" Charles
Buller's, like Hallam's, was to be an "unfulfilled renown." Of
Hallam, whose name is for ever linked with his own, Tennyson said
that he would have been a great man, but not a great poet; "he was as
near perfection as mortal man could be." His scanty remains are
chiefly notable for his divination of Tennyson as a great poet; for
the rest, we can only trust the author of In Memoriam and the verdict
of tradition.
The studies of the poet at this time included original composition in
Greek and Latin verse, history, and a theme that he alone has made
poetical, natural science. All poetry has its roots in the age
before natural science was more than a series of nature-myths. The
poets have usually, like Keats, regretted the days when
"There was an awful rainbow once in heaven,"
when the hills and streams were not yet "dispeopled of their dreams."
Tennyson, on the other hand, was already finding material for poetry
in the world as seen through microscope and telescope, and as
developed through "aeonian" processes of evolution. In a notebook,
mixed with Greek, is a poem on the Moon--not the moon of Selene, "the
orbed Maiden," but of astronomical science. In Memoriam recalls the
conversations on labour and politics, discussions of the age of the
Reform Bill, of rick-burning (expected to "make taters cheaper"), and
of Catholic emancipation; also the emancipation of such negroes as
had not yet tasted the blessings of freedom.
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