IN MEMORIAM AND SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.
Where thy first form was made a man;
I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can
The soul of Shakespeare love thee more."
CHAPTER IV.
IN MEMORIAM AND SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.
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—
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"—
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"—
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:
Our Shakespeare's bland and universal eye
Dwells, 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.
Shakespeare.
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which 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.
In Memoriam, xxxviii. 2.
Compare this Sonnet with "In Memoriam" lxxv.-lxxvii.
Shakespeare.
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit."
Sonnet 26.
Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye
As interest of the dead," &c.
Sonnet 31.
TENNYSON.
Conduct by paths of growing powers
To reverence and the silver hair;
Her lavish mission richly wrought,
Leaving great legacies of thought,
Thy spirit should fail from off the globe;
As link'd with thine in love and fate."
In Memoriam, lxxxii. 8-10.
She takes, when harsher moods remit,
What slender shade of doubt may flit,
And makes it vassal unto love."
In Memoriam, xlviii. 2.
Shakespeare.
Which parts the shore, where two contracted new
Come daily to the banks, that when they see
Return 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.
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me."
Sonnet 61.
Tennyson.
And hide thy shame beneath the ground."
In Memoriam, LXXII. 7.
Desire of nearness doubly sweet;
And unto meeting when we meet,
Delight a hundredfold accrue."
In Memoriam, cxvii. 2.
In Memoriam, cxvii. 3.
I had such reverence for his blame,
See with clear eye some hidden shame
And I be lessen'd in his love?"
In Memoriam, LI. 2.
Shakespeare.
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main," &c.
Sonnet 64.
Than you shall hear the surly, sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled."
Sonnet 71.
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.
Tennyson.
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea."
In Memoriam, CXXIII. 1.
One set slow bell will seem to toll
The passing of the sweetest soul
That ever look'd with human eyes."
In Memoriam, LVII. 3.
Because he felt so fix'd in truth."
In Memoriam, CXXV. 2.
By village eyes as yet unborn."
In Memoriam, CONCLUSION).
Shakespeare.
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.
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change;
In many's looks the false heart's history
la writ, in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange:
Tennyson.
Compare this 87th Sonnet with "In Memoriam," LXII.[4]
His want in forms for fashion's sake,
Shakespeare.
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell."
Sonnet 93.
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd
Since first I saw you," &c.
Sonnet 104.
Tennyson.
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.
In Memoriam, CXXX. 2.
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.
Shakespeare.
Tennyson.
In Memoriam, CXXIX. 2.
To test his worth."
In Memoriam, XCV. 7.
In Memoriam, CXVIII. 7.
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.
IN MEMORIAM.
Readings of the First Edition (1850).[5]
"With all her music in her tone."
"To night the winds began to rise."
"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."
"Hath stretch'd my former joy so great?"
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the keys,
To cloak me from my proper scorn."
"I am not worthy but to speak"
"(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.
"But that still garden of the souls"
"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.
"So be my love an idle tale,"
"And in the chancel like a ghost."
"So bring an opiate treble strong,
Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong
That thus my pleasure might be whole;"
"From hill to hill, yet look'd the same"
"No single tear, no type of pain"
"Thy spirits in the dusking leaf"
"And dusky purlieus of the law."
"I wake, I rise: from end to end"
"To flicker with his treble tongue."
"To who may grasp a golden ball,"
"So wore his outward best, and join'd"
"A life in civic action warm."
"With many shocks that come and go,"
"And knowledge, but from hour to hour."
Will speak to me of me and mine :"
"And, crown'd with attributes of woe,"
"And strove to burst the folded gloom,"
"And what I seem beheld again,"
"That moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the vast of space
Among the worlds, that all is well."
"But woe to him that wears a crown,"
"And the vast Æon sinks in blood."
- ↑ 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." - ↑ lxi. 3.
- ↑ 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."