"
In 1830 Tennyson published the first volume of which he was sole
author. Browning's Pauline was of the year 1833. It was the very
dead hours of the Muses. The great Mr Murray had ceased, as one
despairing of song, to publish poetry. Bulwer Lytton, in the preface
to Paul Clifford (1830), announced that poetry, with every other form
of literature except the Novel, was unremunerative and unread.
Coleridge and Scott were silent: indeed Sir Walter was near his
death; Wordsworth had shot his bolt, though an arrow or two were left
in the quiver. Keats, Shelley, and Byron were dead; Milman's brief
vogue was departing. It seemed as if novels alone could appeal to
readers, so great a change in taste had been wrought by the sixteen
years of Waverley romances. The slim volume of Tennyson was
naturally neglected, though Leigh Hunt reviewed it in the Tatler.
Hallam's comments in the Englishman's Magazine, though enthusiastic
(as was right and natural), were judicious. "The author imitates no
one." Coleridge did not read all the book, but noted "things of a
good deal of beauty. The misfortune is that he has begun to write
verses without very well understanding what metre is." As Tennyson
said in 1890, "So I, an old man, who get a poem or poems every day,
might cast a casual glance at a book, and seeing something which I
could not scan or understand, might possibly decide against the book
without further consideration.
Pages:
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36