He escaped
from Doubting Castle. Others may "take that for a hermitage," and be
happy enough in the residence. We are all determined by our bias:
Tennyson's is unconcealed. His poem is not a tract: it does not aim
at the conversion of people with the contrary bias, it is irksome, in
writing about a poet, to be obliged to discuss a philosophy which,
certainly, is not stated in the manner of Spinoza, but is merely the
equilibrium of contending forces in a single mind.
The most famous review of In Memoriam is that which declared that
"these touching lines evidently come from the full heart of the widow
of a military man." This is only equalled, if equalled, by a recent
critique which treated a fresh edition of Jane Eyre as a new novel,
"not without power, in parts, and showing some knowledge of Yorkshire
local colour."
CHAPTER VI.--AFTER IN MEMORIAM.
On June 13 Tennyson married, at Shiplake, the object of his old,
long-tried, and constant affection. The marriage was still
"imprudent,"--eight years of then uncontested supremacy in English
poetry had not brought a golden harvest. Mr Moxon appears to have
supplied 300 pounds "in advance of royalties." The sum, so
contemptible in the eyes of first-rate modern novelists, was a
competence to Tennyson, added to his little pension and the epaves of
his patrimony. "The peace of God came into my life when I married
her," he said in later days.
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