In politics Tennyson
was what he remained, a patriot, a friend of freedom, a foe of
disorder. His politics, he said, were those "of Shakespeare, Bacon,
and every sane man." He was one of the Society of Apostles, and
characteristically contributed an essay on Ghosts. Only the preface
survives: it is not written in a scientific style; but bids us "not
assume that any vision IS baseless." Perhaps the author went on to
discuss "veridical hallucinations," but his ideas about these things
must be considered later.
It was by his father's wish that Tennyson competed for the English
prize poem. The theme, Timbuctoo, was not inspiring. Thackeray
wrote a good parody of the ordinary prize poem in Pope's metre:-
"I see her sons the hill of glory mount,
And sell their sugars on their own account;
Prone to her feet the prostrate nations come,
Sue for her rice and barter for her rum."
Tennyson's work was not much more serious: he merely patched up an
old piece, in blank verse, on the battle of Armageddon. The poem is
not destitute of Tennysonian cadence, and ends, not inappropriately,
with "All was night." Indeed, all WAS night.
An ingenious myth accounts for Tennyson's success: At Oxford, says
Charles Wordsworth, the author was more likely to have been
rusticated than rewarded. But already (1829) Arthur Hallam told Mr
Gladstone that Tennyson "promised fair to be the greatest poet of our
generation, perhaps of our century.
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