fatherland, a bias from which he could never emancipate himself. But
tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. Had Tennyson's birth been
later, we might find in him a more complete realisation of our poetic
ideal--might have detected less to blame or to forgive.

With that apology we must leave the fame of Tennyson as a politician
to the clement consideration of an enlightened posterity. I do not
defend his narrow insularities, his Jingoism, or the appreciable
percentage of faith which blushing analysis may detect in his honest
doubt: these things I may regret or condemn, but we ought not to let
them obscure our view of the Poet. He was led away by bad examples.
Of all Jingoes Shakespeare is the most unashamed, and next to him are
Drayton, Scott, and Wordsworth, with his


"Oh, for one hour of that Dundee!"


In the years which followed the untoward affair of Waterloo young
Tennyson fell much under the influence of Shakespeare, Wordsworth,
and the other offenders, and these are extenuating circumstances. By
a curious practical paradox, where the realms of poetry and politics
meet, the Tory critics seem milder of mood and more Liberal than the
Liberal critics. Thus Mr William Morris was certainly a very
advanced political theorist; and in theology Mr Swinburne has written
things not easily reconcilable with orthodoxy. Yet we find Divine-
Right Tories, who in literature are fervent admirers of these two
poets, and leave their heterodoxies out of account. But many Liberal
critics appear unable quite to forgive Tennyson because he did not
wish to starve the fleet, and because he held certain very ancient,