Part 6 (1/2)
Maurice, with Jowett, C Kingsley, F Robertson, Stopford Brooke, Mr Ruskin, and the Duke of Argyll, Bishops Westcott and Boyd Carpenter?”
The dates answer Mr Harrison Jowett did not publish anything till at least fifteen years after Tennyson wrote his poems on evolution and belief Dr Boyd Carpenter's works previous to 1840 are unknown to bibliography F W Robertson was a young parson at Cheltenham
Ruskin had not published the first volume of Modern Painters His Oxford prize poem is of 1839 Mr Stopford Brooke was at school The Duke of Argyll was being privately educated: and so with the rest, except the contemporary Maurice How can Mr Harrison say that, in the time of In Memoriam, Tennyson was ”in touch with the ideas of Herschel, Owen, Huxley, Darwin, and Tyndall”? {8} When Tennyson wrote the parts of In Memoriam which deal with science, nobody beyond their families and friends had heard of Huxley, Darwin, and Tyndall
They had not developed, eneral ideas” Even in his journal of the Cruise of the Beagle Darwin's ideas were religious, and he naively ade that Mr Harrison has based his criticisinality, on what seems to be a historical error He cites parts of In Memoriam, and remarks, ”No one can deny that all this is exquisitely beautiful; that these eternal probleraceBut the train of thought is essentially that hich ordinary English readers have been made familiar by F D Maurice, Professor Jowett, Ecce homo, Hypatia, and now by Arthur Balfour, Mr Drummond, and many valiant companies of Septe the historical verity that the ideas of In Memoriam could not have been ”, or by books yet undreamed of and unborn, such as Ecce homo and Jowett's work on some of St Paul's Epistles If these books contain the ideas of In Me froinality was Tennyson's, for we cannot dispute the evidence of dates
When one speaks of ”originality” one does not mean that Tennyson discovered the existence of the ultie (1828-1830) he had voted ”No” in answer to the question discussed by ”the Apostles,” ”Is an intelligible [intelligent?] First Cause deducible from the phenomena of the universe?” {9} He had also propounded the theory that ”the developht possibly be traced froanisin of Species To be concerned so early with such hypotheses, and to face, in poetry, the religious or irreligious inferences which may be drawn froinality of Tennyson His attitude, as a poet, towards religious doubt is only so far not original, as it is part of the general reaction frohteenth century Men had then been freethinkers avec delices It was a joyous thing to be an atheist, or solorious to be ”elorious, as we read in the tone of Mr Huxley, when he triumphs and tramples over pious dukes and bishops Shelley said that a certain schoolgirl ”would make a dear little atheist” But by 1828-1830 men were less joyous in their escape from all that had hitherto consoled and fortified hu before he dreamed of In Memoriam, in the Poems chiefly Lyrical of 1830 Tennyson had written -
”'Yet,' said I, in th, When I went forth in quest of truth, 'It is e to doubt'
Ay me! I fear All may not doubt, but everywhere Some must clasp Idols Yet, my God, Whom call I Idol? Let Thy dove Shadow hten hs on ins In the gross blackness underneath
Oh weary life! oh weary death!
Oh spirit and heartstate!”
Now the philosophy of In Mearded by robust, first-rate, and far fro state” The poet is not so imbued with the spirit of popular science as to be sure that he knows everything: knows that there is nothing but atoms and ether, with no room for God or a soul
He is far from that happy cock-certainty, and consequently is exposed to the contempt of the cock-certain The poelican clergyman--the world in which he was born and the world in which his life was ideally passed- -the idol of all cultured youth and of all aesthetic woument of In Memoriaer hope”
That, I think, is not the argument, not the conclusion of the poe uument and conclusion of the life of Tennyson, and of the love of Tennyson, that immortal passion which was a part of hi yet, and must live eternally From the record of his Life by his son we know that his trust in ”the larger hope”
was not ”faint,” but strengthened with the years There are said to have been less hopeful intervals
His faith is, of course, no arguht not to be We are all the creatures of our bias, our environment, our experience, our emotions The experience of Tennyson was unlike the experience of rounds for belief He ”opened a path untowho discovered the way to death But Tennyson's path led not to death, but to life spiritual, and to hope, and he did ”give a new ireat poets have done Of course it ht As the philosophical Australian black said, ”We shall knoe are dead”
Mr Harrison argues as if, unlike Tennyson, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Burns produced ”original ideas fresh from their own spirit, and not derived froinal ideas these great poets discovered and proated; their ideas seem to have been ”in the air” These poets ”ht that he owed many of his ideas to Godwin, a contemporary thinker Wordsworth has a debt to Plato, a thinker not contemporary Burns's democratic independence was ”in the air,” and had been, in Scotland, since Elder reles in 1515 It is not the ideas, it is the expression of the ideas, that h as old as Plotinus, for they are applied to a novel, or at least an unfamiliar, mental situation Doubt was abroad, as it always is; but, for perhaps the first time since Porphyry wrote his letter to Abammon, the doubters desired to believe, and said, ”Lord, help Thou my unbelief” To robust, not sensitive minds, very much in unity with themselves, the attitude seems contemptible, or at best decently futile Yet I cannot think it below the dignity of mankind, conscious that it is not oic (In Memoriam, cxx) when he says -
”Let his Hereafter, up froreater ape, But I was BORN to other things”
I areater ape, but it would probably be unwise, and perhaps indecent, to iht as well revert to polyandry and paint, because our Celtic or Pictish ancestors, if we had any, practised the one and wore the other However, petulances like the verse on the greater ape are rare in In Memoriam To declare that ”I would not stay” in life if science proves us to be ”cunning casts in clay,” is beneath the courage of the Stoical philosophy
Theologically, the poele with doubts and hopes and fears, which had been with Tennyson from his boyhood, as is proved by the volume of 1830 But the doubts had exerted, probably, but little influence on his happiness till the sudden stroke of loss made life for a time seem almost unbearable unless the doubts were solved They WERE solved, or stoically set aside, in the Ulysses, written in the freshness of grief, with the conclusion that wein will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”
But the gnawing of grief till it beco desideriuuises the old questions These require new attempts at answers, and are answered, ”the sadthe pain