He was not born in a generation late enough to
be truly Liberal. Old prejudices about "this England," old words
from Henry V. and King John, haunted his memory and darkened his
vision of the true proportions of things. We draw in prejudice with
our mother's milk. The mother of Tennyson had not been an Agnostic
or a Comtist; his father had not been a staunch true-blue anti-
Englander. Thus he inherited a certain bias in favour of faith and
fatherland, a bias from which he could never emancipate himself. But
tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. Had Tennyson's birth been
later, we might find in him a more complete realisation of our poetic
ideal--might have detected less to blame or to forgive.
With that apology we must leave the fame of Tennyson as a politician
to the clement consideration of an enlightened posterity. I do not
defend his narrow insularities, his Jingoism, or the appreciable
percentage of faith which blushing analysis may detect in his honest
doubt: these things I may regret or condemn, but we ought not to let
them obscure our view of the Poet. He was led away by bad examples.
Of all Jingoes Shakespeare is the most unashamed, and next to him are
Drayton, Scott, and Wordsworth, with his
"Oh, for one hour of that Dundee!"
In the years which followed the untoward affair of Waterloo young
Tennyson fell much under the influence of Shakespeare, Wordsworth,
and the other offenders, and these are extenuating circumstances.
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