the view of the absolute severance between nature and morality which in Tennyson leads up to it. In the striking poem, Morality, he presents a view of nature in some respects similar to Tennyson's, but with a most characteristic and instructive difference. He pictures "struggling, task'd morality," bearing "the burden and the heat of the long day," and afterwards asking of nature with her "free, light, cheerful air," how she viewed this selfcontrol : And she, whose censure thou dost dread, A strong emotion on her cheek! "Ah, child!" she cries, "that strife divine, "There is no effort on my brow- Yet that severe, that earnest air, I saw, "I knew not yet the gauge of time, I felt it in some other clime, I saw it in some other place. 'Twas when the heavenly house I trod, And lay upon the breast of God." The gulf between nature and morality is fully acknowledged here, but not as impassable. There is continuity: in nature herself there is the suggestion of morality. It is plain from the extracts which have been given that Tennyson was incomparably more the poet of faith than Arnold. That he had more of the spirit of religion than either of his contemporaries is very doubtful; for that spirit is a thing which cannot be measured by the capacity to accept propositions. A man may believe the whole Athanasian creed, and yet have very little religion; he may reject nearly everything in it, and yet have a great deal. But Tennyson had this spirit of religion in a different way from the others, in a way which made it easier for him to adapt his beliefs to existing creeds. There can be little doubt that of the three he was the one who accepted with least change the ordinary religious doctrines. He was in the main orthodox. He had sympathy with doubt, for he had felt it himself, and he has given honourable expression to his belief in the value, as faith, of "honest doubt". But he had never felt it in that imperious form in which it demands a solution satisfactory to the reason. After some degree of hesitation and difficulty he was able to put it aside. The something amiss "will be unriddled by and by ". This conclusion sufficed not only for the time but for life. We have already seen how in his later years Tennyson's optimism was dashed with doubts deeper in some respects than any that touched his youth or his prime. But the indictment which, in poems like Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, he brings against the age, never touches the fundamental question. That, for Tennyson, was settled long ago. The cure for the numerous social evils, if there is any cure at all, lies in a very distant future, but that raises no doubts as to the goodness of the power which rules the world; it rather suggests that evil may be a condition of good-"no ill, no good". Deep-reaching scepticism is expressed by Tennyson dramatically, not in his own voice, by the speaker in Despair, not by himself; and it is significant that the scepticism here is begotten equally of the knowing and know-nothing books," and of the "know-all chapel," whose members, in the phrase of Matthew Arnold, are as familiar with the Deity as with the "man in the next street". But where Tennyson speaks for himself, it is rather as the "Ancient Sage" with his advice to "cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt," or, without any disguise, in the celebrated lines, Crossing the Bar, wherein at eighty he proclaimed how steadfast was his faith. 66 We have now passed three great poets in review, and have interrogated them specially with reference to all the leading interests of humanity. We have found everywhere at the core of their work the thought and life of the time in which they live. The landscape is indeed seen from the vantage-ground of lofty intellect which gives a wider outlook and juster proportion to the parts; but still it is the same as that which, in smaller 1 There is a curious similarity in thought between the familiar lines in which Tennyson affirms this belief, and some lines, much less widely known, in Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra : Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without, Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. portions and therefore with greater tendency to exaggerate the minute, the ordinary eye has looked upon. The great practical task of the century has been the reconstruction of society after the upheaval of the French Revolution; and we find each of the three poets in his own way engaging in the task; Arnold insisting over and over again on its magnitude and difficulty, and on the need of lucidity and a wide outlook to accomplish it; Tennyson on his belief in ordered progress and his desire to " conserve the hopes of man "1; Browning proclaiming his own debt to freedom and his wish therefore that everyone should enjoy it. The dominant thought of the century has been, all are agreed, evolution; and we find it running through poetry from Paracelsus to Demeter. In religion, the need has been for a reconstruction of the fabric shaken by the negative thought of the eighteenth century, and for harmonising it with the new ideas of the nineteenth. At this task all the three poets have toiled, each in his own way, unremittingly. It is true that if we measure their contribution to these subjects by the test, What do they prove? it is small enough. But then, if we insist upon a demonstration after the manner of Euclid, what can be proved that is worth proving? "The intellectual interest of a truth is gone the moment it becomes a fact." It is the truth towards which we reach through darkness, that which the prophet's eye sees glimmering in the distance, that gives life to the soul; and of such truth we shall nowhere, in recent times, find more than in the three great Victorian poets. The student of them becomes convinced that the great poet is indeed what Browning called him: The general-in-chief, Thro' a whole campaign of the world's life and death, Doing the King's work all the dim day long. (How it strikes a Contemporary, iv. 180.) 1 Mr. Arthur Waugh in his valuable book on Tennyson tells an interesting story about the poet :-" Aubrey de Vere asked him whether he were a Conservative. 'I believe in progress,' said Tennyson, and I would conserve the hopes of man.' It is," adds Mr. Waugh, "the very keynote of his poetry." A. INDEX. Andrea del Sarto, 104. Victorian period, 4; his conception 66 66 Bacon, Lord, 231, 236. Bishop Blougram's Apology, 101, 102, 109, Bishop Orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's "Break, break, break," 32. Victorian period, 3; on the revival Daisy, The, 203. D. cipal characters, 117 sqq.; his want | Cristina and Monaldeschi, 157. Darwin, Charles, 233, 246. Dramatic Lyrics, 63 sqq. E. Empedocles on Etna, 129, 137, 165, 172, Englishman in Italy, The, 214, 282. F. Faded Leaves, 130. Flight of the Duchess, The, 65. Forsaken Merman, The, 145. G. Gardener's Daughter, The, 29, 203. Giuseppe Caponsacchi, 119. Goethe, 14, 88, 222, 241, 264, 293, 295. Christmas Eve and Easter Day, 91 sqq., Guido, 117. 298, 303 sqq. Church of Brou, The, 135, 229. Church-Warden and the Curate, The, 154. Cleon, 102. Clive, 159. Colombe's Birthday, 188, 189, 198, 286. H. Harold, 72, 176, 177. Heine's Grave, 140, 270. Holy-Cross Day, 66. |