"was not thinking of Mr Browning."

In the autumn of 1883 Tennyson was taken, with Mr Gladstone, by Sir
Donald Currie, for a cruise round the west coast of Scotland, to the
Orkneys, and to Copenhagen. The people of Kirkwall conferred on the
poet and the statesman the freedom of the burgh, and Mr Gladstone, in
an interesting speech, compared the relative chances of posthumous
fame of the poet and the politician. Pericles is not less remembered
than Sophocles, though Shakespeare is more in men's minds than Cecil.
Much depends, as far as the statesmen are considered, on contemporary
historians. It is Thucydides who immortalises Pericles. But it is
improbable that the things which Mr Gladstone did, and attempted,
will be forgotten more rapidly than the conduct and characters of,
say, Burleigh or Lethington.

In 1884, after this voyage, with its royal functions and celebrations
at Copenhagen, a peerage was offered to the poet. He "did not want
to alter his plain Mr," and he must have known that, whether he
accepted or refused, the chorus of blame would be louder than that of
applause. Scott had desired "such grinning honour as Sir Walter
hath"; the title went well with the old name, and pleased his love of
old times. Tennyson had been blamed "by literary men" for thrice
evading a baronetcy, and he did not think that a peerage would make
smooth the lives of his descendants. But he concluded, "Why should I
be selfish and not suffer an honour (as Gladstone says) to be done to
literature in my name?" Politically, he thought that the Upper
House, while it lasts, partly supplied the place of the American
"referendum." He voted in July 1884 for the extension of the
franchise, and in November stated his views to Mr Gladstone in verse.
In prose he wrote to Mr Gladstone, "I have a strong conviction that