A History of English Literature

Arnold's doctrine, of course, was not perfectly comprehensive nor free from
prejudices; but none could be essentially more useful for his generation or
ours. We may readily grant that it is, in one sense or another, a doctrine
for chosen spirits, but if history makes anything clear it is that chosen
spirits are the necessary instruments of all progress and therefore the
chief hope of society.
The differences between Arnold's teaching and that of his two great
contemporaries are probably now clear. All three are occupied with the
pressing necessity of regenerating society. Carlyle would accomplish this
end by means of great individual characters inspired by confidence in the
spiritual life and dominating their times by moral strength; Ruskin would
accomplish it by humanizing social conditions and spiritualizing and
refining all men's natures through devotion to the principles of moral
Right and esthetic Beauty; Arnold would leaven the crude mass of society,
so far as possible, by permeating it with all the myriad influences of
spiritual, moral, and esthetic culture. All three, of course, like every
enlightened reformer, are aiming at ideal conditions which can be actually
realized only in the distant future.
Arnold's style is one of the most charming features of his work. Clear,
direct, and elegant, it reflects most attractively his own high breeding;
but it is also eminently forceful, and marked by very skilful emphasis and
reiteration. One of his favorite devices is a pretense of great humility,
which is only a shelter from which he shoots forth incessant and pitiless
volleys of ironical raillery, light and innocent in appearance, but
irresistible in aim and penetrating power. He has none of the gorgeousness
of Ruskin or the titanic strength of Carlyle, but he can be finely
eloquent, and he is certainly one of the masters of polished effectiveness.
ALFRED TENNYSON. In poetry, apart from the drama, the Victorian period is
the greatest in English literature. Its most representative, though not its
greatest, poet is Alfred Tennyson. Tennyson, the fourth of a large family
of children, was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, in 1809. That year, as it
happened, is distinguished by the birth of a large number of eminent men,
among them Gladstone, Darwin, and Lincoln. Tennyson's father was a
clergyman, holding his appointments from a member of the landed gentry; his
mother was peculiarly gentle and benevolent. From childhood the poet,
though physically strong, was moody and given to solitary dreaming; from
early childhood also he composed poetry, and when he was seventeen he and
one of his elder brothers brought out a volume of verse, immature, but of
distinct poetic feeling and promise. The next year they entered Trinity
College, Cambridge, where Tennyson, too reserved for public prominence,
nevertheless developed greatly through association with a gifted group of
students. Called home by the fatal illness of his father shortly before his
four year's were completed, he decided, as Milton had done, and as Browning
was even then doing, to devote himself to his art; but, like Milton, he
equipped himself, now and throughout his life, by hard and systematic study
of many of the chief branches of knowledge, including the sciences. His
next twenty years were filled with difficulty and sorrow. Two volumes of
poems which he published in 1830 and 1832 were greeted by the critics with
their usual harshness, which deeply wounded his sensitive spirit and
checked his further publication for ten years; though the second of these
volumes contains some pieces which, in their later, revised, form, are
among his chief lyric triumphs. In 1833 his warm friend Arthur Hallam, a
young man of extraordinary promise, who was engaged, moreover, to one of
Tennyson's sisters, died suddenly without warning. Tennyson's grief, at
first overwhelming, was long a main factor in his life and during many
years found slow artistic expression in 'In Memoriam' and other poems. A