask you to accept it as a present to one of your name, in whom you have given me a very sacred interest. Many years, I trust, will elapse, before he knows that there are any controversies in the world into which he has entered. Would to God that in a few more he may find that they have ceased! At all events, if he should ever look into these Essays they may tell him what meaning some of the former generation attached to words, which will be familiar and dear to his generation, and to those that follow his,—how there were some who longed that the bells of our churches might indeed'Ring out the darkness of the land
'Ring in the Christ that is to be.''Believe me, my dear Sir,
"Yours very truly and gratefully,"F. D. Maurice."