Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/195

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ALFRED TENNYSON
167

him in later years the intensity which seems impossible without some narrowness. He had revived for us the half-forgotten sentiment of patriotism. Even throughout the pseudo-cosmopolitanism of the Manchester period of recent history he was always for England first. 'Love thou thy land!' was his refrain throughout, and he set the example himself. He has been the one Laureate that was really the nation's voice. If his utterances as Laureate—except perhaps the Wellington Ode—do not take a foremost place among his compositions, that is simply because the English nation during his laureateship has been happy in having no dramatic episodes in its history. You cannot be strikingly effective in dealing with a slow and unconscious development.

It cannot be said of Tennyson that he has been a great spiritual force in the national development of the last half-century. The Princess may have aided the movement for the higher education of women, though it is in essence a protest against it. In Memoriam has liberalised theology, and been to the Broad Church movement what The Christian Year has been to the High Church. But where is the Broad Church now? Tennyson was, on the whole, adverse to evolution, which has been almost an instinct in English speculation for the last quarter of a century. So far as he