e depths if we are to deal with it at all, and it must be
vanquished in the region where it is born, and where it skulks unseen.

XII

TENNYSON, RUSKIN, CARLYLE

There were three great men of the nineteenth century of whom we know
more than we know of most men, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Tennyson, in whose
lives fear was a prominent element.

Tennyson has suffered no loss of fame, but he has suffered of late a
certain loss of influence, which was bound to come, if simply from the
tremendous domination which his writings exercised in his lifetime. He
was undoubtedly one of the first word-artists who ever lived and wrote,
but he was a great deal more than that; he was a great mystic, a man
whose mind moved in a shining cloud of inspiration. He had the
constitution and the temperament of a big Lincolnshire yeoman, with
that simple rusticity that is said to have characterised Vergil. But
his spirit dwelt apart, revolving dim and profound thoughts, brooding
over mysteries; if he is lightly said to be Early Victorian, it is not
because he was typical of his age, but because he contributed so much
to make it what it was. While Browning lived an eager personal life,
full of observation, zest, and passion, Tennyson abode in more
impersonal thoughts. In the dawn of science, when there was a danger of
life becoming over-materialised, contented with the first steps of
swiftly apprehended knowledge, and with solutions which were no
solutions at all, but only the perception of laws, Tennyson was the man
of all others who saw that science had a deeply poetical side, and
could enforce rather than destroy the religious spirit; he saw that a
knowledge of processes was not the same thing as an explanation of
impulses, and that while it was a little more clear in the light of
science what was actually happening in the world, men were no nearer
the perception of why it happened so, or why it happened at all.
Tennyson saw clearly the wonders of astronomy and geology, and
discerned that the laws of nature were nothing more than the habits, so
to speak, of a power that was incredibly dim and vast, a power which
held within itself the secrets of motion and rest, of death and life.
Thus he claimed for his disciples not only the average thoughtful men,
but the very best and finest minds of his generation who wished to link
the past and the present together, and not to break with the old
sanctities.

Tennyson's art suffered from the consci