Tennyson, Browning, and a Romantic Fallacy

TENNYSON, BROWNING, AND A ROMANTIC FALLACY LIONEL STEVENSON QNE of the most revealing phenomena_ in literary history is the transition between generations. Each batch of neophyte authors is confronted with a psychological dilemma. Are they to accept their elders as models and gratify a ready-made public demand by conforming to all the established techniques and taboos? Thus did the generation of Pope inherit from Dryden, and the generation of Johnson from Pope. Or are they to embark upon a spectacular revolution, openly defying the sanctions of seniority and setting up strange new idols? Thus did the romantic generation rebel against the neo-classicaL A third possibility, however, remains open. The- advancing generation may select certain elements for retention, and yet profoundly modify these by shifting the emphasis or adding new qualities. Characteristic of the Victorian principle of compromise was the fact that the major Victorian authors were thus both the inheritors and the transmuters of the tenets of romanticism. Only by a careful study of how the romantic impetus slackened during the 1820's and '30's, while new interpretations were slowly, experimentally applied, can we begin to understand how that complex intellectual fabric that we label "Victorianism'' came into being. The way to the transition was conveniently opened by the high mortality rate among authors during the fifteen years prior to 1835. How different the record of the mid-century would be if Byron, Shelley, and Keats, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Jane Austen, had lived to three-score and ten, or to the normal Victorian fourscore. In consequence of the widespread supervention of death, however, the 1830's were left almost totally devoid of major authors of established reputation. Prolific' and facile writers flourished rankly in this interval by the easy device of imitating the most successful achievements of the previous generation. Historical novelists in the wake of Scott, exotic and erotic poets in the wake of Byron, gossiping humourists in the wake of Lamb-these were the authors who occupied the public eye. · Less conspicuous in their own day, but more significant in the perspective of time, other writers were awkwardly freeing themselves from the dead hand of the great romantics, and finding out the ideas and tech175 176 THE UNIVERSITY OF J:ORONTO QUARTERLY niques that were to ripen these obscure young innovators into the mellow sages of the high Victorian summer. Every one of the great Victorians went through this process of half-unconscious revolt. Revering the masters of romanticism, they nevertheless had to face the alternative of slavish discipleship or self-respecting independence, and unwillingly enough they obeyed the inner compulsion toward the harder path. In taking Tennyson and Browning as two exemplars of the transition, one may be astonished to find that their development followed an identical pattern. Unlike though their work was in technique and personal colouring, divergent though they became in their ultimate interests, these two men, who were later to share the pre-eminence of Victorian poetry, went through precisely similar processes of expansion, and, it would seem, completely independently of each other. With both, the focal point of their problem was the influence of Shelley. Whereas other romantic poets had appealed more strongly to the general public, Shelley possessed qualities that exerted the most violent fascination upon the young intellectuals of the late '20's. His soaring imagination, his elusive skill in poetic melody and connotative suggestion, his mixture of Platonic idealism, Rousseauesque primitivism, and Godwinian radicalism, . all merged into an incendiary compound that set the undergraduate mind ablaze. And yet, with all its fascination, Shelley's poetry revealed a flaw of judgment that was too obvious to be ignored. Just as in his own life, whenever he applied his theories to his conduct, he veered again and again over the invisible line dividing the sublime from the ridiculous-in his Oxford demonstration, his Irish escapade, his dealings with his wives and friends, his inadequate contacts with the Italian and Greek revolutionaries-so in his poetry the rational reader could not help seeing a basic fallacy. All the world's problems were to be solved in one vast millenia! transformation -scene, as soon as certain existing institutions such as kings...