CENTENARIES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 615, 18 September 1909, Page 9

CENTENARIES.

"The' Manchester Guardian" has a' shrewd note, on ceritenaries, apropos of the; centenary of. /Tennyson:-r:■•;. V ■. '■';■■■:■. y.>:.\ '■;■;;■''' ; 'V.'/ >" i'.The'. centenaries of'.authors-are;- not apt -to be'of;much importance for their name.or fame. Human.life is short, and a hundred ".years after a man's birth is generally ample to fix /his reputation: By< that time his .cause is/judged; Disposition is secure. A few effusions, of graceful -eulogy suffice to 'meet the requirements of the occasion,,and after a , nine days' brief immortality: in the hands of those ; who do not generally read him, ho relapses into the company of his'constunt followers 'whose.literary taste, is independent of the almanac. With the p ! oet : . whoso* centenary-! is. to-'day.', celebrated, however, the case is different... Tennyson living is still well within the memory.of all but the voungest of us. The accidents :of the popular esteem in which he'.was held, his large editions; his vogue on the drawing-room table and as a wedding present,; aro i still apt, to cloud and obscure the essential; qualitiesat thecore of • his "work. The notion of a hundred years separating' us from, his birth, by forcing 'us, so to speak, to use the wrong end of the telescope, and' by giving the • necessary, sense' of - remoteness, is bound to help critics and,lovers of noetry to'a bettor.'appreciation.of-:-tho'.perman-ent- and abiding aspects, of, his-.writing.,and.a more discriminating sense of what .was passing and temporal.- There are not wanting signs that this process is-now taking place. The elimination of what is.unfit for -. immortality proceeds apace, arid it is affecting. as*' was to be expected, those very nualities in his work which endeared the poet to .tho great reading nublio of his day. . The jealousy.which', mistrusts largo sales is at bottom a sound critical instinot. The - Tehnysonian ■:' philosophy, in which doubt became a creed, and a lukewarm acceptance of scientific discovery antt: the possibilities of-progress,-strictly, in- the future, nassed itself off as.speculative .daring, matched ihelf very exactly with the popular temper of the time. "That it did so was tho cause of its success but it was also its most gnovqus limitation The place of <tho poet is with tho pioneers, not with the baggage of the army. :