It is all very well to laugh at such fears, but they are not natural fears at all, they just indicate a low vitality; they are the symptoms and not the causes of a disease. It is the frame of mind of the sluggard in the Bible who says, "There is a lion in the way." Younger people are apt to be irritated by what seems a wilful creating of apprehensions. They ought rather to be patient and rea.s.suring, and compa.s.sionate to the weakness of nerve for which it stands.
With such fears as these may be cla.s.sed all the unreal but none the less distressing fears about health which beset people all their lives, in some cases; it is extremely annoying to healthy people to find a man reduced to depression and silence at the possibility of taking cold, or at the fear of having eaten something unwholesome. I remember an elderly gentleman who had lived a vigorous and unselfish life, and was indeed a man of force and character, whose activity was entirely suspended in later years by his fear of catching cold or of over-tiring himself. He was a country clergyman, and used to spend the whole of Sunday between his services, in solitary seclusion, "resting," and retire to bed the moment the evening service was over; moreover his dread of taking cold was such that he invariably wore a hat in the winter months to go from the drawing-room to the dining-room for dinner, even if there were guests in his house. He used to jest about it, and say that it no doubt must look curious; but he added that he had found it a wise precaution, and that we had no idea how disabling his colds were. Even a very healthy friend of my own standing has told me that if he ever lies awake at night he is apt to exaggerate the smallest and most trifling sense of discomfort into the symptom of some dangerous disease. Let me quote the well-known case of Hans Andersen, whose imagination was morbidly strong. He found one morning when he awoke that he had a small pimple under his left eyebrow. He reflected with distress upon the circ.u.mstance, and soon came to the rueful conclusion that the pimple would probably increase in size, and deprive him of the sight of his left eye. A friend calling upon him in the course of the morning found him writing, in a mood of solemn resignation, with one hand over the eye in question, "practising," as he said, "how to read and write with the only eye that would soon be left him."
One"s first impulse is to treat these self-inflicted sufferings as ridiculous and almost idiotic. But they are quite apt to beset people of effectiveness and ability. To call them irrational does not cure them, because they lie deeper than any rational process, and are in fact the superficial symptoms of some deep-seated weakness of nerve, while their very absurdity, and the fact that the mind cannot throw them off, only proves how strong they are. They are in fact signs of some profound uneasiness of mind; and the rational brain of such people, casting about for some reason to explain the fear with which they are haunted, fixes on some detail which is not worthy of serious notice. It is of course a species of local insanity and monomania, but it does not imply any general obscuration of faculties at all. Some of the most intellectual people are most at the mercy of such trials, and indeed they are rather characteristic of men and women whose brain is apt to work at high pressure. One recollects in the life of Sh.e.l.ley, how he used to be haunted by these insupportable fears. He was at one time persuaded that he had contracted leprosy, and he used to disconcert his acquaintances by examining solicitously their wrists and necks to see if he could detect symptoms of the same disease.
There is very little doubt that as medical knowledge progresses we shall know more about the cause of such hallucinations. To call them unreal is mere stupidity. Sensible people who suffer from them are often perfectly well aware of their unreality, and are profoundly humiliated by them. They are some disease or weakness of the imaginative faculty; and a friend of mine who suffered from such things told me that it was extraordinary to him to perceive the incredible ingenuity with which his brain under such circ.u.mstances used to find confirmation for his fears from all sorts of trivial incidents which at other times pa.s.sed quite unnoticed. It is generally quite useless to think of removing the fear by combating the particular fancy; the affected centre, whatever it is, only turns feverishly to some other similar anxiety. Occupation of a quiet kind, exercise, rest, are the best medicine.
Sometimes these anxieties take a different form, and betray themselves by suspicion of other people"s conduct and motives. That is of course allied to insanity. In sane and sound health we realise that we are not, as a rule, the objects of the malignity and spitefulness of others. We are perhaps obstacles to the carrying out of other people"s plans; but men and women as a rule mind their own business, and are not much concerned to intervene in the designs and activities of others.
Yet a man whose mental equilibrium is unstable is apt to think that if he is disappointed or thwarted it is the result of a deliberate conspiracy on the part of other people. If he is a writer, he thinks that other writers are aware of his merits, but are determined to prevent them being recognised out of sheer ill-will. A man in robust health realises that he gets quite as much credit or even more credit than he deserves, and that his claims to attention are generously recognised; one has exactly as much influence and weight as one can get, and other people as a rule are much too much occupied in their own concerns to have either the time or the inclination to interfere. But as a man grows older, as his work stiffens and weakens, he falls out of the race, and he must be content to do so; and he is well advised if he puts his failure down to his own deficiencies, and not to the malice of others. The world is really very much on the look out for anything which amuses, delights, impresses, moves, or helps it; it is quick and generous in recognition of originality and force; and if a writer, as he gets older, finds his books neglected and his opinions disdained, he may be fairly sure that he has said his say, and that men are preoccupied with new ideas and new personalities. Of course this is a melancholy and disconcerting business, especially if one has been more concerned with personal prominence than with the worth and weight of one"s ideas; mortified vanity is a sore trial. I remember once meeting an old author who, some thirty years before the date at which I met him, had produced a book which attracted an extraordinary amount of attention, though it has long since been forgotten. The old man had all the airs of solemn greatness, and I have seldom seen a more rueful spectacle than when a young and rising author was introduced to him, and when it became obvious that the young man had not only never heard of the old writer, but did not know the name of his book.
The question is what we can do to avoid falling under the dominion of these uncanny fears and fancies, as we fall from middle age to age. A dreary, dispirited, unhappy, peevish old man or old woman is a very miserable spectacle; while, at the same time, generous, courteous, patient, modest, tender old age is one of the most beautiful things in the world. We may of course resolve not to carry our dreariness into all circles, and if we find life a poor and dejected business, we can determine that we will not enlarge upon the theme. But the worst of discouragement is that it removes even the desire to play a part, or to make the most and best of ourselves. Like Mrs. Gummidge in David Copperfield, if we are reminded that other people have their troubles, we are apt to reply that we feel them more. One does not desire that people should unduly indulge themselves in self-dramatisation. There is something very repugnant in an elderly person who is bent on proving his importance and dignity, in laying claim to force and influence, in affecting to play a large part in the world. But there is something even more afflicting in the people who drop all decent pretence of dignity, and pour the product of an acrid and disappointed spirit into all conversations.
Age can establish itself very firmly in the hearts of its circle, if it is kind, sympathetic, appreciative, ready to receive confidences, willing to encourage the fitful despondencies of youth. But here again we are met by the perennial difficulty as to how far we can force ourselves to do things which we do not really want to do, and how far again, if we succeed in forcing ourselves into action, we can give any accent of sincerity and genuineness to our comments and questions.
In this particular matter, that of sympathy, a very little effort does undoubtedly go a long way, because there are a great many people in the world eagerly on the look out for any sign of sympathy, and not apt to scrutinise too closely the character of the sympathy offered. And the best part of having once forced oneself to exhibit sympathy, at whatever cost of strain and effort, is that one is at least ashamed to withdraw it.
I remember a foolish woman who was very anxious to retain the hold upon the active world which she had once possessed. She very seldom spoke of any subject but herself, her performances, her activities, the pressure of the claims which she was forced to try to satisfy. I can recall her now, with her sanguine complexion, her high voice, her anxious and restless eye wandering in search of admiration. "The day"s post!" she cried, "that is one of my worst trials--so many duties to fulfil, so many requests for help, so many irresistible claims come before me in the pile of letters--that high," indicating about a foot and a half of linear measurement above the table. "It is the same story every day--a score of people bringing their little mugs of egotism to be filled at my pump of sympathy!"
It was a ridiculous exhibition, because one was practically sure that there was nothing of the kind going on. One was inclined to believe that they were mugs of sympathy filled at the pump of egotism! But if the thing were really being done, it was certainly worth doing!
One of the causes of the failure of nerve-force in age, which lies behind so much of these miseries, is that people who have lived at all active lives cannot bring themselves to realise their loss of vigour, and try to prolong the natural energies of middle age into the twilight of elderliness. Men and women cling to activities, not because they enjoy them, but to delude themselves into believing that they are still young. That terrible inability to resign positions, the duties of which one cannot adequately fulfil, which seems so disgraceful and unconscientious a handling of life to the young, is often a pathetic clinging to youth. Such veterans do not reflect that the only effect of such tenacity is partly that other people do their work, and partly also that the critic observes that if a post can be adequately filled by so old a man it is a proof that such a post ought not to exist. The tendency ought to be met as far as possible by fixing age-limits to all positions. Because even if the old and weary do consult their friends as to the advisability of retirement, it is very hard for the friends cordially to recommend it. A public man once told me that a very aged official consulted him as to the propriety of resignation. He said in his reply something complimentary about the value of the veteran"s services. Whereupon the old man replied that as he set so high an estimation upon his work, he would endeavour to hold on a little longer!
The conscientious thing to do, as we get older and find ourselves slower, more timid, more inactive, more anxious, is to consult a candid friend, and to follow his advice rather than our own inclination; a certain fearfulness, an avoidance of unpleasant duty, a dreary foreboding, is apt to be characteristic of age. But we must meet it philosophically. We must reflect that we have done our work, and that an attempt to galvanise ourselves into activity is sure to result in depression. So we must condense our energies, be content to play a little, to drowse a little, to watch with interest the game of life in which we cannot take a hand, until death falls as naturally upon our wearied eyes as sleep falls upon the eyes of a child tired with a long summer day of eager pleasure and delight.
But there is one practical counsel that may here be given to all who find a tendency to dread and anxiety creeping upon them as life advances. I have known very truly and deeply religious people who have been thus beset, and who make their fears the subject of earnest prayer, asking that this particular terror may be spared them, that this cup may be withdrawn from their shuddering lips. I do not believe that this is the right way of meeting the situation. One may pray as whole-heartedly as one will against the tendency to fear; but it is a great help to realise that the very experiences which seem now so overwhelming had little or no effect upon one in youthful and high-hearted days. It is not really that the quality of events alter; it is merely that one is losing vitality, and parting with the irresponsible hopefulness that did not allow one to brood, simply because there were so many other interesting and delightful things going on.
One must attack the disease, for it is a disease, at the root; and it is of little use to shrink timidly from the particular evil, because when it is gone, another will take its place. We may pray for courage, but we must practise it; and the best way of meeting particular fears is to cultivate interests, distractions, amus.e.m.e.nts, which may serve to dispel them. We cannot begin to do that while we are under the dominion of a particular fear, for the strength of fear lies in its dominating and nauseating quality, so that it gives us a dreary disrelish for life; but if we really wish to combat it, we must beware of inactivity; it may be comfortable, as life goes on, to cultivate a habit of mild contemplation, but it is this very habit of mind which predisposes us to anxiety when anxiety comes. Dr. Johnson pointed out how comparatively rare it was for people who had manual labour to perform, and whose work lay in the open air, to suffer from hypochondriacal terrors. The truth is that we are made for labour, and we have by no means got rid of the necessity for it. We have to pay a price for the comforts of civilisation, and above all for the pleasures of inactivity. It is astonishing how quickly a definite task which one has to perform, whether one likes it or not, draws off a cloud of anxiety from one"s spirit. I am myself liable to attacks of depression, not causeless depression, but a despondent exaggeration of small troubles.
Yet in times of full work, when meetings have to be attended, papers tackled, engagements kept, I seldom find myself suffering from vague anxieties. It is simply astonishing that one cannot learn more common sense! I suppose that all people of anxious minds tend to find the waking hour a trying one. The mind, refreshed by sleep, turns sorrowfully to the task of surveying the difficulties which lie before it. And yet a hundred times have I discovered that life, which seemed at dawn nothing but a tangle of intolerable problems, has become at noon a very bearable and even interesting affair; and one should thus learn to appreciate the tonic value of occupation, and set oneself to discern some pursuit, if we have no compulsory duties, which may set the holy mill revolving, as Dante says; for it is the homely grumble of the gear which distracts us from the other sort of grumbling, the self-pitying frame of mind, which is the most fertile seed-plot of fear.
"How happy I was long ago; how little I guessed my happiness; how little I knew all that lay before me; how sadly and strangely afflicted I am!" These are the whispers of the evil demon of fearfulness; and they can only be checked by the murmur of wholesome and homely voices.
The old motto says, "Orare est laborare," "prayer is work"--and it is no less true that "laborare est orare," "work is prayer." The truth is that we cannot do without both; and when we have prayed for courage, and tried to rejoice in our beds, as the saints who are joyful in glory do, we had better spend no time in begging that money may be sent us to meet our particular need, or that health may return to us, or that this and that person may behave more kindly and considerately, but go our way to some perfectly commonplace bit of work, do it as thoroughly as we can, and simply turn our back upon the hobgoblin whose grimaces fill us with such uneasiness. He melts away in the blessed daylight over the volume or the account-book, in the simple talk about arrangements or affairs, and above all perhaps in trying to disentangle and relieve another"s troubles and anxieties. We cannot get rid of fear by drugs or charms; we have to turn to the work which is the appointed solace of man, and which is the reward rather than the penalty of life.
XI
DR. JOHNSON
There is one great and notable instance in our annals which ought once and for all to dispose of the idea that there is anything weak or unmanly in finding fear a constant temptation, and that is the case of Dr. Johnson. Dr. Johnson holds his supreme station as the "figure" par excellence of English life for a number of reasons. His robustness, his wit, his reverence for established things, his secret piety are all contributory causes; but the chief of all causes is that the proportion in which these things were mixed is congenial to the British mind. The Englishman likes a man who is deeply serious without being in the least a prig; a man who is tender-hearted without being sentimental; he likes a rather combative nature, and enjoys repartee more than he enjoys humour. The Englishman values good sense above almost all qualities; by a sensible man he means a man with a clear judgment of right and wrong, a man who is not taken in by pretences nor gulled by rhetoric; a man who can instinctively see what is important and what is unimportant.
But of course the chief external reason, apart from the character of Johnson himself, for his supremacy of fame, is that his memory is enshrined in an incomparable biography. It shows the strange ineptness of Englishmen for literary and artistic criticism, their incapacity for judging a work of art on its own merits, their singular habit of allowing their disapprobation of a man"s private character to depreciate his work, that an acknowledged critic like Macaulay could waste time in carefully considering whether Boswell was more fool or more knave, and triumphantly announce that he produced a good book by accident. Probably Boswell did not realise how matchless a biographer he was, though he was not disposed to belittle his own performances.
But his unbridled interest in the smallest details, his power of hero-worship, his amazing style, his perception, his astonishing memory and the training he gave it, his superb dramatic faculty, which enabled him to arrange his other characters around the main figure, and to subordinate them all to his central emphasis--all these qualities are undeniable. Moreover he was himself the most perfect foil and contrast to Johnson that could be imagined, while he possessed in a unique degree the power of both stimulating and provoking his hero to animation and to wrath. Boswell may not have known what an artist he was, but he is probably one of the best literary artists who has ever lived.
But the supreme quality of his great book is this--that his interest in every trait of his hero, large and small, is so strong that he had none of that stiff propriety or chilly reserve which mars almost all English biographies. He did not care a straw whether this characteristic or that would redound to Johnson"s credit. He saw that Johnson was a large-minded, large-hearted man, with an astonishing power of conversational expression, and an extremely picturesque figure as well.
He perceived that he was big enough to be described in full, and that the shadows of his temperament only brought out the finer features into prominence.
Since the days of Johnson there are but two Englishmen whose lives we know in anything like the same detail--Ruskin and Carlyle. We know the life of Ruskin mainly from his own power of impa.s.sioned autobiography, and because he had the same sort of power of exhibiting both his charm and his weakness as Boswell had in dealing with Johnson. But Ruskin was not at all a typical Englishman; he had a very feminine side to his character, and though he was saved from sentimentality by his extreme trenchancy, and by his irritable temper, yet his whole temperament is beautiful, winning, attractive, rather than salient and picturesque. He had the qualities of a poet, a quixotic ideal, and an exuberant fancy; but though his spell over those who understand him is an almost magical one, his point of view is bound to be misunderstood by the ordinary man.
Carlyle"s case is a different one again. There the evidence is mainly doc.u.mentary. We know more about the Carlyle interior than we know of the history of any married pair since the world began. There is little doubt that if Carlyle could have had a Boswell, a biographer who could have rendered the effect of his splendid power of conversation, we might have had a book which could have been put on the same level as the life of Johnson, because Carlyle again was pre-eminently a "figure," a man made by nature to hold the enraptured attention of a circle. But it would have been a much more difficult task to represent Carlyle"s talk than it was to represent Johnson"s, because Carlyle was an inspired soliloquist, and supplied both objection and repartee out of his own mind. I think it probable that Carlyle was a typical Scotchman; he was more impa.s.sioned in his seriousness than Johnson, but he had a grimness which Johnson did not possess, and he had not Johnson"s good-natured tolerance for foolish and well-meaning people.
Carlyle himself had a good deal of Boswell"s own gift, a power of minute and faithful observation, and a memory which treasured and reproduced characteristic details. If Carlyle had ever had the time or the taste to admire any human being as Boswell admired Johnson, he might have produced fully as great a book; but Carlyle had a prophetic impulse, an instinct for inverting tubs and preaching from them, a desire for telling the whole human race what to do and how to do it, which Johnson was too modest to claim.
There is but one other instance that I know in English literature of a man who had the Boswellian gift to the full, but who never had complete scope, and that was Hogg. If Hogg could have spent more of his life with Sh.e.l.ley, and had been allowed to complete his book, we might, I believe, have had a monument of the same kind.
But in the case of Boswell and Johnson, it is Boswell"s magnificent scorn of reticence which has done the trick, like the spurt of acid, of which Browning speaks in one of his best similes. The final stroke of genius which has established the Life of Johnson so securely in the hearts of English readers, lies in the fact that Boswell has given us something to compa.s.sionate. As a rule the biographer cannot bear to evoke the smallest pity for his hero. The absence of female relatives in the case of Johnson was probably a part of his good fortune. No biographer likes, and seldom dares, to torture the sensibilities of a great man"s widow and daughters. And the strength as well as the weakness of the feminine point of view is that women have a power not so much of not observing, as of actually obliterating the weaknesses of those whom they love. It is sentiment which ruins biographies, the sentiment that cannot bear the truth.
Boswell did not shrink from admitting the reader to a sight of Johnson"s hypochondria, his melancholy fears, his dreary miseries, his dread of illness, his terror of death. Johnson"s horror of annihilation was insupportable. He so revelled in life, in the contact and company of other human beings, that he once said that the idea of an infinity of torment was preferable to the thought of annihilation. He wrote, in his last illness, to his old friend Dr. Taylor:
"Oh! my friend, the approach of death is very dreadful. I am afraid to think on that which I know I cannot avoid. It is vain to look round and round for that help which cannot be had. Yet we hope and hope, and fancy that he who has lived to-day may live to-morrow. But let us learn to derive our hope only from G.o.d.
"In the meantime, let us be kind to one another. I have no friend now living but you and Mr. Hector that was the friend of my youth.--Do not neglect, sir, yours affectionately, SAM. JOHNSON."
Was ever the last fear put into such simple and poignant words as in the above letter? It is like that other saying of Johnson"s, when all sorts of good reasons had been given why men should wish to be released from their troubles by death, "After all, it is a sad thing for a man to lie down and die." There is no more that can be said, and not the best reasons in the world for desiring to depart and have done with life can ever do away with that sadness.
Dr. Johnson supplies the clearest proof, if proof were needed, that no robustness of temperament, no genius of common sense, no array of rationality, no degree of courage, can save a man from the a.s.saults of fear, and even of fear which the sufferer knows to be unreal. Some of the most severe and angry things which Johnson ever said were said to Boswell and others who persisted in discussing the question of death.
Yet Johnson had no rational doubt of immortality, and believed with an almost childlike simplicity in the Christian faith. He was not afraid of pain, or of the act of dying; it was of the unknown conditions beyond the grave that he was afraid. Probably as a rule very robust people are so much occupied in living that they have little time to think of the future, while men and women who hold to life by a frail tenure are not much concerned at quitting a scene which is phantasmal and full of pain. But in Johnson we have the two extremes brought together. He was the most gregarious of men; he loved company so well that he would follow his friends to the very threshold, in the hope, as he once told Boswell, that they might perhaps return. When he was alone and undistracted, his melancholy came back upon him like a cloud. He tortured himself over the unprofitableness of his life, over his failure to achieve official prominence. He does not seem to have brooded over the favourite subject for Englishmen to lose heart over, namely, his financial position. It is a very significant fact in our English life that if at an inquest upon a suicide it can be established that a man has financial difficulties, a verdict of temporary insanity is instantly conceded. Loss of property rather than loss of affection is the thing which the Englishman thinks is likely to derange a man.
But Johnson seems never to have been afraid of poverty, nor to have ever troubled about fame. He was very angry once when it was laughingly suggested to him that if he had gone to the Bar he might have been Lord Chancellor; and I have no doubt, as I have said, that one of his uncomfortable reflections was that he did not seem to himself to be in a position of influence and authority. But, apart from that, it is obvious that Johnson"s broodings took the form of lamenting his own sinfulness and moral worthlessness: what the faults which troubled him were, it is hard to say. He does not seem to have been repentant about the mortification he caused others by his witty bludgeoning--indeed he considered himself a polite man! But I believe, from many slight indications, that Johnson was distressed by the consciousness of sensual impulses, though he held them in severe restraint. His habit of ejaculatory prayer was, I think, directed against this tendency. The agitation with which he once said that corruption had entered into his heart by means of a dream seems to me a proof of this. He took a tolerant view of the lapses of others, and of course the standard of the age was lax in this respect. But I have little doubt myself that here Johnson found himself often confronted with a sensuous tendency which he thought degrading, and which he constantly combated.
Apart from this, he was not afraid of illness in itself, except as a prelude of mortality. Indeed I believe that he took a hypochondriac pleasure in observing his symptoms minutely, and in dosing himself in all sorts of ways. His mysterious preoccupations with dried orange-peel had no doubt a medicinal end in view. But when it came to suffering pain and even to enduring operations, he had no tremors. His one constant fear was the fear of death. He kept it at arm"s length, he loved any social amus.e.m.e.nt that banished it, but it is obvious, in several of his talks, when the subject was under discussion, that the cloud descended upon him suddenly and made him miserable. It was all summed up in this, that life was to his taste, that even when oppressed with gloom and depression, he never desired to escape. I have heard a great doctor say that he believed that human beings were very sharply divided in this respect, that there were some people in whom any extremity of prolonged anguish, bodily or mental, never produced the smallest desire to quit life; while there were others whose attachment to life was slight, and that a very little pressure of care or calamity developed a suicidal impulse. This is, I suppose, a question of vitality, not necessarily of activity of mind and body, but a deep instinctive desire to live; the thought of deliberate suicide was wholly unintelligible to Johnson, death was his ultimate fear, and however much he suffered from disease or depression, his intention to live was always inalienable.
His fear then was one which no devoutness of faith, no resolute tenacity of hope, no array of reasons could ever touch. It was simply the unknown that he feared. Life had not been an easy business for Johnson; he had known all the calamities of life, and he was familiar with the worst calamity of all, the causeless melancholy which makes life weary and distasteful without ever removing the certainty that it is in itself desirable.
We may see from all this that to attempt to seek a cure for fear in reason is foredoomed to failure, because fear lies in a region that is behind all reason. It exists in the depth of the spirit, as in the fallen gloom of the glimmering sea-deeps, and it can be touched by no activity of life and joy and sunlight on the surface, where the speeding sail moves past wind-swept headlands. We must follow it into those depths if we are to deal with it at all, and it must be vanquished in the region where it is born, and where it skulks unseen.
XII
TENNYSON, RUSKIN, CARLYLE
There were three great men of the nineteenth century of whom we know more than we know of most men, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Tennyson, in whose lives fear was a prominent element.
Tennyson has suffered no loss of fame, but he has suffered of late a certain loss of influence, which was bound to come, if simply from the tremendous domination which his writings exercised in his lifetime. He was undoubtedly one of the first word-artists who ever lived and wrote, but he was a great deal more than that; he was a great mystic, a man whose mind moved in a shining cloud of inspiration. He had the const.i.tution and the temperament of a big Lincolnshire yeoman, with that simple rusticity that is said to have characterised Vergil. But his spirit dwelt apart, revolving dim and profound thoughts, brooding over mysteries; if he is lightly said to be Early Victorian, it is not because he was typical of his age, but because he contributed so much to make it what it was. While Browning lived an eager personal life, full of observation, zest, and pa.s.sion, Tennyson abode in more impersonal thoughts. In the dawn of science, when there was a danger of life becoming over-materialised, contented with the first steps of swiftly apprehended knowledge, and with solutions which were no solutions at all, but only the perception of laws, Tennyson was the man of all others who saw that science had a deeply poetical side, and could enforce rather than destroy the religious spirit; he saw that a knowledge of processes was not the same thing as an explanation of impulses, and that while it was a little more clear in the light of science what was actually happening in the world, men were no nearer the perception of why it happened so, or why it happened at all.
Tennyson saw clearly the wonders of astronomy and geology, and discerned that the laws of nature were nothing more than the habits, so to speak, of a power that was incredibly dim and vast, a power which held within itself the secrets of motion and rest, of death and life.
Thus he claimed for his disciples not only the average thoughtful men, but the very best and finest minds of his generation who wished to link the past and the present together, and not to break with the old sanct.i.ties.
Tennyson"s art suffered from the consciousness of his enormous responsibility, and where he failed was from his dread of unpopularity, or his fear of alienating the ordinary man. Browning was interested in ethical problems; his robust and fortunate temperament allowed him to bridge over with a sort of buoyant healthiness the gaps of his philosophy. But Tennyson"s ethical failure lay in his desire to improve the occasion, and to rule out all impulses that had not a social and civic value. In the later "Idylls" he did his best to represent the prig trailing clouds of glory, and to discourage lawlessness in every form; but he was more familiar with the darker and grosser sides of life than he allowed to appear in his verse, which suffers from an almost prudish delicacy, which is more akin to respectability than to moral courage.
But all this was the shadow of a very sensitive and melancholy temperament. Comparatively little is known of the first forty years of his life; it is after that time that the elaborate legend begins. Till the time of his marriage, he must have been a constant anxiety to his friends; his gloom, his inertia, his drifting mooning ways, his hypochondria, his incapacity for any settled plan of life, all seemed to portend an ultimate failure. But this troubled inertness was the soil of his inspiration; his conceptions took slow and stately shape.
He never suffered from the haste, which as Dante says "mars all decency of act." After that time he enjoyed a great domestic happiness, and practised considerable sociability. His terrifying demeanour, his amazing personal dignity and majesty, the certainty that he would say whatever came into his head, whether it was profound and solemn, or testy and discourteous, gave him a personal ascendancy that never disappointed a pilgrim.
But he lived all his life in a perpetual melancholy, feeling the smallest slights acutely, hating at once obscurity and publicity, aware of his renown, yet shrinking from the evidences of it. He could be distracted by company, soothed by wine and tobacco; but left to itself, his mind fell helplessly down the dark slope into a sadness and a dreariness which deprived life of its savour. It was not that his dread was a definite one; he was strong and tough physically, and he regarded death with a solemn curiosity; but he had a sense of the profitlessness of vacant hours, unthrilled by beauty and delight, and had also a morbid pride, of the nature of vanity, which caused him to resent the smallest criticism of his works from the humblest reader. There are many stories of this, how he declaimed against the l.u.s.t of gossip, which he called with rough appositeness "ripping up a man like a pig,"
and thanked G.o.d with all his heart and soul that he knew nothing of Shakespeare"s private life; and in the same breath went on to say that he thought that his own fame was suffering from a sort of congestion, because he had received no letters about his poems for several days.