made, and in all probability will continue to be made for some time to come.[1]
We have seen in 'In Memoriam' some of the poet's efforts to figure as a modern in the domain of what is usually called thought. Let us have samples of his ripest criticism on other aspects. The revolution in Science worked out under the leadership of Darwin, Professor Wallace, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, of Professors Huxley and Tyndall (to give no other names), is a present fact too solidly obvious to be gainsaid. Some opinion on it is inevitable from a 'representative modern poet.' What has ours to say about it? Little enough, but that little is extremely instructive as showing how far and in what manner he has realised this fact. Sitting pensively on a rock on the seashore, the hero of 'Maud' sees a pretty sea-shell. 'What is it?' he wonders. Then he adds immediately, 'A learned man could give it a clumsy name.' And so much for learned men. A pious nurse in a hospital (none other than the lady who puts up with the sights and loathsome smells of disease in considera-
- ↑ One charitably averts one's eyes from the melancholy spectacle of the English critical press at Lord Tennyson's death. Scarcely anything uttered at that time can be taken seriously at all. The frantic competition in eulogy drove the professional writers to utter the most inconceivable absurdities in order to get a hearing and a place in this prodigious 'boom.' It would have been supremely ludicrous had it not ended with becoming supremely disgusting.
