"It was his way
that when we had entered on some scene of special beauty or grandeur,
after enjoying it together, he should always withdraw wholly from
sight, and study the view, as it were, in a little artificial
solitude."
Tennyson's poems, Mr Palgrave says, often arose in a kind of point de
repere (like those forms and landscapes which seem to spring from a
floating point of light, beheld with closed eyes just before we
sleep). "More than once he said that his poems sprang often from a
'nucleus,' some one word, maybe, or brief melodious phrase, which had
floated through the brain, as it were, unbidden. And perhaps at once
while walking they were presently wrought into a little song. But if
he did not write it down at once the lyric fled from him
irrecoverably." He believed himself thus to have lost poems as good
as his best. It seems probable that this is a common genesis of
verses, good or bad, among all who write. Like Dickens, and like
most men of genius probably, he saw all the scenes of his poems "in
his mind's eye." Many authors do this, without the power of making
their readers share the vision; but probably few can impart the
vision who do not themselves "visualise" with distinctness. We have
seen, in the cases of The Holy Grail and other pieces, that Tennyson,
after long meditating a subject, often wrote very rapidly, and with
little need of correction. He was born with "style"; it was a gift
of his genius rather than the result of conscious elaboration.
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