THE ATTITUDE OF TENNYSON TOWARDS SCIENCE
By Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S.
Henry Sidgwick wrote in 1860 concerning Tennyson that he “regarded him as pre-eminently the Poet of Science”; and to explain his meaning he contrasts the attitude of Wordsworth to Nature with that of Tennyson:
The Nature for which Wordsworth stirred our feelings was Nature as known by simple observation and interpreted by religious and sympathetic intuition.
—an attitude which left Science unregarded. But, for Tennyson,
the physical world is always the world as known to us through physical science; the scientific view of it dominates his thought about it, and his general acceptance of this view is real and sincere, even when he utters the intensest feeling of its inadequacy to satisfy our deepest needs.
It is probable that what was then written is now a commonplace of letters, and requires no emphasizing, but as a professed Student of Science, whose life has extended over the greater part of the time which has elapsed since “In Memoriam” was published, I welcome the opportunity of adding my testimony in continued support of the estimate made by Professor Sidgwick half a century ago.
It is generally admitted, and has been recently emphasized, that wherever reference is made to facts of nature in the poems or the fringe of Science touched on,—as it so often is,—the reference is satisfying and the touch precise. Observers of Nature have often called attention to the beautiful accuracy with which natural phenomena are described, with every mark of first-hand personal experience, as distinct from merely remembered conventional modes of expression; and the same sort of feeling is aroused in the mind of a Student of Science as he comes across one after another of the subjects which have kindled discussion during the Victorian epoch,—he is inevitably struck with the clear comprehension of the fundamental aspects of the themes treated which the poems display, he sees that the Poet is never led into misrepresentation or sacrifice of precision in the quest for beauty of form. The two are wedded together “like noble music unto perfect words.”