



Transcribed from the 1918 Burns & Oates edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





HEARTS OF CONTROVERSY


Contents:

Some Thoughts of a Reader of Tennyson
Dickens as a Man of Letters
Swinburne's Lyrical Poetry
Charlotte and Emily Bronte
Charmian
The Century of Moderation




SOME THOUGHTS OF A READER OF TENNYSON


Fifty years after Tennyson's birth he was saluted a great poet by that
unanimous acclamation which includes mere clamour.  Fifty further years,
and his centenary was marked by a new detraction.  It is sometimes
difficult to distinguish the obscure but not unmajestic law of change
from the sorry custom of reaction.  Change hastes not and rests not,
reaction beats to and fro, flickering about the moving mind of the world.
Reaction--the paltry precipitancy of the multitude--rather than the
novelty of change, has brought about a ferment and corruption of opinion
on Tennyson's poetry.  It may be said that opinion is the same now as it
was in the middle of the nineteenth century--the same, but turned.  All
that was not worth having of admiration then has soured into detraction
now.  It is of no more significance, acrid, than it was, sweet.  What the
herding of opinion gave yesterday it is able to take away to-day, that
and no more.

But besides the common favour-disfavour of the day, there is the tendency
of educated opinion, once disposed to accept the whole of Tennyson's
poetry as though he could not be "parted from himself," and now disposed
to reject the whole, on the same plea.  But if ever there was a poet who
needed to be thus "part