[88] [I am much obliged to Mr. Sidgwick for having omitted his original statement that Tennyson “takes the anti-reform line” in the matter of the higher education of women. My father’s friends report him to have said that the great social questions impending in England were “the housing and education of the poor, and the higher education of women”; and that the sooner woman finds out, before the great educational movement begins, that “woman is not undevelopt man, but diverse,” the better it will be for the progress of the world. She must train herself to do the large work that lies before her, even though she may not be destined to be wife and mother, cultivating her understanding, not her memory only, her imagination in its higher phases, her inborn spirituality, and her sympathy with all that is pure, noble, and beautiful, rather than mere social accomplishments; then and then only will she further the progress of humanity, then and then only will men continue to hold her in reverence. See Tennyson: a Memoir, pp. 206, 208.—Ed.]
[89] From Virgil’s Georgics.
[90] From Theocritus.
[91] [For another view of “Gareth” see FitzGerald’s letter to my father in 1873:
My dear Alfred—I write my yearly letter to yourself this time, because I have a word to say about “Gareth” which your publisher sent me as “from the author.” I don’t think it is mere perversity that makes me like it better than all its predecessors, save and except (of course) the old “Morte.” The subject, the young knight who can endure and conquer, interests me more than all the heroines of the 1st volume. I do not know if I admire more separate passages in this “Idyll” than in the others; for I have admired many in all. But I do admire several here very much, as
The journey to Camelot, pp. 13-14,
All Gareth’s vassalage, 31-34,
Departure with Lynette, 42,
Sitting at table with the Barons, 54,
Phantom of past life, 71,
and many other passages and expressions “quae nunc perscribere longum est.”—Ed.]
[92] Bedivere.
[93] Reprinted, with some few alterations, from the Edinburgh Review, No. ccclxxxii., by the kind permission of the Editor and the late Sir Alfred Lyall.
[94] E. FitzGerald.