that it was not borrowed from Huxley, Mr Stopford Brooke, or the late
Duke of Argyll. But, no doubt, many of the ideas were "in the air,"
and must have presented themselves to minds at once of religious
tendency, and attracted by the evolutionary theories which had always
existed as floating speculations, till they were made current coin by
the genius and patient study of Darwin. That Tennyson's opinions
between 1830 and 1840 were influenced by those of F. D. Maurice is
reckoned probable by Canon Ainger, author of the notice of the poet
in The Dictionary of National Biography. In the Life of Maurice,
Tennyson does not appear till 1850, and the two men were not at
Cambridge together. But Maurice's ideas, as they then existed, may
have reached Tennyson orally through Hallam and other members of the
Trinity set, who knew personally the author of Letters to a Quaker.
However, this is no question of scientific priority: to myself it
seems that Tennyson "beat his music out" for himself, as perhaps most
people do. Like his own Sir Percivale, "I know not all he meant."

Among the opinions as to In Memoriam current at the time of its
publication Lord Tennyson notices those of Maurice and Robertson.
They "thought that the poet had made a definite step towards the
unification of the highest religion and philosophy with the
progressive science of the day." Neither science nor religion stands
still; neither stands now where it then did. Conceivably they are
travelling on paths which will ultimately coincide; but this opinion,
of course, must seem foolishness to most professors of science.
Bishop Westcott was at Cambridge when the book appeared: he is one
of Mr Harrison's possible sources of Tennyson's ideas. He recognised
the poet's "splendid faith (in the face of every difficulty) in the
growing purpose of the sum of life, and in the noble destiny of the
individual man." Ten years later Professor Henry Sidgwick, a mind