THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, AUGUST 7, 1909. THE TENNYSON CENTENARY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14133, 7 August 1909, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, AUGUST 7, 1909. THE TENNYSON CENTENARY.

The year 1909 might with some propriety be called the year of centenaries, for each quarter seems to have brought the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of the A great men of the last century. Among these our own race has been largely represented by men who, each in his own special field of work, took a leading place in the history of his time. Early in the year our American cousins celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, a man whose name will probably remain for many centuries in the very foremost rank of America's most remarkable men and greatest statesmen. The world of science has celebrated the centenary %of Darwin, as that of the man who more than any other moulded the scientific thought of his time, and led the way to newer and larger conceptions of the life history of the world. The religious world of England, and we ourselves at the scene of his special work, have celebrated the centenary of George Augustus Selwyn, as that of probably the most representative missionary bishop of the national Church of England during the period of its separate existence. And now the world of literature is celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Alfred Tennyson, as that of the most representative poet of England in the nineteenth century. Few years, it may truly be said, in the history of any century have produced greater men than these, each in his own special field of work; and perhaps we should look in vain through the records of past history to find an instance of a single race producing in a single year so large a proportion of the leaders. of human thought and action. ,

The question has been often raised how fax* we may credit the influence of the times in which they lived with the production of great men; or how far we should in fairness give much at least of the credit to the men for leaving the mark of their genius on the times in which they lived. The question is one that can hardly admit of an answer, especially in the domain of thought rather than of action. It may be true that a man like Napoleon seems to have given more of himself to the age in which he lived than the age gave to him. On the other hand, who shall say whether it was the spirit of their time that inspired the great poetical geniuses of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, or the genius ' of that band of wonderful men who inspired the Englishmen of that heroic time? The problem is full of interest, but it may be doubted whether it is one that can be solved by us. I It is one, however, which is strongly [ suggested by. the name of' Alfred

Tennyson. At the time of his birth the British Islands could boast of a company of poets larger in numbers, and certainly more than equal in talent, to any that had arisen in England for three hundred years. England herself was represented by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron,

Shelley, and Keats, besides other names that would have seemed great at almost any other period ofv her literary history. Scotland was represented by Scott and Campbell, while Ireland could boast of the genius of Moore. In variety of genius, as well as in its extent, the age was one to which it is not easy to find a parallel in the literary history of any nation, and -it might naturally have been supposed that it would be succeeded by another in which poetry, at any rate, would have found little . place and inconsiderable influence in English literature. This had been the case after the period of the great Elizabethan age of English poetry; but though the nineteenth century produced only two English poets who could be considered great, these two have

left perhaps a . deeper mark on the literary thought of their time and country than all the brilliant band of poets who lived during the first thirty years of that period.

In Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning the last century added two great names to the splendid list of English poets, but at' any rate, in the case of the poet whose centenary was celebrated yesterday, it added something t more than this. Much has been said, and justly said, of the genius of the late poet laureate of England. It has been pointed out that few have equalled, and probably none at all surpassed, him in the perfection of his language and the delicate beauty of his thought. These, however, were not the most

remarkable features of the genius which has made Alfred Tennyson's name so widely known among all English-speaking peoples,- and which renders him still the poet who, after

Shakespere, is the most quoted and most highly prized among - the majority of his own people. It was as the poet of his own time that Tenny-

son was chiefly remarkable, and will probably continue so in the future.

Dther poets, like Wordsworth, have

lent the charm of their genius to the world of nature; others again, like Browning, to the thought and life of humanity; the special quality of the genius of the late poet laureate was its sympathy with and its power of reproducing at its best the thought and the ideals of his own time. The

discoveries and new thoughts that Charles Darwin gave to the world of science Alfred Tennyson carried into the realms of poetic vision. The new thoughts ,■ and broader

speculations that, more or less unconsciously, were taking possession of the minds of his own generation were reproduced, in new forms and in a purer light, in his poems. Even the doubts and questionings that have so deeply stirred men's minds during the last three-quarters of a

century were felt and reproduced by

him with a faithfulness that commended them to the thoughtful of his time, and a reverence that has

made them a source of strength and not of weakness to many. Higher praise could hardly be given to a

poet than this; and the leaders of the literature of to-day do well to

celebrate, and will do better yet to try to imitate in these, respects, the representative English poet of the last century.