From a drawing by W. Holman Hunt
(Reproduced from “Tennyson’s Poems,” by kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd.)
In a celebrated passage in “Maud,” Tennyson praised the moral effects of war, and declared that some great conflict might call out the greatness even of the pacific swindlers and sweaters whom he saw around him in the Commercial age. He dreamed, he said, that if—
...The battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out on the foam,
Many a smooth-faced, snub-nosed rogue would leap from his counter or till,
And strike, were it but with his cheating yard-wand, home.
Tennyson lived in the time of a conflict more crucial and frightful than any European struggle, the conflict between the apparent artificiality of morals and the apparent immorality of science. A ship more symbolic and menacing than any foreign three-decker hove in sight in that time—the great, gory pirate-ship of Nature, challenging all the civilisations of the world. And his supreme honour is this, that he behaved like his own imaginary snub-nosed rogue. His honour is that in that hour he despised the flowers and embroideries of Keats as the counter-jumper might despise his tapes and cottons. He was by nature a hedonistic and pastoral poet, but he leapt from his poetic counter and till and struck, were it but with his gimcrack mandolin, home.
THE PALACE OF ART
From a drawing by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(Reproduced from “Tennyson’s Poems,” by kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd.)