Any words about Tennyson as a politician are apt to excite the
sleepless prejudice which haunts the political field. He probably,
if forced to "put a name to it," would have called himself a Liberal.
But he was not a social agitator. He never set a rick on fire. "He
held aloof, in a somewhat detached position, from the great social
seethings of his age" (Mr Frederic Harrison). But in youth he helped
to extinguish some flaming ricks. He spoke of the "many-headed
beast" (the reading public) in terms borrowed from Plato. He had no
higher esteem for mobs than Shakespeare or John Knox professed, while
his theory of tyrants (in the case of Napoleon III. about 1852) was
that of Liberals like Mr Swinburne and Victor Hugo. Though to modern
enlightenment Tennyson may seem as great a Tory as Dr Johnson, yet he
had spoken his word in 1852 for the freedom of France, and for
securing England against the supposed designs of a usurper (now
fallen). He really believed, obsolete as the faith may be, in
guarding our own, both on land and sea. Perhaps no Continental or
American critic has ever yet dispraised a poetical fellow-countryman
merely for urging the duties of national union and national defence.
A critic, however, writes thus of Tennyson: "When our poet descends
into the arena of party polemics, in such things as Riflemen, Form!
Hands all Round, . . . The Fleet, and other topical pieces dear to
the Jingo soul, it is not poetry but journalism." I doubt whether
the desirableness of the existence of a volunteer force and of a
fleet really is within the arena of PARTY polemics. If any party
thinks that we ought to have no volunteers, and that it is our duty
to starve the fleet, what is that party's name? Who cries, "Down
with the Fleet! Down with National Defence! Hooray for the
Disintegration of the Empire!"?

Tennyson was not a party man, but he certainly would have opposed any