I.
THE ORIGIN OF IN MEMORIAM.
‘It must be remembered, writes Tennyson in a note on In Memoriam, ‘that this is a poem, not an actual biography. . . . The different moods of sorrow as in a drama are dramatically given, and my conviction that fear, doubts, and suffering will find answer and relief only through Faith in a God of Love. “I” is not always the author speaking of himself, but the voice of the human race speaking through him.’[1]
This being so, it would seem that, in order to understand the poem, we need know nothing of the circumstances which occasioned it, any more than we require a knowledge of the lives of Shakespeare or of Gray in order to understand Hamlet or the Elegy. But In Memoriam is not quite like Hamlet or Gray’s Elegy; it rather resembles such a poem as Adonais. Just as
- ↑ Memoir, I. p. 305.
