Text: Rossiter Johnson, “Tennyson, Poe and Admiral Farragut,” The Critic (New York), vol. XXX, whole no. 557, October 22, 1892, p. 224

[page 224, column 1, continued:]

TENNYSON, POE AND ADMIRAL FARRAGUT.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE CRITIC: —

Now that we are all talking about Tennyson and listening to the opinions of critics and readers concerning his work, it occurs to me that Edgar Allan Poe's estimation of him is interesting — though Poe was somewhat one-sided as a critic. In his lecture on The Poetic Principle,’ published in every edition of his works, Poe says near the close: —

From Alfred Tennyson, although in perfect sincerity I regard him as the noblest poet that ever lived, I have left myself time to cite only a very brief specimen. I call him, and think him, the noblest of poets, not because the impressions he produces are at all times the most profound — not because the poetical excitement which he induces is at ali times the most intense — but because it is at all times the most ethereal -in other words, the most elevating and most pure. No poet is so little of the earth, earthy.

He then cites the lyric ‘Tears, Idle Tears,’ from ‘The Princess.’ As Poe died in 1849, this dictum was uttered before Tennyson had published ‘In Memoriam,’ ‘Maud’ and ‘Idyls of the King.’

On the other hand, in his much-admired metaphor of the pilot, which the journalists are all quoting, the famous English poet was anticipated by a famous American who was not a poet. When Admiral Farragut, near the close of his life, lay dangerously ill in Chicago, a servant girl with more zeal than discretion ran out for a Catholic priest, who, supposing she had been sent, went to the house in good faith. The old sailor turned and looked at him, and then said gently: ‘There must be some mistake; I have not sent for you, sir; you are not my pilot.’ The expression is poetical [column 2:] enough in Tennyson's verse; it was even more so on Farragut's lips.

There are four measures or rhythms in English poetry, and all have been used by the great poets. Does any one know why a poet so voluminous as Tennyson confines himself almost exclusively to two of them — the iambic and the trochaic? The same is true of Longfellow. Setting aside his Greek hexameters, I recall nothing of his in a three-syllabled rhythm except the little poem ‘Curfew.’ Other poets-notably Moore, Byron and Scott-have done wonderful things in the way of musical verse with the anapest and the dactyl. Think, for instance, of Byron's

the music of which never breaks from the first line to the last. I cannot understand why two melodious singers like Longfellow and Tennyson should discard such an instrument.

I have spoken of Tennyson as voluminous; but, if we consider the element of time, he was not so. In the fifty years succeeding his first publication he produced an average of two lines a day. The plays that he has written since that time would increase this average-if they were poetry. It is a curious fact that if we put together all the British poetry that has generally been conceded to be worthy of preservation in popular collections, it presents very nearly this same average of two lines a day for the five and a half centuries since the birth of Chaucer. As Tennyson never had any other business than writing poetry, he seems to have done it very deliberately, though we cannot know how much he wrote that he did not choose to publish. Byron produced about the same amount for publication, in one-fourth of the time.

ROSSITER JOHNSON.

NEW YORK, Oct. 8, 1892.