The Project Gutenberg eBook, Hearts of Controversy, by Alice Meynell

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Hearts of Controversy

Author: Alice Meynell

Release Date: March 14, 2005 [eBook #1243]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEARTS OF CONTROVERSY***

Transcribed from the 1918 Burns & Oates edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

HEARTS OF CONTROVERSY

Contents:

Some Thoughts of a Reader of Tennyson
Dickens as a Man of Letters
Swinburne's Lyrical Poetry
Charlotte and Emily Bronte
Charmian
The Century of Moderation

SOME THOUGHTS OF A READER OF TENNYSON

Fifty years after Tennyson's birth he was saluted a great poet by that
unanimous acclamation which includes mere clamour. Fifty further years,
and his centenary was marked by a new detraction. It is sometimes
difficult to distinguish the obscure but not unmajestic law of change
from the sorry custom of reaction. Change hastes not and rests not,
reaction beats to and fro, flickering about the moving mind of the world.
Reaction--the paltry precipitancy of the multitude--rather than the
novelty of change, has brought about a ferment and corruption of opinion
on Tennyson's poetry. It may be said that opinion is the same now as it
was in the middle of the nineteenth century--the same, but turned. All
that was not worth having of admiration then has soured into detraction
now. It is of no more significance, acrid, than it was, sweet. What the
herding of opinion gave yesterday it is able to take away to-day, that
and no more.

But besides the common favour-disfavour of the day, there is the tendency
of educated opinion, once disposed to accept the whole of Tennyson's
poetry as though he could not be "parted from himself," and now disposed
to reject the whole, on the same plea. But if ever there was a poet who
needed to be thus "parted"--the word is his own--it is he who wrote both
narrowly for his time and liberally for all time, and who--this is the
more important character of his poetry--had both a style and a manner: a
masterly style, a magical style, a too dainty manner, nearly a trick; a
noble landscape