t . l TENNYSON AND THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION IN VICTORIAN POETRY BEFORE 1359 by WILLIAM BRENT ELLIOTT B.A., University of B r i t i s h Columbia, 1973 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Arts i n the Department of English We accept t h i s thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA A p r i l , 1974 I n p r e s e n t i n g t h i s t h e s i s i n p a r t i a l f u l f i l m e n t o f t h e r e q u i r e m e n t s f o r a n a d v a n c e d d e g r e e a t t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f B r i t i s h C o l u m b i a , I a g r e e t h a t t h e L i b r a r y s h a l l m a k e i t f r e e l y a v a i l a b l e f o r r e f e r e n c e a n d s t u d y . I f u r t h e r a g r e e t h a t p e r m i s s i o n f o r e x t e n s i v e c o p y i n g o f t h i s t h e s i s f o r s c h o l a r l y p u r p o s e s m a y b e g r a n t e d b y t h e H e a d o f m y D e p a r t m e n t o r b y h i s r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s . I t i s u n d e r s t o o d t h a t c o p y i n g o r p u b l i c a t i o n o f t h i s t h e s i s f o r f i n a n c i a l g a i n s h a l l n o t b e a l l o w e d w i t h o u t m y w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n . D e p a r t m e n t o f 7 T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f B r i t i s h C o l u m b i a V a n c o u v e r 8, C a n a d a i i A B S T R A C T T h i s t h e s i s a t t e m p t s t o e x a m i n e t h e u s e o f p r e -D a r w i n i a n e v o l u t i o n a r y c o n c e n t s i n V i c t o r i a n p o e t r y b y c o n c e n t r a t i n g o n t h e w o r k s o f T e n n y s o n , w h o g a v e f u l l e r e x p r e s s i o n t o t h e m t h a n a n y o f h i s c o n t e m p o r a r i e s . W o r k s b y o t h e r p o e t s a r e e x a m i n e d f o r s i g n i f i c a n t c o m p a r i s o n s a n d c o n t r a s t s w i t h h i s ; v a r i o u s w o r k s b y B r o w n i n g , B a i l e y , A r n o l d , a n d B e l l S c o t t r e c e i v e p a r t i c u l a r a t t e n t i o n . T h e i n t r o d u c t i o n d i s t i n g u i s h e s b e t w e e n D a r w i n ' s t h e o r y a n d p r e - D a r w i n i a n e v o l u t i o n a r y s c h e m e s , f i n d i n g t h e l a t t e r t o b e c h a r a c t e r i z e d b y t h e n o t i o n s o f t e l e o l o g y , p r o g r e s s i v i s m , a n d v e r t i c a l h i e r a r c h y . T h e h i s t o r i c a l d e v e l o p m e n t o f e v o l u t i o n i s m i s t r a c e d f r o m i t s o r i g i n s i n R o m a n t i c t h e o r i e s o f t h e o r g a n i c u n i t y o f n a t u r e , a n d t h e m a j o r v a r i e t i e s o f c o n s i d e r e d p o s i t i o n s o n t h e s u b -j e c t a v a i l a b l e t o a p o e t i n t h e e a r l y n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y a r e e n u m e r a t e d . T e n n y s o n ' s e a r l y w o r k i s s h o w n t o d e v e l o p f r o m a b a s i c a l l y s t a t i c , n o n - e v o l u t i o n a r y w o r l d - p i c t u r e t o a p r o g r e s s i v e o n e , m a k i n g u s e o f i m a g e s o f d e v e l o p m e n t d r a w n f r o m e m b r y o l o g y , a s t r o n o m y , a n d r e i n c a r n a t i o n . T h e s t a g e s o f c o m p o s i t i o n o f I n M e m o r i a m r e v e a l t h e i m p a c t o f L y e l l , w h o e m p h a s i z e d t h e s t r u g g l e f o r e x i s t e n c e $ n d n e c e s s a r y e x -t i n c t i o n , a n d l a t e r o f C h a m b e r s , w h o p r o p o s e d a c o n c e p t o f the p r o g r e s s i v e t r a n s f o r m a t i o n o f s p e c i e s . I t i s pro-posed t h a t Tennyson found i n Chambers' theory a way o f tr a n s c e n d i n g the bleak w o r l d - p i c t u r e o f f e r e d by L y e l l , by u n i t i n g i t w i t h h i s con c e p t i o n o f a s p i r i t u a l r e a l i t y behind (not immanent in) the m a t e r i a l world. The f i n a l arrangement o f I n Memoriam develops the idea o f e v o l u t i o n as the progress of the n a t u r a l world toward the s p i r i t u a l , a p o s i t i o n analogous t o a number of p o e t i c and p h i l o s o p h i -c a l trends i n the e a r l y n i n e t e e n t h century. T h i s process o f e v o l u t i o n can be v o l u n t a r i l y aided by " t y p i n g " the higher, emergent forms i n one's own l i f e . Expanding on t h i s n o t i o n , Tennyson's poetry o f the l a t e 1 3 4 0 ' s and 1 & 5 0 ' s demands the conscious p a r t i c i p a t i o n o f human s o c i e t y i n the shaping of a h i g h e r being. With t h i s development, Tennyson's philosophy of e v o l u t i o n i s sub-s t a n t i a l l y complete. H i s l a t e r works r e v e a l a g r a d u a l a t t e n u a t i o n o f h i s immediate hopes f o r the process, pushing the improvement o f the s p e c i e s i n t o the i n c r e a s i n g l y d i s -t a n t f u t u r e , but remaining c o n s i s t e n t l y m e l i o r i s t ; other-wise, h i s p r i n c i p l e continues t o be the one s e t f o r t h i n I n Memoriam. The study concludes w i t h a b r i e f examination of Dar-win's i n f l u e n c e on l a t e r poets, showing i t t o have been g e n e r a l l y confused and the r e s u l t of m i s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. I n t r o d u c t i o n 1 I I . Tennyson's E a r l y Poems and t h e i r Background 15 JT.III. Tennyson's Poems of the 1 # 3 0 ' s and t h e i r Analogues 31 IV. I n Memoriam: The Composition of the Poem 53 V. I n Memoriam: The Poem and i t s Analogues 75 V I . From I n Memoriam t o the O r i g i n : The P r i n c e s s and Poems o f the 1&*50's 99 V I I . C o n c l u s i o n 116 Footnotes B i b l i o g r a p h y 131 150 V N o t e A l l r e f e r e n c e s t o T e n n y s o n ' s p o e m s i n t h i s s t u d y e r e t o t h e e d i t i o n p r e p a r e d b y C h r i s t o p h e r R i c k s , T h e P o e m s o f T e n n y s o n ( L o n d o n : L o n g m a n s , G r e e n , 1 9 6 9 ) . R e f e r e n c e s t o p o e m s b y C h a r l e s T e n n y s o n i n c l u d e d i n P o e m s b y T w o B r o t h e r s a r e t o t h e r e p r i n t e d i t i o n p r e p a r e d b y H a l l a m T e n n y s o n ( L o n d o n : M a c m i l l a n , 1 3 9 3 ) . T h i s s t u d y i s d e d i c a t e d t o t h e m e m o r y o f L i o n e l S t e v e n -s o n , w h o w a s o r i g i n a l l y i n t e n d e d t o b e a m e m b e r o f t h e e x a m i n i n g c o m m i t t e e , b e f o r e h i s u n t i m e l y d e a t h i n D e c e m b e r , 1973. C H A P T E R O N E I N T R O D U C T I O N M o d e r n c r i t i c i s m h a s g e n e r a l l y r e c o g n i z e d t h e i m p o r t a n c e o f t h e c o n c e p t o f e v o l u t i o n f o r V i c t o r i a n p o e t r y , a n d f o r t h e w o r k o f T e n n y s o n i n p a r t i c u l a r . " W i t h t h e i d e a o f E v o -l u t i o n T e n n y s o n ' s m i n d w a s s a t u r a t e d . N o p o e t o f e q u a l r a n k h a s e v e r b e e n m o r e d o m i n a t e d b y a n i d e a t h a n w a s T e n n y s o n b y t h i s , t a k i n g t h e w o r d , i n i t s w i d e r p h i l o s o p h i c a l , a n d n o t m e r e l y i t s b i o l o g i c a l , s e n s e . " ^ H o w e v e r , t h e p r e c i s e n a t u r e o f t h i s " s a t u r a t i o n " i s s t i l l a s u b j e c t f o r d e b a t e . I t h a s b e e n c l a i m e d t h a t T e n n y s o n " f o r e s t a l l [ e d ] t h e s c i e n t i s t s i n 2 t h e i r o w n g a m e , " a n d e v e n t h a t " T e n n y s o n n o t e d t h e f a c t , e n d a f e w y e a r s l a t e r D a r w i n s u p p l i e d t h e i n f o r m a t i o n , " - ^ b u t o t h e r c r i t i c s h a v e d e n i e d a n y t h e o r e t i c a l o r i g i n a l i t y i n h i s s p e c u l a t i o n s . V a l e r i e P i t t , f o r e x a m p l e , h a s s a i d t h a t R h e i s n o t a n t i c i p a t i n g D a r w i n b u t r e c o l l e c t i n g L a m a r c k , " ^ " a n d G e o r g e P o t t e r h a s t r i e d t o p r o v e t h a t h e r e m a i n e d u n c o n v i n c e d o f t h e t r a n s m u t a t i o n o f s p e c i e s u n t i l a f t e r r e a d i n g D a r w i n . ^ N o r i s T e n n y s o n a l o n e e s a s u b j e c t o f t h i s c o n t r o v e r s y ; B r o w n -i n g , B e d d o e s , a n d e v e n K e a t s h a v e a l l b e e n s e e n e s f o r e r u n n e r s o f D a r w i n . ^ 1 I t i s t h e p u r p o s e o f t h i s s t u d y t o e x a m i n e t h e u s e o f c o n -c e p t s o f e v o l u t i o n i n V i c t o r i a n p o e t r y b e f o r e t h e i m p a c t o f 2 Darwin's t h e o r i e s i n 18*59. S i n c e Tennyson made more con-s i s t e n t use of s c i e n t i f i c m a t e r i a l s i n h i s w r i t i n g s than any of the o t h e r V i c t o r i a n poets, h i s work w i l l form the major s u b j e c t f o r examination, but works by other poets w i l l a l s o be i n c l u d e d whenever they provide important com-p a r i s o n s or c o n t r a s t s w i t h h i s . A f t e r a b r i e f survey o f the nature of e v o l u t i o n a r y s p e c u l a t i o n i n the e a r l y nine-t e e n t h century, w i t h a d i s c u s s i o n of the use of such t h e ^ o r i e s by the Romantic poets, the nature o f Tennyson's t h i n k i n g about s c i e n c e at the b e g i n n i n g o f h i s c a r e e r w i l l be examined through h i s e a r l i e s t p u b l i c a t i o n s and h i s major i n f l u e n c e s at Cambridge. From then on the study w i l l pro-ceed c h r o n o l o g i c a l l y through h i s works from 18*30 u n t i l the l a t e 18*50's. The c o n c l u s i o n w i l l provide a b r i e f n o t i c e of the treatment o f e v o l u t i o n a r y themes i n h i s p o s t - O r i g i n works, as w e l l as i n d i c a t i n g the major trends taken by the poets of the l a t e r p a r t o f the century. The c o n t r o v e r s y provoked by the p u b l i c a t i o n i n 18*59 of the O r i g i n of S p e c i e s i s w e l l known, although not n e c e s s a r i l y w e l l understood. The debate took p l a c e not only between e v o l u t i o n -i s t s and churchmen who b e l i e v e d i n an immutable s p e c i a l crem-a t i o n , but a l s o between e v o l u t i o n i s t s and the supporters of Darwin; the r e s u l t was a c o n f u s i o n o f terminology t h a t has p e r s i s t e d t o the present day. S i n c e many problems, not o n l y i n the h i s t o r y of s c i e n c e but a l s o i n the d i s c u s s i o n of V i c -t o r i a n poetry and philosophy, depend f o r t h e i r s o l u t i o n on a k n o w l e d g e o f w h a t c a n l e g i t i m a t e l y b e d e s c r i b e d a s e v o l u -t i o n i s t , a n a t t e m p t a t c l a r i f i c a t i o n i s r e q u i r e d . T h e d i s t i n c t i o n b e t w e e n t h e D a r w i n i a n s a n d t h e o l d - s t y l e e v o l u t i o n i s t s w a s p e r c e p t i v e l y d r a w n b y C h a r l e s L y e l l d u r i n g t h e h e i g h t o f t h e g r e a t d i s p u t e : " w r i t e r s w h o a r e m o s t i n f a v o r o f t r a n s m u t a t i o n ( M r . C . D a r w i n a n d D r . J . H o o k e r , f o r e x a m p l e ) a r e n e v e r t h e l e s s a m o n g t h o s e w h o a r e m o s t c a u t i o u s , a n d o n e w o u l d s a y t i m i d , i n t h e i r m o d e o f e s p o u s i n g t h e d o c t r i n e o f p r o g r e s s i o n ; w h i l e , o n t h e o t h e r h a n d , t h e m o s t z e a l o u s a d v o c a t e s o f p r o g r e s s i o n a r e o f t e n e r t h e n n o t v e r y v e h e m e n t o p p o n e n t s o f t r a n s m u t a t i o n . " T h e d i f f e r e n c e m a y b e m a d e c l e a r e r b y e x a m i n i n g t h e t y p e o f a r g u m e n t a d v a n c e d b y a p r e - D a r w i n i a n e v o l u t i o n i s t . R o b e r t C h a m b e r s , w r i t i n g i n 1 3 5 5 , s a y s : " t h e i m m e d i a t e c a u s e o f t h e d e v e l o p m e n t o f e a c h l i n e t h r o u g h i t s v a r i o u s g e n e r a l g r a d e s o f b e i n g i s t o b e s o u g h t i n a n i n t e r n a l i m p u l s e , t h e n a t u r e o f w h i c h i s u n -k n o w n t o u s , b u t w h i c h r e s e m b l e s t h e e q u a l l y m y s t e r i o u s i m -p u l s e b y w h i c h a n i n d i v i d u a l e m b r y o i s p a s s e d t h r o u g h i t s s u c c e s s i o n o f g r a d e s u n t i l u s h e r e d i n t o m a t u r e e x i s t e n c e . G e o l o g y s h o w s u s e a c h l i n e t a k i n g a l o n g s e r i e s o f a g e s t o a d v a n c e f r o m i t s h u m b l e i n v e r t e b r a t e e f f l u e n t s t o i t s h i g h e s t m a m m a l i a n f o r m s ; a n d t h i s I h a v e v e n t u r e d t o c a l l ' t h e u n i -v e r s a l g e s t a t i o n o f N a t u r e . ' " ^ T h i s a r g u m e n t i s c h a r a c t e r -i z e d b y a n a c c e p t a n c e o f f o u r b a s i c i d e a s : t h e h i e r a r c h y o f n a t u r e , a u n i - d i r e c t i o n a l ( i r r e v e r s i b l e ) d e v e l o p m e n t c o m m o n t o a l l l i f e - f o r m s , a s u g g e s t i o n o f i n e v i t a b l e p r o g r e s s i n t h e 4 analogy with gestation, and an i n t e r n a l impulse which dire c t s the whole process. Darwin's theories abandoned a l l four of these supposi-t i o n s . He s p e c i f i c a l l y maintained that "natural laws" were metaphorical expressions of human understanding, ra-ther than actual determinants of b i o l o g i c a l events. "So again i t i s d i f f i c u l t to avoid personifying the word N 8 t u r e ; but I mean by Nature, only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us."^ The r e s u l t was a repudiation of any attempt to es t a b l i s h laws of inevitable progress from lower to higher forms. Examination of a passage from a recent t h e o r e t i c a l work on evolution may help to reveal the implications of Darwin's position. "The evolutionary species . . . i s a population system which possesses the following c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s . ( 1 ) I t i s a lineage, an ancestral-descendant sequence of popula-tions e x i s t i n g i n space and time. ( 2 ) The lineage evolves separately from other lineages, or, i n other words, from other species. ( 3 ) I t has i t s own 'unitary evolutionary r o l e , ' that i s , i t f i t s into i t s own p a r t i c u l a r ecological niche i n a b i o t i c community. ( 4 ) And i t has i t s evolutionary tendencies, being susceptible to change i n evolutionary role 1 0 during the course of i t s history." The suppositionsimnder-l y i n g t h i s statement are completely opposed to those of Cham-bers' e a r l i e r one. There i s an implied equality of l i f e -5 f o r m s , i n s t e a d o f a v e r t i c a l d i s t r i b u t i o n o f h i g h e r a n d l o w e r s p e c i e s , a l a c k o f c o m m o n d i r e c t i o n i n e v o l u t i o n , a n d a n a w a r e n e s s o f e x t e r n a l i n f l u e n c e s d e t e r m i n i n g d e v e l -o p m e n t , s u b j e c t t o t h e p o w e r o f c h a n c e . T h e s e a r e t h e f e a t u r e s t h a t d i s t i n g u i s h D a r w i n i a n f r o m p r e - D a r w i n i a n t h e o r i e s o f e v o l u t i o n . T h e s i t u a t i o n i s n o t t h i s s i m p l e , h o w e v e r . T o d a y t h e w o r d " e v o l u t i o n " i s g e n e r a l l y u s e d t o m e a n t h e D a r w i n i a n c o n c e p t o f s p e c i e s c h a n g e , b u t w h e n H e r b e r t S p e n c e r p o p u -l a r i z e d t h e w o r d i n t h e 1#50's a n d 1360 ' s , h e u s e d i t t o m e a n a n e c e s s a r y l a w o f d e v e l o p m e n t ; i n t h e c o n t e x t o f t h e t i m e , i t w o u l d h a v e b e e n p o s s i b l e t o c a l l D a r w i n a n o n -e v o l u t i o n i s t , a n d t h i s , c o n s i d e r i n g t h e f l u i d i t y o f l a b e l s , i s w h a t L y e l l d i d i n t h e p a s s a g e q u o t e d a b o v e . T h e d i s t i n c -t i o n w a s n o t a l w a y s r e a d i l y a p p a r e n t , p a r t i c u l a r l y a f t e r D a r w i n b e g a n u s i n g t h e w o r d h i m s e l f i n t h e s i x t h e d i t i o n o f t h e O r i g i n ; f u r t h e r m o r e , D a r w i n ' s w o r k w a s s o c o m p l e x t h a t i t w a s c a p a b l e o f s u s t a i n i n g m o r e t r a d i t i o n a l e v o l u t i o n a r y i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s i f n o t r e a d c a r e f u l l y e n o u g h . T h u s m a n y p e o p l e d i d n o t s e e a n y d i s t i n c t i o n b e t w e e n D a r w i n i a n t h e o r y a n d e a r l i e r h y p o t h e s e s ; t h a t t h i s i s s t i l l t h e c a s e i s s h o w n b y t h e n u m b e r o f e a r l i e r t h i n k e r s w h o a r e s a i d t o h a v e " a n t i -c i p a t e d " D a r w i n , a n d b y t h e n u m b e r o f b a s i c a l l y p r e - D a r w i n i a n t h e o r i e s o f g o a l - d i r e c t e d e v o l u t i o n b e i n g a d v o c a t e d t o d a y , f o r e x a m p l e b y T e i l h a r d d e C h a r d i n . T h e r e i s s t i l l n o g e n e r -a l l y a c c e p t e d v o c a b u l a r y f o r m a k i n g t h e d i s t i n c t i o n ; t h e p r o -6 p o s a l t o c a l l D a r w i n ' s t h e o r y " n a t u r a l s e l e c t i o n " ' ' i s i n -a d e q u a t e b e c a u s e n a t u r a l s e l e c t i o n i s n o w u n d e r s t o o d a s o n l y o n e o f t h e m e t h o d s b y w h i c h e v o l u t i o n t a k e s p l a c e . A b e t t e r s u g g e s t i o n w o u l d b e t o r e p l a c e t h e w o r d " e v o l u t i o n " b y " s p e c i a t i o n , " t o d e s c r i b e t h e l a r g e - s c a l e c h a n g e s , a n d " p o p u l a t i o n g e n e t i c s " a n d s i m i l a r t e r m s f o r t h e s m a l l e r -s c a l e p r o c e s s e s , b u t t h e b i o l o g i s t s w h o u s e t h e s e t e r m s s t i l l u s e " e v o l u t i o n " a s t h e o v e r - a l l n a m e . T h e m a j o r d i f f i c u l t y i n u n d e r s t a n d i n g t h e n a t u r e o f e v o -l u t i o n a r y t h o u g h t i n t h e e a r l y n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y i s t h e f a c t t h a t i t w a s n o t u n t i l a f t e r D 8 r w i n t h a t e v o l u t i o n w a s r e s t r i c t e d t o a b i o l o g i c a l c o n c e p t . E v e n i n t h e w o r k o f H e r b e r t S p e n c e r , b i o l o g i c a l , e v o l u t i o n i s s e e n a s p a r t o f a l a r g e r p r o c e s s i n v o l v i n g i n o r g a n i c m a t t e r a n d t h e c o m p o s i -t i o n o f t h e e n t i r e u n i v e r s e . I n t h e l a t e e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y , t h e n o t i o n h a d b e c o m e c o m m o n t h a t a l l m a t t e r w a s a t l e a s t p o t e n t i a l l y a l i v e , a n d t h e r e f o r e a t s o m e l e v e l o f o r g a n i c d e v e l o p m e n t ; s u c h a b e l i e f l e d t o t h e o r i e s o f u n i v e r s a l p r o g r e s s i n n a t u r e , t h e m o s t f a m o u s b e i n g C o l e r i d g e ' s " p r i n -c i p l e o f i n d i v i d u a t i o n , o r t h e p o w e r w h i c h u n i t e s a g i v e n a l l i n t o a w h o l e t h a t i s p r e s u p p o s e d b y a l l i t s p a r t s . " c A c o r o l l a r y o f t h i s t y p e o f t h e o r y w a s t h e c o n c e p t o f o r g a n i c u n i t y , i n w h i c h n a t u r e w a s s e e n a s b e i n g i n i t s e l f a g r e a t o r g a n i s m , w i t h a n i m p l i e d p r o c e s s o f m a t u r a t i o n . B y m i d -c e n t u r y , t h i s c o n c e p t h a d l a r g e l y c e a s e d t o h a v e a s p e c i f i c m e a n i n g , b u t h a d b e c o m e a g e n e r a l h o n o r i f i c t o b e a p p l i e d t o 7 anything that exhibited unity and coherence. The human race could be personified as a great super-organism, as by Comte; periods of history could be call e d "organic" i f they were characterized by common purpose and s sense of co-opera-ti o n , as by C a r l y l e ; works of art or l i t e r a t u r e which func-tioned i n ways th8t could not be explained adequately by eighteenth-century "mechanical" standards could be said to be organically unified.*'^ The background of evolutionary thinking, then, was p h i l o -sophical rather than s c i e n t i f i c . Even i n Herbert Spencer's law of evolution, the transmutation hypothesis i s b a s i c a l l y a c o r o l l a r y to the more general idea of progression. In the early nineteenth-century context, the word "evolution" de-scribes any theory i n which the world, or i t s constituent parts, i s seen as slowly and progressively emergent, instead of having been formed by a single, unitary act of creation. This metaphysical bias underlies a large number of philoso-phical systems, of which three can be selected as representa-t i v e . F i r s t , there i s the position which was given i t s f i n a l shape by P h i l i p Henry Gosse i n He argued that the Bib-l i c a l account of creation was l i t e r a l l y true, but that the world was created i n the middle of a sequence of development that took place i n God's mind. Thus f o s s i l s represent crea-tures that never existed i n time, but which were nonetheless 1 5 part of earth's development 8S planned by God. This posi-3 t i o n attempted a compromise between churchmen and evolution-i s t s by accepting the l a t t e r ' s arguments as evidence of the divine plan while denying the temporality of the process. The theory i s i r r e f u t a b l e , but did not win public favour. Second, there i s the position of those who accepted the idea of a temporal process of development while denying the transmutation of species. Sometimes God was supposed to have conveniently created new forms at appropriate i n t e r v a l s ; such a series of s p e c i a l creation was implied by L y e l l i n the 1330's. A l t e r n a t i v e l y , the method of development was l e f t vague, so that nature i t s e l f appeared to be developing i n a mysterious way. In either case, evolutionary progres-sion was seen as an attribute of nature as a whole, rather than of i n d i v i d u a l species. This position i s b a s i c a l l y a s u r v i v a l of the venerable p r i n c i p l e of the chain of being, with the addition of sequential development i n time. I t was the most widely held of the evolutionary theories. Third, there i s the p o s i t i o n of those who m8de the process dependent on the transmutation of species. The theories of Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, i n the late eighteenth century, are the e a r l i e s t sustained expositions of t h i s concept; i n -dependently of each other, they stated that a l l l i f e devel-oped from primitive beginnings, through the agency of the organism's i n t e r n a l needs. Thus, to use a famous example, i f an animal l i v e d i n an environment where the food supply was mainly limited to t a l l trees, i t would gradually develop a long neck for feeding, and the acquired c h a r a c t e r i s t i c would 9 be inherited by i t s descendants. Although each man had his followers, neither influenced public opinion greatly, et 16 least i n England. The f u l l development of t h i s p o s i t i o n had to wait u n t i l the controversy over Cuvier's theories had ended. Cuvier attempted to reconcile the B i b l i c a l account of cre-ation with the recent discoveries of the f o s s i l s of extinct species. According to his theory, l i f e on earth was period-i c a l l y devastated by great catastrophes that rendered most, i f not a l l , of the ex i s t i n g forms extinct. The most recent catastrophe was the Noachian deluge, which, of course, did not r e s u l t i n complete extinc t i o n . Following such a mass extermination, either the few creatures remaining repopulated 17 the earth, or else God intervened with a new creation. This theory was challenged i n England, however, where there was a t r a d i t i o n of uniformitarianism, the idea that the ge-o l o g i c a l changes of the past were i d e n t i c a l with those ob-servable i n the present. This view, o r i g i n a l l y proposed by James Hutton i n the late eighteenth century, was advanced 1 & persuasively by Charles L y e l l i n the 16*30'S. After .38 period of resistance, L y e l l ' s theories were generally accepted. L y e l l attacked Lamarck i n the second volume of his work, but he himself was undecided about the problem of the o r i g i n of species, and eventually became a supporter of Darwin. But for a long time the prestige of his work may have mi l i t a t e d against the proposal of transmutationist theories. Apart from 19 the minor figures of W. C. Wells and Patrick Matthew, almost 10 n o t h e o r i s t s i n t h i s v e i n a p p e a r e d u n t i l t h e 1 6 % 0 ' s , w h e n t h e a n o n y m o u s p u b l i c a t i o n o f C h a m b e r s ' V e s t i g e s o f C r e a t i o n c r e a t e d a s t o r m . B u t a f t e r t h a t t h e r e w a s a r e n e w a l o f m u -t a t i o n i s m , l e a d i n g t o t h e p o p u l a r i t y o f H e r b e r t S p e n c e r . A n a d d i t i o n a l f a c t o r l e a d i n g t o t h e r e s u r g e n c e o f t r a n s -m u t a t i o n i s m W8S t h e e v o l u t i o n a r y n a t u r e o f a s t r o n o m i c a l s p e c u l a t i o n i n t h e e a r l y n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y , K a n t a n d L a -p l a c e h a d a l r e a d y d e v e l o p e d a t h e o r y o f t h e c r e a t i o n o f t h e s o l a r s y s t e m f r o m p r i m a l u n d i f f e r e n t i a t e d m a t t e r , a n d t h i s t h e o r y w a s a m p l i f i e d b y J o h n H e r s c h e l i n E n g l a n d . H e r s c h e l ' s d i s c o v e r y o f t h e n e b u l a e , a p p a r e n t l y u n o r g a n i z e d m a t t e r s p r e a d t h r o u g h o u t t h e u n i v e r s e i n g r e a t c l o u d s , l e d h i m t o p r o p o s e a t h e o r y o f c o n t i n u o u s d e v e l o p m e n t . I n s t e a d o f o n e c r e a t i o n a t o n e m o m e n t o f t i m e , h e p o s i t e d a g r a d u a l ' t r a n s -f o r m a t i o n o f p r i m i t i v e m a t t e r i n t o s i m p l e s t a r s a n d e v e n t u a l l y i n t o s o l a r s y s t e m s ; h e b e l i e v e d t h a t a l l s t a g e s o f d e v e l o p -m e n t c o u l d b e d i s c o v e r e d c o - e x i s t i n g a t t h e p r e s e n t m o m e n t . ?0 T h e v i e w s o f H e r s c h e l a n d h i s f o l l o w e r N i c h o l g a v e e v o l u -t i o n a r y t h i n k i n g p e r h a p s i t s m o s t f o r c e f u l i m p e t u s ; f o r a l o n g t i m e t h e w o r d " e v o l u t i o n " w a s m o r e a f e a t u r e o f a s t r o -n o m i c a l t h a n o f b i o l o g i c a l w r i t i n g , a n d l a t e r b i o l o g i c a l t h e -o r i e s o f m u t a t i o n i s m w e r e g e n e r a l l y u n d e r s t o o d a s p a r t o f t h e s e m e p r o c e s s a s t h e c o s m i c d e v e l o p m e n t . N i c h o l m a d e t h i s c o m p a r i s o n e x p l i c i t , t h u s i n e f f e c t f i x i n g a s e a l o f a p p r o v a l o n t h e d e v e l o p m e n t h y p o t h e s i s . N o a t t e m p t t o u n d e r s t a n d e v o l u t i o n a r y t h e o r i e s i n t h e e a r l y n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y c a n 11 a f f o r d t o n e g l e c t t h e i n f l u e n c e o f a s t r o n o m y . S u c h w a s t h e b a c k g r o u n d t o e v o l u t i o n a r y s p e c u l a t i o n i n e k r l y V i c t o r i a n p o e t r y . C o n c e p t s w e r e g e n e r a l l y r a t h e r u n -c l e a r , a n d i t w a s p o s s i b l e f o r a n a m b i g u o u s l y p h r a s e d s t a t e m e n t t o b e a c c e p t e d b y o p p o s i n g f a c t i o n s ; t h u s T e n n y s o n 21 w a s h a i l e d b y R i c h a r d O w e n a s a " c h a m p i o n o f S c i e n c e " a n d b y O w e n ' s o p p o n e n t H u x l e y a s " t h e f i r s t p o e t s i n c e L u c r e t i u s 2 2 w h o h a s u n d e r s t o o d t h e d r i f t o f s c i e n c e . " A c t u a l s c i e n t i f i c s p e c u l a t i o n f o r m e d o n l y a p a r t o f T e n n y -s o n ' s b a c k g r o u n d , o f c o u r s e ; e s a p o e t , h e w a s e q u a l l y i n f l u -e n c e d b y t h e i d e a s o f t h e p o e t s o f t h e p r e c e d i n g g e n e r a t i o n . W o r d s w o r t h a n d C o l e r i d g e h a d b o t h c o n t r i b u t e d t o t h e d o c t r i n e o f t h e o r g a n i c u n i t y o f n a t u r e . W o r d s w o r t h h a d p i o n e e r e d a n h i s t o r i c a l a p p r o a c h i n p o e t r y , s e e i n g h i s i d e a s a s a f u n c t i o n o f h i s p e r s o n a l g r o w t h , b u t h e d i d n o t a p p l y t h i s n e w p e r s p e c -t i v e t o n a t u r e i n a n y t h i n g t h a t c o u l d b e c a l l e d a n e v o l u t i o n -a r y m a n n e r ; h i s n a t u r e w a s b a s i c a l l y i m m u t a b l e i n e s s e n c e . T h e v e r y u s e o f i m a g e s o f o r g a n i c g r o w t h t o d e s c r i b e t h e m a t u r -a t i o n o f a p e r s o n ' s m i n d , h o w e v e r , w a s i n f l u e n t i a l i n p r e -p a r i n g t h e w a y f o r m o r e p r o p e r l y e v o l u t i o n a r y i d e a s i n o t h e r 2 3 w r i t e r s . C o l e r i d g e , o n t h e o t h e r h a n d , d e s p i t e c o n s i d e r a b l e v a c i l l a t i o n , s e e m s t o h a v e b e e n a n e v o l u t i o n i s t o f s o r t s , a l -t h o u g h h e r e m a i n e d o p p o s e d t o t h e i d e a o f t r a n s m u t a t i o n o f s t > e -c i e s . * A s e a r l y e s 1795, i n " T h e D e s t i n y o f N a t i o n s , " h e u s e d a n i m a g e r e m i n i s c e n t o f E r a s m u s D a r w i n , d e s c r i b i n g a 1? process of creation: "she the Protoplast beheld / Stand beauteous on Confusion's charmed wave" (11. 290 - 2 9 1 ) . The Protoplast implies either an undifferentiated creation, or 25 a d i r e c t i n g power of development. In his philosophical writings, Coleridge makes use of figures, such as the lad-der, which imply a graded sequence of organic life-forms, but t h i s sequence i s not a temporal one, being instead a pre-existing, Platonic idea which i s expressed i n the i n d i -vidual organisms. ° He himself makes the d i s t i n c t i o n be-tween "a single and temporary Event, anterior of necessity to a l l actual experience, and an assertion of a universal progress of the Nature nowjyexi sting," emphatically endorsing 27 the former. However, his general concepts, when not c l a r -i f i e d by concrete i l l u s t r a t i o n s , are s u f f i c i e n t l y ambiguous to be acceptable to a large number of evolutionary positions, and thus may have stimulated evolutionary thinking i n his readers. Both Keats and Shelley were influenced by Erasmus Darwin, and introduced evolutionary passages into t h e i r poetry. Keats Ts Endymion presents a v i s i o n of the wreckage on the ocean-bed, including r e l i c s of modern man, man of "Saturn's generation," and primitive monsters ( I I I . 1 2 3 - 1 3 6 ) . His Hyperion, according to H. ¥. Piper, shows the influence of W. C. Wells, who had proposed a theory i n which master races, characterized by superior beauty and mental a b i l i t y , supersede less highly developed ones:^9 . . . f i r s t i n b e a u t y s h o u l d b e f i r s t i n m i g h t : Y e a , b y t h a t l a v / , a n o t h e r r a c e m a y d r i v e O u r c o n q u e r o r s t o m o u r n a s w e d o n o w . ( I I . 2 2 9 - 2 3 1 ) I n K e a t s ' s p o e m s , t h e s e e v o l u t i o n a r y s p e c u l a t i o n s a r e t i e d i n w i t h a d o c t r i n e o f t h e d e v e l o p m e n t o f p o e t r y , i n w h i c h h i s o w n g e n e r a t i o n w a s a s t a g e i n a n i n e v i t a b l e p r o g r e s s . S h e l l e y a d a p t e d K e a t s ' s s e a - b e d s u r v e y t o a d e s c r i p t i o n o f t h e c o n t e n t s o f t h e e a r t h ' s s t r a t a i n P r o m e t h e u s U n b o u n d . T h e p a s s a g e c a r r i e s r e m i n i s c e n c e s o f C u v i e r i a n t h e o r i e s o f c o s m i c d e s t r u c t i o n : t h e b e a s t s o f p a s t e p o c h s I n c r e a s e d a n d m u l t i p l i e d l i k e s u m m e r w o r m s O n a n a b a n d o n e d c o r p s e , t i l l t h e b l u e g l o b e W r a p p e d d e l u g e r o u n d i t l i k e a c l o a k , a n d t h e y Y e l l e d , g a s p e d , a n d w e r e a b o l i s h e d ; o r s o m e G o d W h o s e t h r o n e w a s i n a c o m e t , p a s s e d , a n d c r i e d , ' B e n o t ! ' ( I V . 313-313) T h e w h o l e f o u r t h a c t o f P r o m e t h e u s i s b a s e d o n t h e c o n c e p t o f t h e o r g a n i c u n i t y o f t h e u n i v e r s e , f o r a l l t h i n g s , i n -c l u d i n g t h e i n o r g a n i c , u n d e r g o a r e g e n e r a t i o n a n d e n t e r a n e w l i f e . B u t t h e m o s t o b v i o u s , a n d m o s t c o n t r o v e r s i a l , t r e a t m e n t o f e v o l u t i o n a r y i d e a s i n R o m a n t i c p o e t r y w a s t h a t o f B y r o n . C a i n p r e s e n t s t h e r e a d e r w i t h a v i s i o n o f t h e p a s t h i s t o r y o f t h e w o r l d , s h o w i n g i t t o h a v e b e e n i n h a b i t e d b y p r e - A d a m -i t e b e i n g s w h o w e r e e f f a c e d b y a c a t a s t r o p h e . A t o n e p o i n t i n t h e p l a y L u c i f e r s p e c u l a t e s t h a t l i f e , a s a p r i n c i p l e , m a y h a v e e x i s t e d b e f o r e G o d ( I I . i . 155-156), s u g g e s t i n g t h e 30 i n f l u e n c e o f E r a s m u s D a r w i n ' s p h r a s e o l o g y . C u v i e r i a n f a n -t a s i e s f i l l h i s w o r k , b e i n g f o u n d a s w e l l i n M a n f r e d , T h e D e f o r m e d T r a n s f o r m e d , " D a r k n e s s , " a n d D o n J u a n ( C a n t o I X ) ; i n t h i s l a s t p o e m C u v i e r i s r e f e r r e d t o b y n a m e . B y r o n ' s f a v o u r i t e w a y o f s u g g e s t i n g c o s m i c d e s t r u c t i o n i s b y t h e i m a g e o f a " w a n d e r i n g s t a r " t h a t h a s b u r n e d o u t o r e x p l o d e d . T h e s e a r e t h e m a i n s o u r c e s f r o m w h i c h T e n n y s o n a n d h i s c o n t e m p o r a r i e s w o u l d h a v e d e r i v e d t h e i r f i r s t i m p r e s s i o n s o f e v o l u t i o n a r y t h e o r y . T e n n y s o n ' s i n t e r e s t i n a s t r o n o m y p r o b -a b l y m a d e t h e a s t r o n o m i c a l i m a g e s i n B y r o n , f o r w h o m h e h a d a n e a r l y e n t h u s i a s m , m o r e p r o m i n e n t t h e n w o u l d o t h e r w i s e h a v e b e e n t h e c a s e ; a n d t h e p r o g r e s s i v i s t c o n c e p t s t h a t l e d t o t h e f i n a l v i s i o n i n P a r a c e l s u s w e r e a l m o s t c e r t a i n l y d e -r i v e d f r o m S h e l l e y t o s o m e d e g r e e . H o w e v e r , t h e m o s t e x p l i -c i t s t a t e m e n t s a b o u t t h e t r a n s f o r m a t i o n o f s p e c i e s c a m e f r o m E r a s m u s D a r w i n ' s f o l l o w e r s , a r a t h e r d i s r e p u t a b l e m i n o r i t y , a n d t h e l e s s d i r e c t s t a t e m e n t s o f o t h e r w r i t e r s w e r e a m b i g u -o u s a n d e a s i l y o v e r l o o k e d . I t i s t h e r e f o r e d i f f i c u l t t o d e -t e r m i n e t h e e x t e n t t o w h i c h y o u n g r e a d e r s l i k e T e n n y s o n a n d B r o w n i n g w o u l d h a v e b e e n i n f l u e n c e d b y t h e s e i d e a s ; t h e y w o u l d m o s t l i k e l y h a v e c o m e t o e v o l u t i o n a r y t h i n k i n g t h r o u g h a s t r o n o m i c a l a n d c o s m i c s p e c u l a t i o n , e n c o u n t e r i n g i t a s a p h i l o s o p h i c a l s y s t e m w i t h m o r a l a n d t h e o l o g i c a l r a m i f i c a t i o n s , r a t h e r t h a n a s a g e n u i n e l y s c i e n t i f i c h y p o t h e s i s . CHAPTER TOO TENNYSON'S EARLY POEMS AND THEIR BACKGROUND Tennyson began h i s c a r e e r w i t h the p u b l i c a t i o n , i n 1327, of the volume Poems by Two B r o t h e r s . The Rev. George C l a y -t o n Tennyson, or some other member of the f a m i l y , may have e d i t e d the book, because a body of A l f r e d ' s verse, much more i n n o v a t i v e than anything i n the p u b l i s h e d s e l e c t i o n , was ex-cluded on the grounds t h a t i t was too f a r removed from the p u b l i c taste.'' Even as pu b l i s h e d , A l f r e d ' s c o n t r i b u t i o n s , so f a r as the a t t r i b u t i o n s C 8 n be c e r t a i n , a l r e a d y show c o n s i d e r -able independence from then c u r r e n t s t y l e s of d i c t i o n and d e s c r i p t i o n o f nature. His work can f r e q u e n t l y be d i s t i n -guished from h i s b r o t h e r ' s by the ch o i c e o f s u b j e c t ; w h i l e C h a r l e s p r e f e r s h e a v i l y melodramatic exclamations, as on the death of a s i s t e r or f a t h e r , A l f r e d p r e f e r s landscapes and h i s t o r i c a l episodes t h a t i l l u s t r a t e the vastness and e f f e c t s of time: "The Dru i d ' s Prophecies," "The D e l l o f E — . " Because of the s e l e c t i o n , however, the volume presents a f a i r l y c o n v e n t i o n a l w o r l d - p i c t u r e , d e s p i t e the e x o t i c i s m of many of the s u b j e c t s and the B y r o n i c stances. The poems t h a t are most b l a t a n t l y d i d a c t i c are g e n e r a l l y p l a t i t u d i n o u s , w i t h p r a i s e s f o r the c r e a t o r ( " A l l joyous . . . " ) , an e n t i r e l y con-v e n t i o n a l n o t i o n o f the a f t e r l i f e ("'Tis the v o i c e o f the dead"), 16 elementary r e f l e c t i o n s on the revealing q u a l i t i e s of time ("The eye must catch the point . . . " ) , the pathetic f a l -lacy ("Boyhood"), and an equation of the loss of r e l i g i o u s f a i t h and the beginnings of Vice ("Religion! tho' we seem to spurn"). O r i g i n a l i t y of thought, i n the work of either Charles or A l f r e d , usually involves some aspect of science. Tennyson's early i n t e r e s t i n science i s well known and documented. I t shows i t s e l f r egularly i n his poetry, i n the use of images drawn from biology, geology, and e s p e c i a l l y astronomy: "As rays of many a r o l l i n g central Star / Aye f l a s h i n g earthward have not reached us yet" (from the un-published early poem, "Among some nations"). In t h i s i n -stance there i s even a foreshadowing of his l a t e r technique of using s c i e n t i f i c imagery to e s t a b l i s h analogies between the processes of nature and the a c t i v i t i e s of man—the simile i s designed to i l l u s t r a t e the recalcitrance of some countries i n producing poetry—but the analogy i n t h i s example i s very f 8 i n t and comparatively unrelated to the subject. The poem should be regarded as an exercise i n a technique that has not yet been mastered. Science also provided him with subjects for general conversation, and formed possibly the most sub-s t a n t i a l portion of his leisure reading. There i s no way of knowing how many books on natural history and related sub-jects Tennyson read as a young man, but his careful perusal of "C. C. Clarke" rs Hundred Wonders of the World i s documen-3 ted, and a copy of Buffon was i n his father's l i b r a r y . (It 17 i s tempting to think that an acquaintance with Buffon may have biased Tennyson toward, evolutionary speculation from the beginning, but there i s no evidence that t h i s was the case; Buffon's hints about progressive development were placed c a r e f u l l y through his work i n such a fashion that i t was d i f f i c u l t to make connections between them, and the one e x p l i c i t passage on the subject of species change was deliberately non-progressivist, a t t r i b u t i n g such change to "degeneration."^) Tennyson's s c i e n t i f i c imagery i s usually precise and ac-curate; Charles', on the other hand, i s generally vague and questionable, as for exemple his reference to the "axles" of the stars ("The stars of yon blue placid sky") or his tentative adherence to the concept of the hollow sun ("Phre-n o l o g y " ) — i . e . , the idea thet the flaming gases existed only on the outer edges of the sun's atmosphere, and that under-neath there was a s o l i d core with normal climate. Such astronomical images ere generally introduced without implied analogies to human a f f a i r s . The s c i e n t i f i c ideas of the young Tennysons, as shown i n t h i s f i r s t volume, were standard. No ind i c a t i o n of a b e l i e f i n evolution i s given, nor even of a system of analogies be-tween men and the other ani»mals£( since to describe human be-ings as r e p t i l e s was by t h i s time a conventional term of d i s -paragement) . Even images of organic growth are not par t i c u -l a r l y common, though f r u i t / f l o w e r images occur occasionally, 13 as i n "Memory." The most extended image of natural hier-archy, i n "Did not thy roseate l i p s outvie," i s extremely tenuous and perhaps not even uniformly progressive; the sequence i s : f r u i t , pearl-bearing mollusc, deer, angel, moon, star, s t a r - c l u s t e r (Pleiad), end sun-The one important exception to the conventionality of s c i e n t i f i c imagery i s the concept of the p l u r a l i t y of worlds, an idea popularized by Fontenelle i n the previous century and att r a c t i n g the attention of thinkers es di f f e r e n t es Byron and the Sc o t t i s h clergymen Thomes Chalmers.^1 Although f a i r l y re-spectable by the 1320*5, this concept was s t i l l not orthodox b e l i e f , p a r t i c u l a r l y i n the uses to which Tennyson put i t . In early nineteenth-century thought, these other worlds were ex-pected to play some s i g n i f i c a n t eschatological rol e ; they were part of God's system, and so the question of t h e i r s u periority or subordination to earth i n the scheme of things was much discussed. Eventually, they were hypothesized as being the 7 - -resting-places of the souls of the dead. In the Poems by Two Brothers there i s a recurring use of the word "worlds" to de-scribe circumstences of the a f t e r l i f e . In "Yon star of eve," the just l i v e " i n heppier worlds than t h i s " ; " t h T eternal soul must reign / In worlds devoid of pain," and the dead see "brighter suns 8 n d bluer skies" ("Why should we weep . . . " ) ; at some time i n the future ( a f t e r the Judgment?) there w i l l be "brighter suns" ("How g a i l y sinks . . . " ) . These are admittedly tenuous examples, e a s i l y interpreted i n conventional terms, but more emphatic instances can be found i n 19 Tennyson's unpublished poems of t h i s period. "The Dying Man to his Friend" describes heaven as a "world more bright than t h i s , " "radiant realms of day"; "The Coach of Death" takes place i n a world behind the sun, where the dead see the earth as another world i n "the dead, pale skies." The concept of other worlds p l a i n l y fascinated Tennyson, and he used the con-cept i n the framework i n which i t was most acceptable, i n con-nection with the standard "other world" of the a f t e r l i f e . Since s c i e n t i f i c and r e l i g i o u s attitudes are not e a s i l y separated i n the nineteenth century, a b r i e f examination of the r e l i g i o u s content of Poems by Two Brothers w i l l be useful. Despite t h e i r general conventionality, certain less then ortho-dox implications make themselves f e l t . A poem on a suicide, for example, discusses the future of the soul, but makes no reference to an a f t e r l i f e of punishment ("The Grave of a Sui-cide"). Occasional use i s made of images of separation be* tween God and man, ranging from Charles' more conventional "mystic maze" of God's plan ("In summer, when a l l nature glows") to Alfred's " v e i l " ("Memory") and "mortal shore" ("Why should we weep . . . " ) , which imply, however vaguely, a r a d i c a l gulf between human consciousness and the things described, whether the other world or t h i s one, seen through memory. (Compare the "web of bloody haze" i n "Armageddon," a forerunner of the web drawn across the skies i n In Memoriam.) Some of the terms used to describe the world's h o s t i l i t y and indifference, such as the "weste of darkness" ("I wander i n darkness") and the "black gulf of woe" ("Exile of Bassorah"), although taking 2 0 t h e i r c o l o u r i n g f r o m t h e e m o t i o n a l a t t i t u d e s o f t h e s p e a k e r s , s e r v e t o r e i n f o r c e t h e i m p r e s s i o n o f i s o l a t i o n f r o m m e a n i n g i n t h e w o r l d . S i m i l a r i m p l i c a t i o n s c a n b e s e e n i n t h e c o n c l u -s i o n o f " F r i e n d s h i p " w i l l d e e m t h e e T r u t h , s o l o v e l y i s t h y m i g h t ! " — a l t h o u g h t h e i d e n t i f i c a t i o n o f f r i e n d s h i p a n d t r u t h i s n o t p r o f o u n d i f , a s t h e e p i g r a p h f r o m C i c e r o m i g h t l e a d o n e t o e x p e c t , t h e n o t i o n o f f r i e n d s h i p i s t a k e n a s a n a b s o l u t e . T w o o f C h a r l e s ' c o n t r i b u t i o n s , " P h r e n o l o g y " a n d " T h e D e i t y , " r e v e a l t h e c o m p l e x o f r e l i g i o u s a n d s c i e n t i f i c a t t i t u d e s i n a l l i t s a m b i v a l e n c e . " T h e D e i t y " c a n b e r e a d e i t h e r a s a s i m p l e , s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d r e l i g i o u s l y r i c o r a s a q u e s t i o n i n g o f t h e a r g u m e n t f r o m d e s i g n . I t b e g i n s b y a s k i n g w h e r e G o d i s t o b e f o u n d ; w h e t h e r t h i s i s a r h e t o r i c a l q u e s t i o n o r n o t d e p e n d s o n t h e m e a n i n g o f t h e e p i t h e t 1 " i m m a t e r i a l " a s a p p l i e d t o G o d . P e r h a p s t h e r e a s o n t h a t G o d i s n o t r e v e a l e d i s p r e c i s e l y b e -c a u s e h e i s s p i r i t , n o t m a t t e r ; s o h e c a n s u r n e r v i s e h i s w o r k s , " s u n s a n d s y s t e m s , " w i t h o u t r e v e a l i n g h i m s e l f e x c e p t t h r o u g h t h e t r a n s f i g u r a t i o n o f C h r i s t . O n t h e o t h e r h a n d , t h e p o e m c o u l d s u g g e s t G o d ' s a b s e n c e f r o m t h e n a t u r a l w o r l d , e n d t h e e l a b o r a t e l y s p e l l e d o u t r e v e l a t i o n t h a t i s r e q u e s t e d i s w i s h f u l t h i n k i n g ; " 0 ! t h a t h e w e r e r e v e a l ' d . t o m e " w o u l d t h e n i n d i c s t e t h e s p e a k e r ' s i n a b i l i t y t o c o n f i r m G o d ' s e x i s t e n c e . " P h r e n o l o g y " i s a c o n v e r s a t i o n a l p o e m m o c k i n g t h e n e w l y -q f o u n d e d a n d m u c h p r o p a g e n d i z e d p s e u d o - s c i e n c e . ' I t c o n c l u d e s b y a s k i n g w h e t h e r t h e n e w d i s c i p l i n e w i l l u n r a v e l a n y o f t h e 21 r e a l l y important mysteries of the world, mostly astronomical. The climax of the poem comes when the hypothesis of the hol-low sun i s dismissed: "Or may we that hypothesis explode, / Led by your science nearer to our God?" The next item i n the series i s the optics of the rainbow. Why i s God mentioned i n such close connection with the sun? I t would appear that astronomy holds the most s p i r i t u a l l y important secrets. Sim-i l a r l y , the d e v i l i n Alfred's early drama, "The Devil end the Lady" (II. i . 40-57), i s s t i r r e d into r e f l e c t i o n about the nature of existence, substance and accidence, and the atomic theory by looking at the stars: "0 suns and spheres and stars and belts and systems, / Are ye r e a l or are ye not?"--in the process mocking the pretensions of astrology. In general, then Poems by T\io Brothers shows Tennyson as f a i r l y conventional i n r e l i g i o u s and s c i e n t i f i c conceptions before he went up to Cambridge; the p a r a l l e l s to l a t e r poems and ways of thinking, such as the questioning of the deity, the gulf between man and God, do not carry the same weight i n the early poems as they do l a t e r , and generally are so tenuous or hidden by context that they can only be regarded as tangen-t i a l ! , However, an examination of the unpublished work of t h i s period shows that t h i s picture of the young Tennyson i s not complete. An image more suggestive of progressive development than any seen i n the published work occurs i n the "quick-wing'd gnat" passage describing metamorphoses i n the animal kingdom (pupation, sloughing of skin) end comparing them with the state 22 of the soul: " a l l low things range / To higher! but I cannot change."^ What i s described here i s not, of course, evolu-tion; but as an i n d i c a t i o n of some form of progress i n nature i t i s revealing, and shows a type of thinking not at a l l i n evidence i n the s t a t i c world-system of the Poems by Two Bro-thers . Furthermore, the implication of a desired growth of the soul into a purely s p i r i t u a l form ("My earthly s p i r i t . . . l i k e a caddisworm i n stone . . . en eternal prison"), while i n i t s e l f conventional,, foreshadows the l a t e r interest i n evolution on the s p i r i t u a l and moral as well as physical planes. In 1$2$ Tennyson went up to Cambridge. His tutor was W i l -liam Whewell, l a t e r to become famous as a Bridgewater theorist and h i s t o r i a n of science; he was then already known for his work on tides, and during Tennyson's residence he held the chair i n Mineralogy. Although t h i s had been a subject since Shelley's time, a generation e a r l i e r , the interest of the gen-e r a l educated public was just beginning to be aroused by geol-ogy; Oxford, even more than Cambridge, had taken the lead i n 11 the f i e l d during the early 1&*20's. By Tennyson's time there was also a separate department of geology et Cambridge, with Adam Sedgwick holding the chair. Both Whewell end Sedgwick were at T r i n i t y College, where Tennyson resided; his s c i e n t i f i c interests would undoubtedly have been stimulated during his stay. Much has been said about the influence of the Apostles group on Tennyson, but i t has not been noted that the Apostles shared 23 certain ideas and ways of thought with Whewell. A Kantian i n most respects, Whewell d i f f e r e n t i a t e d between theories and facts, or, i n his more technical terminology, between ideas (the mental structures which determine our method of perceiving the world or examining i t ) and sensations (the purely empirical data). He recognized a c e r t a i n f l u i d i t y of c l a s s i f i c a t i o n here: "Theories become Facts, by becoming 12 c e r t a i n and f a m i l i a r " ; s t i l l , he attempted to erect the fundamental theories of a l l the sciences on the foundation of the categories; he wished to establish that the results of s c i e n t i f i c method were necessarily, not contingently, true. Following Kant, he divided the sciences into two groups: those dependent on the ideas of time and space (pure sciences, i . e . mathematics), and those dependent on that of causation (mechanical sciences). Thus some of his basic d i s t i n c t i o n s p a r a l l e l those of the Coleridge-inspired Apostles. The Apostles, properly known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, had been organized by John S t e r l i n g and F. D. Maurice a few years e a r l i e r , when they were undergraduates. Through both of t h e i r founding figures, they had come under the i n f l u -ence of Coleridge's metaphysics, p a r t i c u l a r l y that of the Aids to Reflection. Some of the attitudes, i f not the s p e c i f i c ar-guments and elaborations, of that book exercised a considerable influence over Tennyson, despite his l a t e r disavowals of any interest i n Coleridge's prose; for i t s major theme i s the re-moval of the argument from design from the l i s t of evidences ?4 for God's existence, and i t s replacement by personal convic-t i o n and i n t e r n a l evidence, by "the goings-on i n my own mind."1'4 The a f f i n i t i e s with the structure of argument i n In Memoriam should be obvious. More important for the immediate subject of t h i s study, Coleridge develops a sort of evolutionary the-ory i n the book; but although his d i c t i o n sometimes suggests a temporal process, i t i s more l i k e l y ( especially i n view of his r e j e c t i o n of the idea of the development of man from other n r i -mates) that he understands nature to operate as a continuous chain of being, with possibly one uniform creation at one mo-ment oftime, or perhaps the system of multiple creations that 1 5 was becoming increasingly favoured i n the 16^20's. ' In Aphor-ism XXXVI, he traces a lin e from metal through vegetation to animal, with each stage a n t i c i p a t i n g the next: "most wonderfully . . . doth the muscular l i f e i n the insect . . . imitate and t y p i c a l l y rehearse the adaptive Understanding . . . of man." The analogy holds also with human i n s t i t u t i o n s : "Every state . . . which i s not progressive, i s dead, or retrograde" (Aphor-ism XX). The tenth Aphorism on S p i r i t u a l Religion implies a temporal process: "Nature i s a l i n e i n constant and continuous evolution. I t s beginning i s l o s t i n the super-natural: end for our understanding, therefore, i t must appeer as a continuous l i n e without beginning or end." But, s t r i c t l y speaking, i t i s not a given species but rather the s p i r i t u a l essence of the world which evolves, from God to the f i n a l end, of whatever sort; temporality may be implied, but i s not necessarily intended. The text i s ambiguous, and while such r e f l e c t i o n s m8y heve en-25 couraged Tennyson's thinking on the subject, they do not con-s t i t u t e a p l a i n statement as, say, Erasmus Darwin's writings do. The Apostles were strongly influenced by Coleridge's moral and theological arguments. Tennyson, for example, voted i n t h e i r discussions that an i n t e l l i g i b l e F i r s t Cause could not be deduced from the universe, and that there was a moral p r i n -17 ci p l e beyond general expediency. Hallam, i n his Theodicaea Novissima, which can be taken as indicatives of attitudes cur-rent before i t was read i n 1331 , declares that man cannot d i s -cover God by searching i n the universe, and proposes proofs of God's rela t i o n s h i p to the world based on personal i n t u i t i o n and 1 $ ( i m p l i c i t l y ) a w i l l to believe. In t h i s essay he proposes an i n t e r e s t i n g theory of the nature of sin, according to which the human soul becomes perfect i n i t s struggle against i t , end that consequently s i n must be created s p e c i f i c a l l y f or that 19 purpose by God. Furthermore, i f God i s love, as Hallam takes fo r granted, then God i s incomplete without an object of love, namely Ch r i s t , who by reason of God's love for him becomes an approximation of God. And since men are enjoined to approach God through the love of Christ, there i s e strong implication that through the power of love the i n d i v i d u a l person can be-come analogous to the Incarnate C h r i s t . 2 ^ Tennyson could have found i n his friend's ideas an extension of his already appar-ent interest i n s p i r i t u a l progress. Physical progress as well seems to have been on Tennyson's 26 mind at Cambridge. He propounded the theory that the "devel-opment of the human body" or "the evolution of man" (readings 21 d i f f e r ) could be traced from the "radiated, vermicular, mol-luscous and vertebrate organisms"; a suggestion to which Hal-lam responded, "Do you mean that the human brain i s at f i r s t l i k e a madrepore's, then l i k e a worm's, etc.? but t h i s cannot be for they have no brain." A source for Tennyson's idea i s a pair of a r t i c l e s by Southwood Smith i n the Westminster Re-view for 1323, discussing recent findings i n neurology. Attention has been drawn to the discussion of f e t a l brain de-velopment i n the second a r t i c l e as a source f o r concepts such as that of the "four changes" i n the cancelled stanzas of "The Palace of Art," but this idea cannot have been what Tennyson referred to here; Smith traced the development of the embryo from a f i s h - l i k e stage, with no resemblance noted to d i v e r t i c u -23 late forms at a l l . Killham speculates that "he had somehow come to relate the discovery that the human brain seemed to de-velop through stages analogous to the permanent form i n fishes, r e p t i l e s and birds before reaching the recognizably human form, to the very much more s t a r t l i n g idea that the human brain had . . . evolved"; ^ but no such daring lean of thought was neces-sary for Tennyson, since the a r t i c l e s p e c i f i c a l l y made the anal-25 ogy between radiate ganglia and the human brain, and discussed the increasingly complex brains of various animals i n a semi-progressive sequence. There was ample material for a potential evolutionist to use i n the a r t i c l e ; e l l that was r e a l l y missing 27 was the notion of a temporal process or of a graduated series of concrete l i n k s . Among the Apostles, then, Tennyson was exposed not only to a form of r e l i g i o u s and p o l i t i c a l radicalism, but to the beginnings of a theory of evolution. I t may have been the p r e v a i l i n g assumption of Tennyson as well as of most evolutionists at the time, including Coleridge, that the process took place " i n the mind of God" or i n nature as an antecedent essence rather than i n time, that l i v i n g things had been created (or had appeared) showing evidence of a progressive ordering or hierarchy even though t h e i r develop-ment had not been sequential; but the phrase "at f i r s t " i n Hallam's reply, quoted above, may suggest that some form of temporal development had at least been hypothesized. At any rate, Tennyson would have become extremely f a m i l i a r with the idea of continuous progress as a fact of nature as well as, i n Coleridge's scheme, a moral good. The effect of these influences on Tennyson's thought may be shown by comparing one of his Cambridge poems with a re-lated e a r l i e r one. In 1&29, urged by his father, Tennyson won the Chancellor's Gold Prize with a poem on the assigned topic, Timbuctoo. The poem was noted for i t s "obscurity": " I f such an exercise had been sent up at Oxford, the author would h 8 v e had a better chance of being rusticated, with the view of his passing a few months at a Lunatic Asylum, than of obtaining the p r i z e . " ^ ^ To aid his process of composition, Tennyson had sent home for an old poem of his, "Armageddon," on which he had worked at about the age of f i f t e e n . He i n -corporated a large amount of material from the e a r l i e r poem into the l a t e r , including the central v i s i o n , a section of about 130 l i n e s . 2 ^ "Armageddon" i s largely self-explanatory, with the speaker beigg shown a v i s i o n of the f i n a l battle f o r the universe. "Timbuctoo," on the other hand, seems at f i r s t to have l i t t l e to do with i t s avowed subject, although the connection be-comes clear during the v i s i o n . The speaker laments the loss of the great motivating fantasies of the past, A t l a n t i s and the I s l e s of the Blessed, and wonders whether A f r i c a contains anything comparable. He i s then v i s i t e d by an angel who shows him a v i s i o n of a marvellous c i t y , only to lament that d i s -covery w i l l soon cause i t to shrink to a c o l l e c t i o n of huts. The angel i s i d e n t i f i e d as the s p i r i t of Fable. Both poems use the f a m i l i a r theme of the p l u r a l i t y of worlds. During his v i s i o n , the speaker sees "The Moon's white c i t i e s , " and hears the "hum of men / Or other things t a l k i n g i n unknown tongues, / And notes of busy L i f e i n distant worlds" (11. 99-111); "Timbuctoo" adds a description of the types of s t a r s . In the e a r l i e r work the significance of t h i s passage i s obvious: the entire universe i s coming to Judgment. In the l a t e r work, the other worlds are most probably, l i k e the imaginary c i t i e s and islands, b e a u t i f u l fantasies. His approach seems more s c e p t i c a l than when he was younger. Some of the omitted material from "Armageddon" i s s i g n i f i -cant f o r Tennyson's interest i n natural history. The d e v i l s 29 are described as mixing the q u a l i t i e s of man and beast; i n one of the manuscripts, the d e v i l s ' pavilions contain "Mam-moth and Mastodonte." S i m i l a r i t y between man and lower animals i s reserved for the d e v i l s ' side; the angel a s s i s t s the speaker i n a temporary process of s p i r i t u a l development, removing from his soul the f e t t e r s of "bond of clay" and " d u l l mortality" ( I I . 1J4-5). The v i s i o n i t s e l f i s central to both poems. In "Armaged-don" the speaker's soul grows "godlike" and stands on the "outward verge" of "God's omniscience"; he could have wor-shipped his own soul. The angel praises "Everlasting God, and thou not less / The Everlasting Man" and i d e n t i f i e s the soul's l i f e with God's, as well as hinting at reincarnation ("former wanderings i n other shapes"). In "Timbuctoo" the r a d i c a l l y unorthodox v i s i o n i s toned down; the soul merely grows "mighty" 8 n d stands on the "outward verge" of " f u l l beatitude." There i s no mention of worshipping one's own soul, and no "Everlasting Man." The probable reason for t h i s i s the extremely personal nature of the e a r l i e r poem. Tennyson was subject to a sort of trance state which he could produce by repealing his name; while under i t s influence, his i n d i v i d u a l i t y seemed to d i s -solve, and a conviction of immortality took over; i t was "no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder, asso-2 9 ciated with absolute clearness of mind." The visionary state i n "Armageddon" seems to be a good description of the 30 f e e l i n g , so that i n the writing of "Timbuctoo," the person-a l c h a r a c t e r i s t i c was suppressed, and the v i s i o n was used for an arbit r a r y purpose rather than a personal statement. Tennyson would have found among the Apostles a va l i d a t i o n of his mystic states, since, as a resu l t of t h e i r adherence to Coleridge, they were sympathetic to in t e r n a l evidence for God. This concept was associated with the I d e a l i s t notion of phenomenal r e a l i t y . "The world i s one greet thought, and I am thinking i t , " announced John Kemble, and a similar idea can be found i n one of Tennyson's unpublished poems of t h i s period, "The I d e a l i s t , " i n which "the s p i r i t of a man" creates " a l l I hear and see," weaving the universe. A l l earthly things are attributes or creations of the soul, whose dwelling place i s E t e r n i t y ; only God and other i n d i v i d u a l souls are external to i t . This poem undoubtedly exaggerates the basic conception dramatically, but the attitude i s e v i -dent i n "Armageddon" and many of the l a t e r works: i n t e r n a l r e a l i t y i s the standpoint from which to judge the world; the evidence of the mind, not of nature, i s conclusive for e t h i -c a l and r e l i g i o u s questions. The mystic trance, combined with the reasoning of the Apostles and t h e i r guiding s p i r i t Coleridge, can already be seen to provide the basis for Ten-nyson's interpretetion of the world. CHAPTER THREE TENNYSON'S POEMS OF THE 1830'S AND THEIR ANALOGUES Evolutionary material i s gradually introduced into Tenny-son's poetry during the 1#30's. "The Palace of Art" and "The Two Voices" are the key poems i n t h i s respect, and the following discussion w i l l focus primarily on them, while also examining other poems f o r t h e i r use of s c i e n t i f i c con-cepts, and for t h e i r revelation of the complex of r e l i g i o u s and philosophical ideas that determined the mature form of Tennyson's evolutionary thought. An analogous use of evolu-tionary material w i l l be explored i n Browning's Paracelsus, as well as i n some la t e r , possibly derivative works by other authors. Arthur Hallam's 1331 review of Tennyson's poems provides an important i n d i c a t i o n of the ways i n which Tennyson organ-ized the s c i e n t i f i c concepts i n his work. Hallam praises Tennyson for two p a r t i c u l a r l y important reasons: "his power of embodying himself i n i d e a l characters or rather moods of character" and "his v i v i d , picturesque delineation of objects, and the peculiar s k i l l with which he holds a l l of them fused, to borrow a metaphor from science, i n a medium of strong emo-t i o n . " ' The f i r s t of these, while suggesting i n part 8 per-sonal quality of the poet rather than of the verse, indicates 32 the dramatic element i n Tennyson's poems; statements i n the poems are not necessarily to be taken as embodying the poet's own attitudes. The second stresses mood end emotion as opposed to l o g i c a l reasoning; Hallam i s advo-ceting a poetry of i n d i r e c t statement, es opposed to a didacticism such as Wordsworth's, whose ^ork i s frequently " f a l s e es poetry" though "good as philosophy." In t h i s recommended poetry, "elevated habits of thought" can only be "implied," not expressed; ideas are communicated only i n terms of images. "These men had no need to seek; they l i v e d i n a world of images; for the most important and ex-tensive portion of t h e i r l i f e consisted i n those emotions o which are immediately conversant with sensation." * On the basis of t h i s essay, then, i t i s safe to predict that Tennyson's early poems would be concerned not with d i r e c t , didactic statement, but with the use of concepts as analogies to mental or emotional conditions. This i s not to say, however, that the ideas presented i n the poems ere unimportant. Hallam and the other Apostles pieced s p e c i e l emphesis on the role of the poet as seer, es cen be seen i n t h i s quotetion from F. D. Maurice: "The mind of a poet of the highest order i s the most perfect that can belong to man. . . . The poet i s the great interpreter of nature's mysteries, not by nerrowing them into the grasp of the under-standing, but by connecting each of them with the f e e l i n g which changes doubt to f a i t h . . . . He cannot be untrue, for 33 i t i s his high c a l l i n g to interpret those universal truths 3 which exist on earth only i n the forms of his creation." The Platonism, however diluted, of t h i s statement i s also evident i n some of Tennyson's poems, such as "The Poet" and "The Poet's Mind," which rel y on images drawn from organic nature to suggest the poet's grasp of truth. In the former poem, the poet's seeds (poems) 8re "Like to the mother plant i n semblance"; the mother plant i s not precisely defined, but i s connected by a series of i n t e r l o c k i n g images to the poet's thoughts and to truth, which are thus i d e n t i f i e d . This poem further uses a complicated system of imagery to describe the action of the imagination. The poet's thought either produces or comprises "viewless arrows" which simul-taneously operate on three levels of meaning: f i r s t , they suggest love—Cupid's arrows; second, they introduce a mar-t i a l significance which reappears l a t e r i n the poem i n the form of Wisdom shaking the world; t h i r d , they carry en organic significance, since they are compared with "the arrow-seeds of the f i e l d flower" which propagate new plants. A l l these metaphors are drawn together i n the image of the poem spread-ing "The winged shafts of truth." This poem, i n addition to demonstrating the manner i n which organic—and by extension s c i e n t i f i c — i m a g e s function' i n Tennyson's early poetry, also exemplifies the notion of the poet's unique r e l a t i o n to truth. Two of the other poems i n the 1330 volume add further insights on t h i s subject. "A 34 Character" i s a s a t i r i c a l sketch of the f a l s e poe%, whose philosophical pronouncements are contrasted with his narrow-ness of understanding: . . . he said, 'The wanderings Of t h i s most i n t r i c a t e Universe Teach me the nothingness of things.' Yet could not a l l creation pierce Beyond the bottom of his eye. The f a l s e poet i s distinguished from other men not by inher-ent differences but by his own pride: "And stood aloof from other minds / In impotence of fancied power." "The Mystic," on the other hand, offers a description of true i n t e l l e c t u a l power. This man i s separated from others by his nature: f t"he was not one ofyye." Subject to states re-sembling Tennyson's, " l y i n g broad awake, and yet / Remaining from the body," the mystic comprehends i n his mind the Platon-i c Ideas of a l l creation, "The imperishable presences serene"; the only stated l i m i t to his understanding i s the l a s t c i r c l e , which "Investeth and ingirds a l l other l i v e s " — e n d on the other side of which i s "an ether of black blue," suggesting the Ptolemaic primum mobile, beyond the l i m i t s of the physical universe. His perception i s equally extensive i n time; the implication of the l i n e s describing "Time flowing i n the mid-dle of the night, /And a l l things creeping to a day of doom" i s that he can foresee the day of Judgment. These poems of f e r a consistent summary of the role of the poet. He perceives and expresses the truths of tthe^mniverse, becoming i n his role of creator anelogous to God. The poet's 35 mind i s "holy ground" ("The Poet's Mind"). The analogy be-tween God and the creative imagination was of course neither new nor o r i g i n a l , but had received a new impetus from Shel-ley's "Defense of Poetry" and Coleridge's concept of the secondary imagination; i t became a means of saving the the-ory of values from the subjectivism opened up by Kant, and i n t h i s sense i t was soon taken up by C a r l y l e , i n his de-s c r i p t i o n of the divine i n s p i r a t i o n operating i n man.4- In Tennyson's work the concept does not develop f u l l y a l l these various implications, but the basic idea i s s t i l l present i n the early poems. This fact i s important because i t has been suggested that Tennyson conceived of evolution by analogy with the action of the creative imagination.^ But by 1#32 there was already an apparent s h i f t i n his idea of the poet's function, and i t i s i n "The Palace of Art," the most e x p l i c i t representation of t h i s s h i f t , that the f i r s t substantial references to evo-lutionary theories occur i n Tennyson's verse. "The Palace of Art" was s p e c i f i c a l l y announced as an allegory i n the dedicatory poem attached to i t , and was presumably inspired by Richard Chevenix Trench's words, "Tennyson, we cannot l i v e i n A r t."^ As many c r i t i c s have argued, Tennyson was i n funda-mental agreement with Trench on t h i s matter; the poems from the 1330 volume already discussed show en important c o n f l i c t between the pleasures of aesthetic i s o l a t i o n and a more s e r i -ous commitment to truth. "The Palece of Art" deals with the 36 problems faced by en exclusive adherence to the aesthetic claims of a private a r t . The soul i s given a " l o r d l y pleasure-house" by the poet-speaker. Most of the poem describes the contents of the palace, i n which each of the rooms and corridors has a special symbolic decor, altogether comprising a wide, though purposely se l e c t i v e , range of imaginetive constructions. The problem with t h i s private world i s that the soul at-tempts to be s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t . The decorations of the palace, because they are a substitute for the r e e l world, are en i n -adequete support for the imagination; estranged from r e a l i t y , the soul must su f f e r . Both the i s o l a t i o n and the attempt to become l i k e God prec i p i t a t e the c r i s i s of the l a s t eighty l i n e s , as a r e s u l t of which the soul leaves the pelece to purge her g u i l t i n the world outside. The pelece i s not re-pudieted, simply l e f t u n t i l the soul i s worthy to return to i t , with others; the poem r e f l e c t s the need f o r poetry to exercise e moral or s o c i a l consciousness. I t i s noteworthy that an astronomicel image i s used to describe the soul during her period of suffering; she resembles e star that stands elone instead of moving i n accordance with "one fixed law" (1. 256). In the published text of the poem, there are, with the ex-ception just noted, no s p e c i f i c a l l y s c i e n t i f i c images—a feet which can be interpreted as another demonstration of the i n -adequacy of the soul's private world; she i s impervious to the discoveries of science: " F u l l o f t the r i d d l e of the painful 37 earth / Flashed through her as she sat alone" ( 1 1 . 2 1 3 - 1 4 ) , without responding. In a footnote to the 1332 volume, how-ever, Tennyson explained that i f the poem had not been too long already, he would have added a set of l i n e s , which he then reproduced. These l i n e s , describing an observatory tower where the soul goes to watch the heavens, would have served to emphasize the soul's s u p e r f i c i a l attitude toward science, since such astronomy would not have brought her any closer to the r e a l world; i n building the palace, the poet-speaker had mimicked heaven with "hollowed moons of gems" (1. 133). Interestingly, one of Tennyson's notebooks contains a de-leted passage (reproduced by Ricks i n a footnote to 11. 136-139) which, i f i t had been included, would have made the soul seem more serious-minded than she appears i n the revised and published version. In these l i n e s , the soul sees the "secret e n t i t i e s of Fa i t h " "shadowed" i n the form of abstractions that have not yet entered the phenomenal world: "But always waiting i n a dusky place / To clothe themselves i n creeds." The next stanza describes various types of philosophy, which are implied to be only part-truths by the following sequence of geological and b i o l o g i c a l observations: Yet she S8W the Earth l a i d open. Furthermore How the strong Ages had t h e i r w i l l , A range of Giants breaking down the shore And heaving up the h i l l . And likewise every l i f e that Nature made, What yet i s l e f t and what i s gone To where the classes vanish, shade by shade, L i f e and h a l f - l i f e , to none. 38* "Strong Ages" and "a range of Giants" ere not very s p e c i f i c phrases; i t i s d i f f i c u l t to determine whether gradual or catastrophic change i s implied, or whether, more l i k e l y , the lenguage was de l i b e r a t e l y made capable of sustaining either i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . I f the astronomicel pessege, reproduced i n the footnote i n the 18*32 volume, had d i r e c t l y followed from these l i n e s , the observation of the heavens would have seemed more serious than when detached from t h e i r o r i g i n a l context. Probably the reason thet Tennyson deleted the passage i s thet i t tended to weaken the impression of s u p e r f i c i a l i t y and erro-gence on the pert of the soul. The presence of the nebular hypothesis i n the footnoted passage--"Regions of l u c i d matter taking forms"—indicates a concern with important end contro-v e r s i a l s c i e n t i f i c issues, since t h i s hypothesis was used by Chambers and others to provide an analogy for b i o l o g i c a l evo-l u t i o n , and was f o r a long time before thet the most prominent evolutionary theory i n general discussions. A s i m i l a r process of r e v i s i o n C 8 n be observed elsewhere i n the poem. In the 16*32 edition, a passage followed l i n e 128*, but was deleted i n the 18*42 revised version. The passage c u l -minated i n e description of orgenic development: 'From chenge to chenge four times within the womb The brein i s moulded,' she began, 'So through a l l phases of a l l thought I come Into the perfect man.' Derived from embryology, and to 8 lerge extent borrowed from Southwood Smith's a r t i c l e i n the Westminster Review for 18*?8*,^ 39 they are designed to show the b 8 s i s of the soul's miscon-ceived pride. The four changes r e f e r to the recently ob-served phenomenon of embryonic rec a p i t u l a t i o n , i n which v e s t i g i a l t r a i t s of previous evolutionary stages can be observed i n the embryo at d i f f e r e n t stages of i t s develop-10 ment, for example, g i l l s and the v e s t i g i a l t a i l . The f i r s t l i n e of the stanza was l a t e r revised to "From shape to shape at f i r s t within the wombf" probably r e f l e c t i n g 11 Tennyson's wider reading, which would have shown him that the process cannot be divided into four neat stages, but that the v e s t i g i a l t r a i t s overlap sequentially and further-more do not a f f e c t the entire body structure. The changes i n the brain, although less easy to observe t h 8 n the others, probably came to Tennyson's attention f i r s t , through the Westminster a r t i c l e ; but even there the process of develop-ment i s not d i v i s i b l e into s p e c i f i c stages analogous to 1"? e a r l i e r or "lower" life-forms. Using t h i s concept as an analogy for the growth of the human mind, the soul launches into self-adulation: ' A l l nature widens upward: evermore The simpler essence lower l i e s . More complex i s more perfect, owning more Discourse, more widely wise.' 1 ^ Although some commentators have misinterpreted these l i n e s , ^ the concept expressed i s not d i f f i c u l t to explain. Nature i s conceived of as an inverted pyramid, widening out at the top, with the simpler forms et the bottom and the more complex, with the soul presumably among them, toward the upper reaches. 40 In short, the soul i s using the developmental image as an analogy to her own increase i n knowledge. I f " A l l nature" refers to the entire system of l i v i n g things, then the image i s a genuinely evolutionary one; but i f i t merely refers to each i n d i v i d u a l species, i t i s not necessarily so. Since the l i n k between the embryological image and. the t o t a l i t y of nature i s unspecified, the passage remains am-biguous. The soul's conclusion i s that she i s uniquely f i t t e d for detachment, being above a l l things as a re s u l t of the process of development. Her f i n a l statement i n t h i s passage, "I dwell apart, holding no forms of creeds, / But contemplating a l l , " constitutes the fundamental act of pride. A f t e r the 18*5© r e v i s i o n , the l i n e was transferred to another part of the poem ( 1 . 2 1 1 ) , without any preceding argument to estab-l i s h a r a t i o n a l context, and altered to: "I s i t as God hold-ing no form of creed, / But contemplating a l l . " The soul i s thus made more arrogant than i n the e a r l i e r version. The e f f e c t of the rev i s i o n , then, was to increase the im-pression of the soul's s u p e r f i c i a l i t y and i s o l a t i o n from r e a l -i t y by removing a passage which was becoming too much a part of Tennyson's own thought to be ascribed to the soul. The further development of t h i s idea can be seen i n "The Two Voi-s ;.. Kces," which was begun before the death of Hallam, although completed afterward and not published u n t i l 16*42, The poem i s a dialogue between a poten t i a l suicide and a " s t i l l small 41 voice" that tempts him on and destroys his r a t i o n a l i z a -tions i n favour of l i f e ; a second voice enters 8fter the decision for l i f e has been made. As a poem about r e l i g i o u s doubt and f a i t h , i t i s a pro-found advance from the e a r l i e r "Supposed Confessions." In that work, the doubts a f f l i c t i n g the speaker were l e f t vague, being expressed i n terms of separation from God and i n a b i l -i t y to believe. The speaker contrasts his youthful b e l i e f s with his older disillusionment; when young, he had desired to "look into the laws / Of l i f e and death . . . and ana-lyse / Our double nature, and compare / A l l creeds" (11. 172-76), while now he i s worried that "everywhere / Some must clasp Idols." The 15*30 edi t i o n also had some li n e s , deleted l a t e r , which expressed the hope of immortality i n interes t i n g terms: To stand beside a grave, and see The red small atoms wherewith we Are b u i l t , and smile i n calm, and S8y— 'These l i t t l e motes and grains s h a l l be Clothed on with immortality.' These atoms appear to be blood corpuscles, and the immortal-i t y described i s b a s i c a l l y an elaboration of the t r a d i t i o n a l "dust to dust?" The context makes i t clear that the speaker i s merely wishing that he could f e e l thatsfchis type of future i s hopeful; he does not r e a l i z e , or has lo s t his b e l i e f in, the immortality of the in d i v i d u a l soul. "The Two Voices" attempts a resolution of the problem of the vslue of l i f e . The problem must be solved e n t i r e l y on 42 the basis of i n t e r n a l evidence ( f 8 i t h ) , without external interference. The ending has been misinterpreted as im-plying that the speaker has to r e l y on the sight of the people going to church to restore his f a i t h , but actually the scene outside the window i s merely a coda, a confirma-t i o n . The speaker wins his case when he decides f o r "More l i f e , and f u l l e r " (1. 3 9 9 ) , and the scene outside and the "hidden hope" offered by the second voice come as a f u l f i l -ment of his wish. Uheistruggle takes place inside the man. The voice of despair frequently makes use of images derived from organic nature, such as the metamorphosis of the dragonfly (11. 3-15) and the emergence of the flower from the bud. These images t e l l against the speaker by degrading his status as a unique creation and suggesting that his ideals are merely adaptational mechanisms, de-signed to motivate him into staying a l i v e into maturity. The voice also uses images of generalized developments "Nor art thou nearer to the l i g h t , / Because the scale i s i n f i -n i t e " t i l l . 92-3) . This image i s not i n the f u l l e s t sense evolutionary, because Tennyson had not by t h i s time experi-mented with the use of organic metaphors to describe the development of society, a theme he was to explore i n many poems of the 1 8 5 0's. Again, the description, "owning but a l i t t l e more / Than beasts . . . C a l l i n g t h y s e l f a l i t t l e lower / Than angels" (11. 1 9 6 - 9 9 ) , being merely a j o i n i n g of two B i b l i c a l images, makes no inherent connection between men and other animals. 43 The most int e r e s t i n g aspect of the poem, f o r the pur-poses of t h i s discussion, i s the number of alternative, or contradictory, world-systems the speaker uses; the com-bination of cosmological speculation and e t h i c a l ^ or ex-i s t e n t i a l , argument makes i t a b r i e f model for In Memoriam. The speaker begins with a f a i r l y conventional l i b e r a l cos-mos: "Young Nature through f i v e cycles ran, / And i n the sixth she moulded man" ( 1 1 . 17-13). The idea that the six days were act u a l l y s i x epochs W8S f a i r l y standard i n the 1830's;"'^ the i d e n t i f i c a t i o n of nature and God was also by t h i s time b a s i c a l l y orthodox. A more s t a r t l i n g notion, but one that Tennyson had used before, i s that of the plur-a l i t y of worlds, as i n "his peers / In yonder hundred m i l -l i o n spheres" ( 1 1 . 2 9 - 3 0 ) , and "Some yearning toward the 1 5 lamps of night" ( 1 . 3 6 3 ) . A more ambiguous reference i s to the "Intelligences f a i r " which range above the human state, mentioned i n the cancelled passage following 1. 3 4 9 ; they could be s p i r i t s , or the inhabitants of other planets, or perhaps both, considering Tennyson's early use of the idea of other worlds as habitations of the dead. A t h i r d world-view follows from the discussion of i n d i -v i d u a l i t y e a r l i e r i n the poem. In response to the voice's doubt about the value of the i n d i v i d u a l i n comparison to the species ( 1 1 . 3 1 - 3 3 ) , the speaker asserts that absolute unique-ness confers importance upon the i n d i v i d u a l l i f e . Since t h i s argument does not further his cause, he l a t e r v i r t u a l l y re-44 verses i t , arguing that perhaps no l i f e i s merely i n d i v i d u a l , but that a l l l i v e s are somehow linked (11. 346-4#). This view does not imply a developmental linkage to other species, although i t does r e c a l l an eighteenth-cantury concent of the continual development of souls, found i n the poetry of James 16 Thomson. Instead, i t posits a theory of reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, i n which one i s reborn a f t e r forgetting the present l i f e (11. 352-54). The idea was un-doubtedly due i n some degree to the "Intimations" Ode, and can be found t e n t a t i v e l y stated elsewhere i n Tennyson's early poems. "Recollections of the Arabian Nights?'! f o r example, opens with the narrator carried back along "The forward-flowing tide of time" and becoming a "True Mussulman," which though primarily an elaborate description of a dream state , suggests by i t s d i c t i o n a remembrance of a former l i f e . "The Day-Dream," again, uses a simile involving " s p i r i t s folded i n the womb," dimly perceiving the outside world. But the un-ambiguous elaboration of the idea.comes only i n "The Two Voices." The speaker suggests two alternatives: he may have "lapsed from nobler place," or he may have arisen "throggh lower l i v e s . " This l a s t p o s s i b i l i t y i s seized on as providing hope of s p i r i t u a l progress. A l l of these alternative world-views are proposed by the speaker merely es hypotheses which may aff i r m the value of existence. The resolution of the poem comes about, not be-cause any one of them i s accepted as true, but because, by 45 means of his manipulation of them, the speaker i s led to his f i n a l affirmation of l i f e . They are included i n the poem, not as Tennyson's statements about the world, but as the stages whereby the speaker recovers his f a i t h . S c i e n t i f i c material, then, i s introduced into Tennyson's early poetry i n the form of analogical imagery, r e i n f o r c i n g the main currents of thought rather than providing new ones i n t h e i r own r i g h t . A contrasting use can be found i n Browning's Paracelsus, published i n 1335, which reaches i t s climax i n a d i r e c t and e x p l i c i t statement of evolutionary development. The f i v e acts represent f i v e stages of Paracelsus' l i f e . He i s f i r s t seen "aspiring," ;then i r o n i c a l l y " a t t a i n i n g , " as he discovers that his way of l i f e thus f a r has been i n -complete. His attainment consists of the r e a l i z a t i o n of his defects, which he w i l l presumably remedy; but instead he i s next seen predicting his own downfall, which soon follows. His f i n a l attainment comes only on the point of death, when he has a v i s i o n of the development of the vrorld, which, by emphasizing man's role as a l i n k i n a long progressive series, reconciles him to his own f a i l u r e s . Paracelsus' o r i g i n a l wish—"Make no more giants, God, / But elevate the race et once!" ( I . 779-30)—is f u l f i l l e d by the r e a l i z a t i o n that e l l nature i s developing towerd Godheed by slow stages. The closing v i s i o n i s p a r a l l e l e d by the poet Aprile's de-46 s c r i p t i o n of his i d e a l i n the second part of the poem ( I I . 420-46*7). In an e x p l i c i t comparison between the poet 8 n d God, who, as the perfect poet, " i n his person acts his own creations," A p r i l e describes the sequence i n which he would create: f i r s t , "The forms of earth," second, an inhabitable world ("Woods, valleys, rocks and pl a i n s " ) , t h i r d , speech ("no thought which ever s t i r r e d / A human breast should be untold"), and f i n a l l y , music ("to perfect and consummate a l l " ) . The precision of the analogy becomes apparent at the end of the poem, when Paracelsus r e a l i z e s that t h i s i s i n fact God's own sequence of creation. Since, shortly before the v i s i o n , Paracelsus' fr i e n d Festus has made a comparison between the s c i e n t i s t ' s thoughts and "subterraneous f i r e " (V. 395), i t i s clear that the evolution of the world i s presented 8s analogous to the de-velopment of the soul. The evolutionary sequence i s as f o l -lows: f i r s t volcanic a c t i v i t y — " T h e c e n t r e - f i r e heaves un-derneath the earth, / And the earth changes l i k e a human face" (V. 6 5 3 - 5 4 )—and other forms of geologic change, rep-resented by the "wroth sea's waves"; then the emergence of l i f e . Then a l l i s s t i l l ; earth i s a wintry clod; But spring-wind, l i k e a dancing psaltress, passes Over i t s breast to waken i t , rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks . . . (V. 665-63) Various animals are described i n a progressive order: i n -sects, birds, mammals, and f i n a l l y man, "the consummation of 47 t h i s scheme." This process i s more than simply a r e c i t a l of the creation myth of Genesis. In an almost d e i s t i c fashion, once God has i n i t i a t e d the process, he merely "tastes a pleasure" i n each successive stage; the method of development i s l e f t vague, and i s nowhere stated to be continually under God's direct management. I t i s , however, a recapitulatory process; man's "at t r i b u t e s had here and there / Been scattered o'er the v i s i b l e world before, / Asking to be combined" (V. 6 3 5 - 3 7 ) . Each stage anticipates the next, and man, although the highest stage i n creation so f a r , shows "August anticipations, symbols, types" (V. 775) of the higher stage to come; " i n completed man begins anew / A tendency to God." C h r i s t may have been the per-fect man, but the process w i l l continue even afte r a l l men reach perfection, when '!begins, man's general infancy." Progress i s defined as the law of l i f e ; "these things tend s t i l l upward" (V. 742), and the mode of progress i s shown as the progressive incarnation of God i n l i v i n g things, with man as the closest approximation so f a r . In a l e t t e r to F u r n i v a l l , Browning held up Paracelsus as con-taining, i n i t s progressive development "from senseless mat-17 ter to organized'," a l l that had been proven i n Darwinism. "At the back," he emphasizes, i s s t i l l the hand that s t a r t s the b a l l r o l l i n g ; but the process seems to operate without further outside interference. The h i s t o r i c a l Paracelsus, whom Browning claimed to be portraying accurately, described the formation of the world i n terms of a chemical reaction. Progressive separations of the prime materials from each other brought about the d i f f e r e n t stages through which creation passed. Although extremely controversial i n the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, t h i s concept was, by Browning's time, somewhat out of date, because of i t s reliance on alchemical ideas such as the quadrature of the elements, which were gradually being abandoned. For t h i s reason, Browning l e f t the pre-cise mechanism unexplained,, and attributed i t to a general law of progress, rather then to s p e c i f i c acts of God. Such evolutionary speculation i s not confined to Tenny-son and Browning, however, even though they make use of i t i n a much more highly developed form than t h e i r contemporary poets. P h i l i p James Beiley, for exemple, i n his cosmologicel dreme Festus, published i n 1 8 3 9 , makes use of Cuvier's cate-str'ophism, end of e progressive sequence of animal l i f e (pp. 1 3 0 - 1 3 1 ) , though without any implication of transmutation of species; the newer, more controversial estronomical ideas, such as the destruction of worlds—"Systems arise / 0JF a world dies / Each constant hour i n a i r " — c o n f l i c t with the 19 orderly, b a s i c e l l y eighteenth-century universe he presents. He also adopts the organic metaphor fo r cosmic destruction: "as the f r u i t / Matures, and world by world drops mellowed of f / The wrinkling stalk of Time" (p. 27). In t h i s he was followed by John Stanyan Bigg, who described the universe as 4 9 growing from "seedlings into suns; from suns to systems," and refers'ifio "embryotic suns and nebulae" which are the product of "the great thought / That rayed out into con-70 s t e l l a t e d worlds." These authors demonstrate the i n -creasing f a m i l i a r i t y with which evolutionary concepts came to be treated during the middle of the nineteenth century, but do not make use of them i n p o e t i c a l l y impor-tant ways, as Browning and Tennyson do; t h e i r imagery generally serves a simply i l l u s t r a t i v e function, becoming an accessory to the thought, rather than i t s prime vehicle. Browning, i t has been seen, thought of evolutionary de-velopment 8S the progressive incarnation of God i n the world. No such e x p l i c i t concept has yet been seen i n the early poems of Tennyson, however; and the new poems pub-lished i n 1842 generally use images drawn from the sciences either for witticism, f o r i l l u s t r a t i v e examples i n charac-ter sketches, or i n order to suggest the importance of s c i -ence i n modern l i f e . The few exceptions to t h i s tendency reveal an e n t i r e l y d i f f e r e n t attitude toward evolutionary progress from Browning's. Ex t i n c t i o n of species and i t s polar opposite, progressive development, are drawn upon f o r t h e i r s o c i a l and psychologi-c a l applications. "Nature brings not back the Mastodon," says H a l l i n "The Epic," explaining why he has destroyed his epic poem, 8nd the unpublished "New Timon, and the Poets, Part 11^ '" dating from the same general period, forecasts In 50 Memoriam and the "Epilogue" to "The Charge of the Heavy-Brigade" i n i t s emphasis on the p o s s i b i l i t y of human ex-t i n c t i o n : This London once was middle sea, Those h i l l s were plains within the past, They w i l l be plains again—and we, Poor de v i l s , babble, we s h a l l l a s t . "Love thou thy land," on the other hand, makes an analogy between p o l i t i c a l freedom and the development of the body: "For Nature also, . . . devising long, / Through many agents making strong, / Matures the i n d i v i d u a l form." The tension between progress and extinction i s f e l t i n "Morte d'Arthur," where Arthur's l a s t words imply the pos-s i b i l i t y of progression despite, or because of, the de-st r u c t i o n of Camelot. "The old order changeth, y i e l d i n g place to new, / And God f u l f i l s himself i n many ways, / Lest one good custom should corrupt the world'-';? (11. 240-4?). "The V i s i o n of Sin" presents an analogous s i t u a t i o n . The poem has traced the decline, physical as well as moral, of a sinner; at the end the symbolic landscape of section 3, which showed God's rose of dawn being ignored, i s changed to a scene of decay: "Below were men and horses pierced with worms, / And slowly quickening into lower forms." The "lower forms" r e c a l l the "lower l i v e s " of "The Two Voices," and. 21 suggest a reversal of the developmental process. At t h i s stage, God appears to have withdrawn from the physical world, and the answer to the question, "Is there any hope?" i s " i n a tongue no man could understand." More than the pli g h t of 51 a single man i s implied; the speakers i n the l a s t stanza, who are not stated to have been corrupted by s i n themselves, f i n d God's answer incomprehensible. Hallam Tennyson was right i n suggesting that the whole human race i s involved; the problem of s i n assumes cosmic proportions. The examination of these early poems has shown the gradual introduction of evolutionary ideas and images into Tennyson's poetry, but none of the published works up to t h i s point o f f e r any unambiguous statements on the subject. The psychological attitude, however, can be more precisely observed. An early unpublished poem, "Youth" (16*33), i n d i -cates an uncertainty over the choice of a course of l i f e ; one set of voices speaks of hov; " a l l things become the pest," advoceting self-absorption i n an aesthetic world based on memory, while a "sharper voice" c a l l s th© speaker on to an uncertain goal. "Confused, and ceasing from my quest, / I l o i t e r e d i n the middle wey . . . the present." For a while he contemplates the world: Now i d l y i n my netel bowers, Unvext by doubts I cennot solve, I s i t emong the scentless flowers And see and hear the world revolve: but the course of indifference cannot be held f o r very long, and soon, inspired by a sense thet something i s happening, he comes upon e resolving v i s i o n of godlike figures on the mounteins. The process i s s i m i l a r to the pattern of Sartor Resartus, with the "middle way" corresponding to the "centre of indifference"; lack of commitment to an i n t e l l e c t u a l oosi-52 t i o n i s portrayed 8s at best a temporary v a c i l l a t i o n , at worst a betrayal of obligation. Whatever the immediate implications of the poem i n 18*33, Tennyson's development was to take the form of an increasing commitment to facing and understanding the r e a l i t i e s of the world. "The Poet's Sons," a t a i l p i e c e to the 18*42 volumes, shows t h i s commit-ment quite c l e a r l y : the poet sings "of what the world w i l l be / When the years have died away"; his theme i s at once the future, and the underlying r e a l i t i e s of the world. CHAPTER FOUR IN MEMORIAM; THE COMPOSITION OF THE POEM C r i t i c a l opinion has been divided on the question of the nature and appropriateness of the "natural theology" of In Memoriam A.H.H. Tennyson's own recorded statements empha-size at one time the personal, elegiac aspects and at an-other the more impersonal philosophical ones. A large num-ber of his contemporaries responded favourably to the poem's q u a l i t i e s of f a i t h , and even to i t s evolutionary specula-ti o n s . Romanes praised Tennyson as a forerunner of Darwin, and s c i e n t i s t s such as Owen and Herschel "regarded him as a champion of Science"; 1 Henry Sidgwick regarded his b e l i e f that "humanity w i l l not and cannot acquiesce i n a godless world" as a successful response to the problems nosed by C a r l y l e . On the other hand, most modern c r i t i c s have been dubious about the success of Tennyson's cosmological thought. The most famous comment i s T. S. E l i o t ' s , that " I t s [ j n Me^ e ffi'OJciam'sj, f a i t h i s a poor thing, but i t s doubt i s a very intense experience,"-^ a judgment that has been followed by a large number of c r i t i c s , including Christopher Ricks, who characterizes Tennyson's darkest poems as his most profound.**" Even on the more pertinent question of what b e l i e f s the poem actually shows, opinions are divided: George Potter and Graham 54 Hough argue that the evolutionary concept that seems appar-ent i n some sections of the poem i s r e a l l y ^ust a develop-ment of the standard idea of natura naturans—developing nature, rather than evolving species;5 John Killham and James Harrison are more favourably i n c l i n e d to the possi-b i l i t y of transmutation-ism being used i n the poem, whether or not Tennyson granted the idea f u l l acceptance. Potter's contention seems to r e l y too much on his assump-tions about the popularity of evolutionary speculation i n the early part of the century:, i f i t can be shown that the proponents of mutationism were an obscure minority, then Tennyson could not have been using t h e i r theories. "The 'mutetionists' . . . were not the men with the highest repu-tations i n t h e i r respective f i e l d s of study. Erasmus Darwin-, Lamarck, Goethe, Lorenz Oken, Geoffroy S a i n t - H i l e i r e , ¥. C. Wells, Patrick Matthew, end Robert Chambers . . . were not the most femous men i n s c i e n t i f i c work of t h e i r dey, end were by no meens the most leerned or i n t e l l i g e n t . . . I f eny well-informed Englishman had i n the year 18*50 been asked to name the best minds among workers i n the natural sciences . . . he would probably have mentioned none of these names, but rather Cuvier, Richard Owen, L y e l l , the Herschels, Sedgwick, Henslow, and Louis Agassiz—not one of whom had the s l i g h t e s t b e l i e f i n the mutability of species before Darwin published his 7 Origin." Apart from the curious i n f e r i o r i t y by association assigned to some of the figures on the e a r l i e r l i s t , there are 55 several misleading statements here. F i r s t , l y e l l was not as opposed to the concept of transmutation es his public statements made out. A f t e r his i n i t i a l r e j e c t i o n of La-marck, despite considerable v a c i l l a t i o n , he became a muta-t i o n i s t of sorts, spending years speculating on the problem of whether species were the fixed and r e a l e n t i t i e s he had thought they were. He continued to use the vocabulary of "creation," but only for lack of a better one; he denied the idea of a series of separate divine interventions i n the natural process. Second, although none of Potter's second group p u b l i c l y endorsed 8 mutetionist doctrine, some of them contributed ideas which were not inconsistent with i t ; the Herschels formulated the nebular hypothesis, d i s -cussed i n a previous chapter, and Agassiz popularized the o notion of "prophetic types" among animal species. Third, regardless of Chambers1 public reputation, he was widely read, and Tennyson evidently drew important ideas from him. The ideas of some of the other mutstionists were also known to Tennyson, since L y e l l devoted a long section of his P r i n -c i p l e s to a discussion of Lamarck, and many of Erasmus Dar-win's ideas could have been gleaned from Shelley, i f not from a reading of that author himself. Since, therefore, there i s no immediate reason to deny the p o s s i b i l i t y of a transmutationist influence on Tennyson, i t should be possible to examine the stages of development that In Memoriam went through, with reference to what i s known 56 of Tennyson's readings i n evolutionary theory. I t i s not possible to be certain of the dates of the majority of the 133 separate poems which make up t h i s long work, but they can be arranged into various broad groups on the basis of t h e i r appearance i n the surviving manuscripts. A group of eight c l e a r l y belongs to 1 8 3 3 . A much larger group, found i n the T r i n i t y MS., belongs predominantly to the years 18*33-18*37, with some pieces of l a t e r date; a group of about equal size appears i n the Lincoln MS., dated 18*42, along with a f a i r copy of most of the e a r l i e r poems. A few more sections were added by the time that the t r i a l e d i t i o n was printed i n 18*49, and s i x more s t i l l were included i n the 18*50 publica-t i o n ; these sections cannot be dated. The f i r s t group of poems i s c l e a r l y personal, dealing with the shock of bereavement end the anticipated return of the ship carrying Arthur Hallam's body. vEven et t h i s early stage, however, three c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of the eventual poem stand, out: an emphasis on the l i m i t s of human knowledge, an i n -a b i l i t y to draw consolation from the contemplation of nature, and the continual tendency to present alternetive opinions on important subjects. This l a s t t r a i t can be observed i n sections 3 0 end 3 1 ; while i n the f i r s t , there i s implied a well-developed b e l i e f i n the a f t e r l i f e , the second denies the p o s s i b i l i t y of certainty, using the figure of the uncommunica-ti v e Lazarus. The a f t e r l i f e i n section 3 0 , i n c i d e n t a l l y , shows strong a f f i n i t i e s to the plurality-of-worlds theme ob-5 7 served i n Tennyson's f i r s t published poems; the "serst>hic fleme"—not the only occurrence i n In Memoriam of Dantesque f i g u r e s — t r a v e l s '!From orb to orb" with "gathered power," and t h i s image antedates the publication of Taylor's Phys-i c a l Theory by approximately three years. Tennyson was not only drawing ideas from his reading, but also adapting ideas current at the time even before they were expressed i n pub-lis h e d works. A Harvard Notebook draft, also dating from 1 8 3 3 , shows the d i r e c t i o n Tennyson took i n making parts of the poem im-personal, i n order to emphasize t h e i r u n i v e r s a l i t y . E v i -dently written before the In Memoriam stanza had been f i n a l l y decided on, i t shows the world as seen under the influence of g r i e f : A cloud was drawn across the sky, The stars t h e i r courses b l i n d l y run. Out of the waste places came a cry And murmurs from the dying sun. When these l i n e s were l a t e r recast to form part of section 3 , t h e i r sentiment was put i n the mouth of an abstract Sorrow, and presented an image of the world i n general, rather than a single l o c a l i z e d phenomenon. The next block of sections, those collected i n the T r i n i t y MS., mostly antedate 1 8 3 7 , although there are some uncertain-t i e s , and i n t e r n a l evidence assigns some to l a t e r dates. Tennyson's prime concern here i s with the immortality of the soul. Whereas i n the e a r l i e r section 8 5 the speaker imag-53 ined the dead man's s p i r i t speaking to him, although aware of the unr e a l i t y of the phenomenon ("so methinks the dead would say; / Or so s h a l l g r i e f with symbols play"), i n these poems the r e a l i t y of the immaterial s p i r i t i s i n s i s t e d upon: "A S p i r i t , not a breathing voice" ( 1 3 ) , "No v i s u a l shade of some one l o s t , / But he, the S p i r i t himself, may come / Where a l l the nerve of sense i s dumb" ( 1 1 3 ) . Sensory manifesta-tions of ghosts are i l l u s o r y , "but the canker of the brain" ( 1 1 2 ) . Speculation about the nature of the a f t e r l i f e continues. The general impression i s that the s p i r i t ascends, morally and i n t e l l e c t u a l l y as well as physically, "As f l i e s the l i g h t e r through the gross" ( 4 1 ) . This idea, a development from the t r a d i t i o n a l b e l i e f i n the lightness of the soul, was f a m i l i a r at the time from various s p e c i f i c sources. Jo-seph Butler had speculated that the dead might enter "a high-er and more enlarged state of l i f e . . . i n which our capaci-t i e s and sphere of perception, and of action, may be much greater than at p r e s e n t . " ^ From such a b e l i e f i t i s a nat-u r a l progression to the idea that the souls of the dead i n -habit other worlds, i n the solar system or outside i t , an idea that had already been r e f l e c t e d i n Tennyson's early poetry, and which probably received a new strength from Isaac Taylor's Physical Theory of Another L i f e ( 1 3 3 6 ) . Taylor hypothesizes that the apostolic doctrine of bodies c e l e s t i a l and t e r r e s t r i a l reveals the "universal law of the i n t e l l i g e n t c r e a t i o n " — f i r s t , a natural body, then, a development into a s p i r i t u a l 5 9 form.'' This universal law, combined with the concert of the p l u r a l i t y of worlds, implies that after death the soul ends up on other planets, or perhaps, es a s p i r i t u a l being, exists immaterially i n space, i t s destiny involved with 1 2 the "unseen economy" of the heavens. Whether Tennyson 1 3 found Taylor quite as consoling as Mattes thinks, ' the extension of t r a d i t i o n a l C h r i s t i a n concepts of the a f t e r -l i f e into the physical universe c e r t a i n l y influenced some of the sections of In Memor£am. For example, i n section 40, Hallam participates i n "those great o f f i c e s that s u i t / The full-grown energies of heaven," and scention 45 shows the c h i l d learning the use of his body, s t a t i n g that to do so "were f r u i t l e s s " i f the whole learning process had to be re-peated after death, so that the purpose of t h i s l i f e i s es a preparation f o r the next. Again, the u n i v e r s a l i t y of the law i s emphasized i n section 82: "Eternal process moving on, From state to state the s p i r i t walks"; but t h i s passage can-not be traced s o l e l y to Taylor's influence, because i t i s reminiscent of the reincarnationel passege i n "The Two Voi-ces" and the embryological one i n "The Palace of Art*'" both of which have been shown to derive from e n t i r e l y d i f f e r e n t sources. 1^ Taylor's influence can also be seen i n section 24, i n which the suggestion that the past w i l l "orb into the perfect s t 8 r / We sew not, when we moved therein" r e i n t r o -duces the imege of the p l u r a l i t y of worlds, with an implied analogy to the condition of the a f t e r l i f e . Certain other 6 0 passages, such as those describing the " c i r c u i t s of thine o r b i t " (63) and "tenfold-complicated change" (93), and the image of the s p i r i t as "a f i n e r l i g h t i n l i g h t " ( 9 1 ) , t 1 show the vestiges of a Dantesque cosmos as well as Taylor s. The analogy implied, i n sections 43 and 44, between the child's loss of his early memories and the departed, s p i r i t ' s catching a memory-trace from i t s mortal existence, seems reminiscent of the "Intimations" Ode, and M 8 t t e s has i n d i -cated the influence of Wordsworth on another set of passages: "My own dim l i f e should teach me t h i s , / That l i f e s h e l l l i v e f o r evermore, / Else eerth i s darkness et the core" (34); " I f Death were seen / At f i r s t es Death, Love hed not been" (35). These l i n e s o f f e r the seme ergument es Words-worth's, thet the sense of immortelity i s necessary for the proper development of the affections, which otherwise would be stunted by a "hollowness Cwhich] would pervade the whole 1 6 system of things." I t may be wondered, of course, precise-l y how consoling a point t h i s i s ; i f the b e l i e f i n immortel-i t y i s progremmed into the mind, i f i t i s necessery for men to believe i t , then i t s truth-value cannot be determined ob-j e c t i v e l y . But for Tennyson and Wordsworth t h i s c r i t e r i o n wouldnot have been v a l i d ; both mainteined the supreme impor-tance of subjectively determined truth. Section 34 ends by r e s t a t i n g one of Tennyson's most firmly held b e l i e f s , thet i f immortelity i s an i l l u s i o n , then l i f e i s pointless, and a n n i h i l e t i o n would be preferable. 61 This s u b j e c t i v i s t standpoint i s developed i n more d e t a i l i n section 33, which describes the speaker's f a i t h as hav-ing "centre everywhere, / Nor cares to f i x i t s e l f to form." The experience described does not ref e r to Tennyson's trance-state, because the l a s t stanza i d e n t i f i e s i t with "the law within," which must be maintained by reason; the trance was more purely a phenomenon of f e e l i n g . These l i n e s must refer to a subjective apprehension of truth, presumably r e s u l t i n g from d i r e c t s p i r i t u a l contact with God, but a truth that can be expressed and not merely f e l t , f or otherwise i t could not be as i n s t r u c t i v e as i t i s stated, to be i n the l e s t stanze. The r e f u s a l to l i n k f a i t h to "form," while not providing a purer f a i t h than the contrasted one ("Her f a i t h through form i s pure as thine"), opens the wey for a trans-cendence of any single creed, end elso prepares f o r the no-t i o n of an immaterial God, not revealed by the physical uni-verse. A few of the sections may perhaps showothe influence of 1 7 Tennyson's reading of L y e l l . ' Section 53 warnssof the dan-gers of "divine Philosophy" transgressing her l i m i t s ; 108 reverses t h i s attitude somewhat, asking "What p r o f i t l i e s i n barren f a i t h , / And vacant yearning . . .?" Because the sec-t i o n cannot be r e l i a b l y dated, i t remains debatable whether i t shows the beginning of the impact of L y e l l . Section 54 provides the f i r s t f u l l expression of the disillusionment and s p i r i t u a l anguish that mark many of the sections produced i n 62 the succeeding few years. The f i r s t three stanzas, and part of the fourth, l i s t a set of hopes thet are basic to the comfortable C h r i s t i a n world system, such as Bailey was incorporating into Festus at about the seme time: thet a l l things were goel-directed, and that the suffering on eerth would eventuelly be compenseted f o r . Towerd the end of t h i s l i s t there i s en interruption: "Behold, we know not enything"; t h i s warning wes o r i g i n e l l y much more emphatic, since four e d d i t i o n e l l i n e s denied the existence of any revelation of such an a f t e r l i f e — " d e l e t e d presum-ebly for r e l i g i o u s reasons," says Ricks. Following t h i s l i n e , however, i s an increased f e e l i n g of assurance, since the f i n a l image, of winter changing to spring, implies an inevitable process. But the f i n a l stanza again removes any certainty, revealing a l l t h i s to have been e dreem, end leeves the imege of the thinker as a c h i l d , e n t i r e l y help-less and dependent: "And with no languege but a cry." Geological influence can be observed i n the use of scien-t i f i c imagery i n some of the sections; 43, for exemple, uses asmetaph-arxthat emphesizes the continuity of a l l l i f e : "that s t i l l garden of the souls / In many a figured l e e f e n r o l l s / The t o t a l world since l i f e began"; the "figured l e e f , " to-gether with the "traces" of the flower i n the previous st8n-1 # za, may derive from L y e l l * s discussion of f o s s i l imprints. By contrast, the "world-wide f l u c t u a t i o n " of seetion 112 may be p o l i t i c a l , or meteorological. But two sections make ex-63 p l i c i t use of L y e l l ' s theory of erosion as the fundamental force of geological change. The streams of section 3 5, coming from "Ionian h i l l s " — t h e important word emphasizing the immense passage of time L y e l l required for s i g n i f i c a n t change to take place—"sow / The dust of continents to be." The importance of t h i s section i s not merely i t s use of a s t a r t l i n g new concept, but i t s recognition of the emotional meaning of geological time, the reduction of human existence to a b r i e f episode i n world history and the consequent piercing awareness of death. I t i s the chain of speculation roused by t h i s image that r e s u l t s i n the confirmation of the b e l i e f i n immortality as a necessary stage of development. Section 123 begins with b a s i c a l l y the same idea; the im-pact of geological change: "There r o l l s the deep where grew the tree. / 0 earth, what changes hast thou seen!" The second stanza attempts to describe the changes with an image of d i s s o l v i n g h i l l s . However, set i n opposition to the dreamlike v i s i o n , i s the speaker's dedication to another dream, which he w i l l hold true. Geological change i s being used to suggest the contrast between subjective truth end the deceiving facade of the materiel world. By t h i s point i n the poem's development, the speaker i s reaching for truths beyond his i n d i v i d u a l , personal circumstances; es Tennyson s p e c i f i c -a l l y cautioned the reader, i t " i s not always the euthor speeking f o r himself, but the voice of the human race speak-1 Q mg through him." 7 64 The next stage i n the writing of In Memoriam can be seen i n the sections added to the Lincoln MS. i n 1342. Presumably most of these were written i n 1337 or a f t e r . The speculations about immortality continue. The pas-sage about the "great Intelligences f a i r " i n section 35 may have been written e a r l i e r — R i c k s i s unclear about the dating of the d i f f e r e n t parts of the s e c t i o n — b u t the "hundred s p i r i t s " i n the "orient star" (36) date from 1339. Section 47 seems reminiscent of Tennyson's trance state when i t describes the s e l f "Remerging i n the general Soul," but i t quickly abandons that idea and proclaims the s u r v i v a l of human i n d i v i d u a l i t y . The Wordsworthian j u s t i f i c a t i o n reappears (55), t h i s time however as a ques-tio n : "The wish . . . / Derives i t not from what we have / The l i k e s t God within the soul?" The further question, "Are God and Nature then at s t r i f e , " raises d i r e c t l y the question of Tennyson's response to L y e l l . L y e l l , r e j e c t i n g both the idea of a single creation and that of a series of divine interventions, each r e s u l t i n g i n a new s p e c i e s — t h e progressivist view, a prominent concept espoused by such men as Hugh M i l l e r , p a r t i c u l a r l y during the 1340's—adapted Hutton's e a r l i e r b e l i e f i n an unchanging, continual state of conditions on earth, and advanced the hypothesis that a l l the geological changes which s c i e n t i s t s were then aware of were explicable by assuming the continued action of erosion and volcanic a c t i v i t y , the same general 65 phenomena observable today, over a period of m i l l i o n s of years. The consequences of his scheme for the b i o l o g i c a l sciences lay i n his r e j e c t i o n of Cuvier's system of hypo-thesized p e r i o d i c a l catastrophes, which, by o b l i t e r a t i n g most ex i s t i n g l i f e , caused extinction by divine f i a t , as 20 i t were. I f extinction was to be accommodated to a uni-formitarian world, then there had to be explanations for i t discoverable i n the t y p i c a l contemporary environment. This thought was di s o r i e n t i n g i n the early nineteenth cent-ury, when the most popular view was that the world was neatly adapted to meet the needs of a l l created beings. Nonetheless, L y e l l proceeded to prove his case. He based much of his argument, as Darwin was to do l a t e r , on the sort of evidence Malthus had provided three 21 decades e a r l i e r . A l l organisms were engaged i n a struggle for existence, competing with each other f o r food, and i n -capacitating themselves f o r l i f e by overpopulation. Limited geographical d i s t r i b u t i o n affected the a b i l i t y to adept. But, most important of a l l f o r L y e l l , a species was not i n -herently d i f f e r e n t from an i n d i v i d u a l . Just as there were l i m i t s beyond which an i n d i v i d u a l could not change and remain a l i v e , so species could not adapt themselves to the point of changing t h e i r fundamental nature, which L y e l l at t h i s time regarded as a fixed e n t i t y . Consequently, specties became ex-t i n c t , just as individuals died. Part of the reason why Ly-e l l rejected Lamerck's development hypothesis was that the 66 a b o l i t i o n of the concept of the species as a r e e l entity-would have thrown out his analogy; the transformation of one species into another, although an at t r a c t i v e idea i n some ways, would have introduced too many complications into the straightforward process of extinction as L y e l l 22 conceived i t . At any rate, the dominant impression made by L y e l l ' s discussion of t h i s problem i s that of i t s i n e v i t a b i l i t y . Geological change w i l l i n e v i t a b l y produce eventual climatic change, and few species w i l l be able to adapt themselves to t h i s . Such i s the image of the world that Tennyson would have been l i k e l y to derive from a reading of L y e l l . He had already rejected the argument from design, under the i n f l u -ence of Coleridge and the Apostles; the impact of L y e l l would have been a l l the greater i n causing him to question the bases of his f a i t h . L y e l l ' s universe, l i k e Laplace's, was b a s i c a l l y one i n which God was superfluous, and section 3 of In Memoriam represents a world operating at random: "tThe stars, ' she whispers, 'b l i n d l y run*'*" According to Al f r e d North Whitehead, t h i s l i n e goes to the heart of the problems of science: "Each molecule b l i n d l y runs. The human body I s i a d c p l l e c t i o n of molecules. Therefore, the human body 23 b l i n d l y runs." But the v a l i d i t y of the image i s limited by i t s being placed i n the mouth of l y i n g Sorrow. However, some of the other sections deal with the struggle for existence i n a less guarded fashion. 67 In section 6 , the fact that death i s a commonplace occur-rence simply adds to the speaker's g r i e f . This fact ac-quires a L y e l l i a n significance i n section 5 5 . Nature seems "So c a r e f u l of the type . . . / So careless of the single l i f e " — a p o s i t i o n supported by i l l u s t r a t i o n s of the r a t i o of b i r t h to s u r v i v a l . This fact alone i s s u f f i c i e n t to make the speaker, or rather the human race speaking through him, " f a l t e r where I firml y trod"; f a i t h i s described as lame. The e f f e c t of what might be c a l l e d the simple Malthusian revelation i s to make the sources of f a i t h " f a i n t . " But t h i s e f f e c t i s compounded by the addition of the further Ly-e l l i a n revelation, that "A thousand types are gone" ( 5 6 ) . The p o s s i b i l i t y occurs that man might eventually perish just as indiv i d u a l s do now, and be "sealed within the iron h i l l s . " Although L y e l l i s at one point very consoling about the pos-s i b i l i t y of s u r v i v a l , 2 ^ i t remains inescapable that there i s no certainty about the continued existence of the human spe-c i e s . The problem of immortality i s experienced at the spe-cies l e v e l ; i f man becomes extinct, what point w i l l there have been i n human existence? The answer i s unencouraging; man's history makes him worse than a "dragon of the prime," morally f i t f o r destruction. The p o s s i b i l i t y of a hopeful solution i s deferred i n d e f i n i t e l y : "behind the v e i l . " I nterestingly, the major geological images of t h i s period, apart from f o s s i l i z a t i o n , are catastrophic. Section 1 1 3 com-pares geological with p o l i t i c a l upheavals, the former being 63 more i n harmony with Cuvier's than with L y e l l ' s world: the earth changes o r b i t , with consequent shocks, agonies, end energies. In section 1 1 3 , "They say" that the earth hegen and developed catastrophically, the r e s u l t of " c y c l i c storms"; the shape of the earth i s "seeming-random." Mere volcanic eruptions and earthquakes form an e s s e n t i a l part of L y e l l ' s system, of course, but not c y c l i c storms. However, no l i t e r a l b e l i e f i s implied: "They say." Perhaps Tennyson — o r the s p e a k e r — i s considering a l l the alternatives to L y e l l ' s ideas possible. Section 124 offers a considered r e l i g i o u s statement. God i s s t i l l very much behind the v e i l , but the subjective appre-hension of truth i s conclusive; the injunction to "Believe no more" i s answered by, "I have f e l t . " The contrast with the other sections, i n which f e i t h i s being undermined, i s a strong i n d i c a t i o n of Tennyson's uncertainties. I t i s l i k e l y , as James Harrison speculates, thet the de-pression evident i n these sections i s the r e s u l t of the leek of evolutionary content i n L y e l l . 2 5 Whet i s apparent i s that evolutionary ideas begin to assert themselves i n the poem ebout t h i s time. The passage i n 1 1 3 about man being "The herald of a higher race" can be interpreted simply as a pre-d i c t i o n of moral progress, e s p e c i a l l y since the next 8pposite phrese i s "of himself i n higher place"; but the reference to "ape and t i g e r " i s more than simply emblematic of i n s t i n c t u a l forces. The idea that man was descended from apes was not new, 69 and Tennyson was probably aware of i t ; i f so, the reference to the ape would be an example of his continual practice of including alternative theories. Furthermore, t h i s prog-ress depends on man's typing " t h i s work of time / Within h i m s e l f " — t h e work of time being the eventual emergence of man i n the world, an event without previous analogy. The resu l t must be something more than en i n t e n s i f i c a t i o n of q u a l i t i e s , such as morel virtue, thet ere elreedy present. However, there i s nothing i n these l i n e s that implies the transmutation of species. The word "type" creates problems. The f i r s t references i n the O.E.D. to the b i o l o g i c a l sense of the word are dated 1850, but one of them i s Tennyson's "So careful of the type," which ac t u a l l y dates from the 1#30's. The word can take r a d i c a l l y d i f f e r e n t meanings. In the e a r l i e r section 33, for example, i t c a r r i e s the more conventional r e l i g i o u s con-notations of a n t i c i p a t i o n , symbolic prophecy, end even model. The seme sense, roughly, eppeers i n the epilogue. The difference i s thet i n the eerly section Hallam represents a goal f o r Tennyson to aim at, while i n the epilogue he be-comes himself a foreshadowing of the eventual condition of the race. The verbal usage i n 118* i s derived from the con-notation of modelling. The key point here i s that man d i f f e r s from the other eni-mals i n his possession of e soul. The speaker of 120 i s "born to other things" than are dictated by his mere b i o l o g i c a l 70 nature, s i g n i f i c a n t l y again referred to by the figure of the ape. The soul exempts man from the ordinary fate of l i f e ; sections 27 and 63 (the l a t t e r e a r l i e r ) discount the significance of animals i n the eternal scheme. Man's phys-i c a l nature i s expressed by the phrase "magnetic mockeries," a reference to Mesmer's theory of animal magnetism es well as to more respectable s c i e n t i f i c discoveries of e l e c t r i c a l 27 action i n the nerves. What i s foreign to the modern reader i s the idea that man can v o l u n t a r i l y take pert i n the evolutionary process. Section 118 predicts the development of the race through suffering and moral testing; section 131 offers the notion of a " l i v i n g w i l l " which w i l l produce true f a i t h , "that comes of s e l f - c o n t r o l . " Tennyson has not dissociated the natural and s p i r i t u a l processes, seeing them instead 8S as-pects of the same general p r i n c i p l e . The t r i a l e d i t i o n of 1849 contained some important addi-tions to the body of the poem. The most important of these i s the so-celled epilogue, which was probably begun i n 1842 but apperently not completed u n t i l 1845. By that time Ten-nyson had read Chambers, and his f i n a l concept of evolution was c r y s t a l l i z i n g . Robert Chambers published his Vestiges of the Natural His-28 tory of Creation anonymously i n 1844. His book created a storm among r e l i g i o u s groups, and earned as well the obloquy of many respectable s c i e n t i s t s , even those of the evolution-71 i s t camp. Darwin was sympathetic, but Huxley was indignant at Chambers' mistakes, and his response probably determined the dominant attitude i n t h i s century, as expressed by Hough when he describes the Vestiges as "almost the worst kind of s c i e n t i f i c p o p u l a r i z a t i n g . " 2 ^ S t i l l , the book has more than merely h i s t o r i c a l importance, although i t has plenty of that, being the major source f o r evolutionary ideas i n the public consciousness during the l£40's. I t serves as a valuable compendium of s c i e n t i f i c thought, makes the most famous con-nection between the nebular hypothesis and that of b i o l o g i c a l development, and uses many of the arguments that were to become standard proofs of evolution l a t e r i n the century, such as r e c a p i t u l a t i o n theory and the existence of rudiment----fcary organs. I t i s equally f u l l of mistakes and untenable ideas, such as that of spontaneous generation, but i t should be remembered that that p a r t i c u l a r concept was not f i n a l l y disproven u n t i l the 1860's. The book's general argument i s that there i s a universal p r i n c i p l e of development from lower in t o higher forms, and that t h i s can be seen i n a l l phenomena from the organization of nebulae to the ascent of man. The mechanism of develop-ment i s b a s i c a l l y Lamarckian; adaptation to the environment by indivi d u a l s affects the nature of the young, presumably i n the embryonic stage. Like L y e l l , Chambers rejected the idea of complete breaks i n the geological process end record, but unlike L y e l l , he plgeednlitble emphasis on the struggle f o r 72 existence, regarding i t as accidental to the main plan of creation. His was a t e l e o l o g i c a l l y organized evolutionary world. The epilogue to In Memoriam shows strong reminiscences of the Vestiges. A soul s h a l l draw from out the vast And s t r i k e his being into bounds, And, moved through l i f e of lower phase, Result i n man, be born and think, And act and love, a closer l i n k Betwixt us and the crowning race . . . Whereof the man, that with me trod This planet, was a noble type Appearing ere the times were ripe. (11. 123 -123, 137-139) According to Potter, the phrase "moved through l i f e of lower phase" refers to von Baer's observations on embryological re-development. Chambers, however, connects such observations with an evolutionary hypothesis, producing the r e c a p i t u l a t i o n theory, according to which embryonic stages are analogous to previous life-forms from which the present animal has devel-oped. Therefore, i f Tennyson's phrase refers to embryonic change, the context makes i t clear that the development hypo-thesis i s being drawn on. Furthermore, one of Chambers' key concepts i s that adaptationally induced changes i n the parent a f f e c t the embryo so that i t develops into a new form; the development of the species and of the i n d i v i d u a l fetus are v i r t u a l l y i d e n t i c a l , subject to the same laws. This idee pro-vides the j u s t i f i c a t i o n for the "closer l i n k j " whether i t i s understood as a c o l l e c t i v e human soul or es en i n d i v i d u a l 73 developing into the new required form during gestetion. The notion of Hallam as a "type" of the higher race drawsa both on the r e l i g i o u s usage—a symbolic prophecy—and on Chambers' use: "Is our race but the i n i t i a l of the grand 31 crowning type?" I t seems reasonable, then, to argue that the reading of L y e l l was profoundly depressing for Tennyson because of his presentation of the struggle for existence es inescap-able and l i m i t i n g to the powers of the species, and that the reading of Chambers solved t h i s problem by showing a way i n which evolution could enable one (whether an i n d i -vidual or a species) to transcend t h i s struggle by a s s i s t i n g in^the gradual development of a higher form of l i f e . In Me-moriam ends with a marriage, which i s at once symbolic of the union between souls and of the mechanism of evolution; Chambers had stressed the c r u c i a l importance of the "genera-ti v e system" i n the development of the species. Tennyson's l i t e r a l b e l i e f i n the truth of Chambers' arguments wes not necessery for t h e i r use i n the consummeting v i s i o n of the epilogue, eny more then his b e l i e f i n the e l t e r n e t i v e , end sometimes c o n f l i c t i n g , theories of geological change wes re-quired for t h e i r use i n other sections. Like Milton, Tenny-son found his poetic purpose strengthened by the presenta-t i o n of d i f f e r i n g cosmological systems. However, despite the fact that i t i s the voice of the human race, and not mere-ly Tennyson himself, that i s speaking, his recorded states: 74 merits give substance to the conclusion that the evolutionary concept was f o r him a personal b e l i e f as well .as a poetic device. He thought "that the theory of Evolution caused the world to regard more c l e a r l y the 'L i f e of Nature 8 s 8 lower stage i n the manifestation of a p r i n c i p l e which i s more f u l l y manifested i n the s p i r i t u a l l i f e of man, with the idea that i n t h i s process of Evolution the lower i s to be 32 regarded as a means to the higher.'" His commitment was c l e a r l y to the concept of evolution as a s p i r i t u a l process, of which the b i o l o g i c a l was only one aspect. Thus the de-t a i l s of the transmutation of species were secondary to the important symbolic quality of the concept, that i t allowed l i f e , and more p a r t i c u l a r l y , man, the p o s s i b i l i t y of free-dom from the l i m i t s of material existence, and of developing into a more s p i r i t u a l form. Without such transmutation, there could be no hope of the race being able to shape i t s destiny into higher conditions; the c o n c e p t ; i t s e l f , leaving the d e t a i l s aside, i s es s e n t i e l to the conclusion of In Memoriam. CHAPTER FIVE IN MEMORIAM: THE POEM AND ITS ANALOGUES The discussion i n the previous chapter of the stages i n the composition of In Memoriam i s only part of the analysis that must be made i n order to determine the s i g -nificance and meaning of the evolutionary passages i n the poem. The obvious fact i s that the f i n a l order of the sections, as published i n 1 8 5 0 , i s not chronological, and that the sequence of composition has been obscured. This knowledge has led some c r i t i c d , f o r example Christopher Ricks, to claim that the "charting of Tennyson's doubts and hopes" i n the poem does not provide i t with e s s e n t i a l unity. Tennyson, however, s p e c i f i c a l l y cautioned that i t was not an autobiography, and Morse Peckham has speculated that the reason Tennyson refused to allow his manuscripts to be pub-lished was so that the compositional sequence would not d i s t r a c t readers from the meaning of the completed work. Many schemes have been offered, f o r dividing the poem into sections. Tennyson himself explained that the organization was s t r i c t l y chronological, with the three Christmas Eves forming the breaks between the d i v i s i o n s ; he elaborated t h i s plan to James Knowles, with a s l i g h t discrepancy, saying that there were nine d i v i s i o n s : 1-8 , 9 - 2 0 , 2 1 - 2 7 , 28-49, 5 0 -5 3 , 5 9 - 7 1 , 7 2 - 9 3 , 9 9 - 1 0 3 , and 1 0 4 - 1 3 1 . 3 Various c r i t i c s , 76 however, have suggested other structures. Robert Langbaum has proposed 95 as the fundamental turning point; E. D. H. Johnson divided i t into 1 - 2 7 , 2 3 - 7 7 , 7 3 - 1 0 3 , and 1 0 4 - 1 3 1 , elsewhere se l e c t i n g 35 end 103 as the key sections; V a l e r i e P i t t places the d i v i s i o n s et the "dim dawn" sections, 72 4 and 99. A l l these arrangements have some v a l i d i t y , i n thet they a l l show the working of s p e c i f i c patterns of thought and imagery throughout the poem; but none are par-t i c u l a r l y h e l p f u l i n tracing the working of the evolutionary and s c i e n t i f i c patterns. The following b r i e f analysis w i l l t r y to show the contribution these elements make to the func-tioning of the poem. I t i s understood that i t can only reveal one aspect of the work's t o t a l i t y , and that only es much of the lerger context as i s necessary to es t a b l i s h the significance of t h i s aspect w i l l be undertaken. In the t r i a l e d i t i o n of 1 3 4 9 , the prologue preceded the t i t l e page; i n the f i n a l version, i t was moved to a place immediately preceding the f i r s t section. The sizeable break i n the e a r l i e r e d i t i o n made the prologue a dedication, not intimately connected with the main body of the work; put into closer proximity with the rest of the poem, however, i t strongly suggests the public, prophetic quality that Tenny-son p e r i o d i c a l l y emphasized. Probably one of the l a s t sec-tions to be composed, i t r e f l e c t s the struggles of the poem i n i t s references to the impermenence of the meterial world, the transcendent nature of God, and the necessity of f a i t h 77 and love as the sources of truth. The theological tone may lead the reader to expect a didactic poem, arguing the issues of f a i t h and science; an i n t e r e s t i n g c o n f l i c t i s created between t h i s and the expectation of a personal 5 elegy, roused by the t i t l e . These two elements are kept i n balance during the f i r s t section. The opening l i n e , so often misquoted, refers to Goethe, among whose l e s t words were "from changes to higher changes":^ I held i t truth, with him who sings To one clear harp i n divers tones, That men may r i s e on stepping-stones Of t h e i r dead selves to higher things. This passage introduces immediately the twin themes of per-sonal development through suffering and the larger develop-ment of the race. By the end of the section, the focus has narrowed onto the g r i e f s of the speaker, but the l i n k with the more universal problems of mankind has been established from the beginning. Section 3 further i l l u s t r a t e s t h i s l i n k ; Sorrow suggests the biindness and meaninglessness of the world. Nature i s said to be "A hollow form with empty hands," i n which God i s not immanent: the f i r s t expression of a recurring theme. The next several sections are devoted to an exploration of the speaker's personal g r i e f , with l i t t l e r e f l e c t i o n a p p l i -cable to the s i t u a t i o n of the race as a whole; however, sec-t i o n 6 shows that the u n i v e r s a l i t y of bereavement i s i t s e l f 73 a motive f o r sorrow, and section 27 contrasts man with the beasts that are incapable of experiencing the higher f e e l -ings. Also, the f i r s t c a l l to public commitment f o r the poet has been made, and rejected, i n section 21, where a t r a v e l l e r has reproached him for indulging private g r i e f s at a time "When Science reaches forth her arms / To f e e l from world to world." The tension i n i t i a t e d i n section 3 with the suggestion of the meaninglessness of the world i s temporarily resolved i n 33, when the speaker has reached "a purer 8 i r , " con-ceiving of God as transcending a l l forms, but that t h i s solution i s only temporary i s shown by the praise given to his s i s t e r f o r her equally pure—perhaps s u p e r i o r - - " f a i t h through form." The next section, 34, unites the personal and universal conditions i n the consideration of immortality. The certainty derived from personal i n t u i t i o n i s contrasted with the doubt caused by thinking on the enormous stretches of time to come, with t h e i r implication of the i n s i g n i f i -cance of man. Although 36, with i t s invocation of C h r i s t , weighs the balance on the side of i n t u i t i v e f a i t h , t h i s group of sections begins the st e a d i l y increasing impact of geologi-c a l speculation on the speaker. Section 37 again examines the role of the poet. Urania, the sacred or astronomical muse, upbraids the attempt to i n -clude philosophy i n an elegy, recommending a return to more-fa m i l i a r matters. Melpomene, here representing elegy, admits 79 her unfitness for high thought, but pardons her s l i p by reminding Urania that the "dear one dead" studied "things divine." The poem returns to more personal concerns i n the following sections, but eventually begins i t s more uni-vers a l considerations once again, asserting the s u r v i v a l of in d i v i d u a l differences a f t e r death ( 4 7 ) . Then, as i f i n apology f o r the renewed philosophizing, the pretensions of the "Short swallow-flights of song" to i n t e l l e c t u a l cer-t a i n t y are neatly deflated; Sorrow does not care "to part and prove"; the poems are dramatic rather than didactic ut-terances. Up to t h i s point, In Memoriam has been primarily con-cerned with the speaker's i n d i v i d u a l experience; when,the human race speaks through him, i t generally does so with reference to personal feelings.. But, i n sections 5 3 - 5 6 , the universal e x p l i c i t l y becomes the subject matter. The fear i s expressed that Philosophy may overrun i t s l i m i t s and lead to despair; promptly, the comfortable C h r i s t i a n i d e a l of existence, i n which a l l suffering i s rewarded, and a l l l i f e has meaning, i s undermined. Nature seems to con-t r a d i c t the speaker's b e l i e f s about God. The hope of immor-t a l i t y , which gave meaning to Hallam's existence, seems i n -compatible with the r e a l i z a t i o n that the deaths of the over-whelming majority of any l i f e form are es s e n t i a l f o r the con-tinued existence of the species. But the further revelation of the extinction of entire species endangers what l i t t l e so consolation s t i l l remains. The question i s posed: what mean-ing i s there, not only i n personal existence but i n the ex-istence of the whole human race, i f mankind w i l l one day die out? Because God i s behind the v e i l , not immanent i n the physical world, the answer cannot be known. The next two sections provide a dying f a l l f o r t h i s temp-t a t i o n to despair. Section 5 7 , with i t s opening words, "Peace; come away," r e c a l l s the reader to the p a r t i c u l a r s i t u a t i o n which has call e d f o r t h these outbursts; the lang-uage of the f i r s t two stanzas i s f u l l of short phrases and interruptions, as though the speaker i s s t r i v i n g to get con-t r o l of himself. The frightening implications of modern science w i l l not return him to the world of the l i v i n g : "we do him wrong / To sing so wildly"—what i s u n f i t t i n g to be associated with the memory of the loved one i s to be rejec-ted. Section 5 3 adds a consolation from the "high Muse," Urania: "Abide a l i t t l e longer here, / And thou shalt take a nobler leave." Considering Urania's c l a s s i c a l association with astronomy, i t i s possible that what i s implied here i s that i f the poet w i l l face the challenges of despair, as i n the preceding sections, he w i l l f i n d the means of mastering them; i n which case, the progress from Urania's o r i g i n a l ap-pearance i n section 3 7 to t h i s point indicates that the poet's ideas and feelings are now more mature and t r u t h f u l . The poem once again concentrates on personal themes, with many references to the nature of the a f t e r l i f e , and to the 81 nature of poetry. The poet's reply to the upbraiding t r a v e l l e r i n section 21 i s reaffirmed: s o c i a l r e a l i t i e s , including presumably the achievements of science, are unimportant compared with the creation of songs that w i l l be recognized and responded to emotionally by future read-ers,(77). Among the many things that happen i n t h i s part of the poem, however, there i s evident a subsidence of the e a r l i e r extreme g r i e f , and the beginning of a period of change. This change of attitude i s symbolized i n section 69, i n which,,8 dream i s recounted: Nature has l o s t i t s powers of stimulating growth, but an angel, glossed by Ten-nyson as "the Divine Thing i n the gloom," brings a comfort that i s d i f f i c u l t for the dreamer to understand. Touching the crown of thorns, emblematic of the role of poet who writes 8 b o u t death and g r i e f , he seems to "touch i t into l e a f . " A movement has begun toward redemption, both of the poem, the poet, and mankind. The fact of death i s no longer a challenge to f a i t h (82). Death i s seen as part of the "Eternal process," analogous to metamorphosis; Hallam i s te n t a t i v e l y supposed as triumphing " i n conclusive b l i s s , / And that serene res u l t of a l l " ( 3 5 ) . The speaker i s reaffirming his desire f o r l i f e i n seeking a new friendship, with Hallam's implied consent. From t h i s point forth, the universal q u a l i t i e s of the poem, i t s a p p l i -cation to the experience of the entire human race, become dominant, i n a series of contrasts and resolutions of d i f f e r -32 ent images of cosmic change, with three d i s t i n c t l e v e l s of argument. In the f i r s t stage, images of es s e n t i a l non-progressive change, the "cycled times" of section 85 and the "cl o s i n g cycle" of 1 0 5 , alternate with images suggestive of develop-ment: the nebular hypothesis drawn on i n 89 for the "crimson-c i r c l e d star" and her "father," and the trance-state experi-ence of cosmic process i n 9 5 . There "The l i v i n g soul" en-wraps the speaker's, and somehow communicates "AEonian music measuring out / The steps of Time—the shocks of Chance— / The blows of Death." The paring down of syntax, the drop-ping of connectives, shows the d i f f i c u l t y of expressing i n 7 words the "deep pulsations of the world." Both types of process are fused i n 106, fo r an assertion of t r a n s i t i o n which combines the c y c l i c a l — t h e changing of the year--with the progressive, and not only generalized s o c i a l improvement, but a long-range development toward "the C h r i s t that i s to be." The second stage contrasts the shock and destruction of change with the drive toward, improvement. "World-wide f l u c -tuation" and "thousand shocks . . , agonies . . . energies" ( 1 1 2 - 1 1 3 ) graphically express the calamitous nature of cos-mic change; by contrast, 110 describes the vague desire, born of love, "That spurs an imitative w i l l , " suggesting the La-marckian impulse that regulates the development of the spe-cies into i t s necessary higher forms. Both of these concepts 33 are combined i n section 113, where the development of the earth, through " c y c l i c storms," i s pa r a l l e l e d with the development of man as a re s u l t of su f f e r i n g into a higher race. . . . l i f e i s not as i d l e ore, But i r o n dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt i n baths of hissing tears, And battered with the shocks of doom To shape and use. The section concludes with the moral imperative to "work out the beast, / And l e t the ape and t i g e r die." The con-text establishes that t h i s advice i s directed not merely to the i n d i v i d u a l , but to the race as a whole. Thus cata-strophic destruction and the in t e r n a l drive toward prog-ress are reconciled. The thirdssfegge develops from the synthesis already reached, which i s restated i n 127, where Hallam smiles at overwhelming destruction onsearth—"the great Eon sinks i n blood"—because the process i s going well* The p o s s i b i l i t y of regression i s faced, and mastered; even the "vast eddies i n the flood" co-operate toward the f i n a l end (123). The i n s u b s t a n t i a l i t y of the physical world i s the l a s t remaining contrast; "The h i l l s are shadows, and they flow / From form to form" ( 1 2 3 ) . Here, geological change becomes quiet and gentle, dreamlike, as opposed to the e a r l i e r images of storm and disaster. The concluding section (131) r e c a l l s t h i s passage when i t i d e n t i f i e s the physical world with i l l u s i o n : 0 l i v i n g w i l l that shalt endure When a l l that seems s h a l l s u f f e r shock, Rise i n the s p i r i t u a l rock. The evolutionary process, i d e n t i f i e d with the w i l l of God, has taken the place occupied i n Platonic systems by s t a t i c archetypes. The true informing p r i n c i p l e of the world i s progressive and dynamic. The epilogue sums up the entire development i n i t s f i n a l image of the m a r r i a g e — l i f e depends on reproduction--and the closing v i s i o n , i n which the perfection of mankind, as typed beforehand by the development of an i n d i v i d u a l who serves as a l i n k with the "crowning race," i s seen as the ultimate purpose of the universe: "one f a r - o f f divine event, / To which the whole creation moves." This analysis has shown the importance and function of evolutionary passages i n In Memoriam, at the r i s k of neglec-t i n g most of i t s tremendous range and depth. These passages, however, do contribute an e s s e n t i a l part of the poem's t o t a l power, and make i t the great evolutionary poem of i t s century. From a twentieth-century point of view, there are incongru-i t i e s i n i t which Tennyson was probably not aware of; f o r example, the fact that Hallam appeared as a type "ere the times were rip e " (epilogue) suggests that nature can make fun-damental mistakes. However, i f one t r i e s to see i t on i t s own terms, i t develops a consistent philosophical position based on evolutionary theory, even i f t h i s p osition is 1 held only by the speaker i n the f i c t i o n of the poem,, not by the 35 poet himself. But that t h i s l a s t supposition i s true i s doubtful; although the elaboration may be e s s e n t i a l l y f i c -t i v e and poetic, the general b e l i e f becomes the motivating force i n much of Tennyson's other work, and agrees i n sub-stance with his recorded statements. i i In order to demonstrate the uniquely e f f e c t i v e way i n which In Memoriam u t i l i z e s evolutionary material, a compari-son can be made with s i m i l a r works by three other poets, a l l dating from the same period or shortly after: The Year of the World ( 1 8 4 6 ) by William B e l l Scott, Empedocles on Etna ( 1 8 5 2 ) by Matthew Arnold, and three works by P h i l i n J 8 m e s Bailey—nThe Angel World" ( I 8 5 O ) , "The Mystic" and "A S p i r -i t u a l Legend" ( 1 8 5 5 ) . In addition, t h i s b r i e f survey w i l l show the ways i n which evolutionary conceptions were being absorbed by other members of the culture of the 1 8 4 0's. The Year of the World announces i t s dominant conception i n i t s t i t l e . Greek and Eastern philosophies made emphatic use of the image of a great c e l e s t i a l year compared with which human years are l i k e seconds. The reader i s thus prepared, not only f o r a poem with a long v i s t a of time, but for a thorough saturation i n pagan and primitive philosophical con-cepts. He i s not disappointed. The poem i s b a s i c a l l y a nar-ra t i v e about a youth i n ancient Greece who goes on a quest fo r truth and i n the process crosses many countries and learns much ancient wisdom; furthermore,tthe explanatory sub-86 headings of the f i v e d i v i s i o n s set f o r t h a series of doct-rines which the youth learns i n his journey or acts out i n his own person. To look simply at these subheadings creates the impres-sion that one i s about to resd the verse equivalent of a Hegelian t r e a t i s e . Like Hegel, i t begins with pure con-sciousness, " I n s t i n c t i v e L i f e , " then separates the active understanding from the transcendental faculty, thus making the same point that Tennyson does i n his separation of empir-i c a l knowledge from the subjective apprehension of truth. Then, doctrines of contemplative absorption, se l f - e l e v a t i o n , and divine love follow i n sequence—that i s , withdrawal into the s e l f , worship of the s e l f or "comparative best," and wor-ship of the absolute best, as revealed. The h i s t o r i c a l se-quence i s that of the r i s e of man from primitive conditions to the foundation of h i s t o r i c nations, to the I n c a r n a t i o n — a continual progress toward unity, presumably achieved at the advent of C h r i s t . Although the sequence i s applied only to h i s t o r i c a l phenomena, i t i s e s s e n t i a l l y an evolutionary one, based on the meeting of opposing tendencies, "unity, diver-s i t y , /Antagonism, life™(p. 103). "This long s t r i f e / Through darkness, and i n mythos, and i n f a i t h / And i n the aggrandizement of s e l f , and i n / The weary work of knowledge" (p. 6) introduces the concept of c u l t u r a l evolution into poetry. Moreover, Scott suggests, as Tennyson does not, that f a i t h i t s e l f i s determined by a stage i n the process: "This 3 7 W i l l with co-existent force, e creed / Lends to the mind, —men c a l l i t F a i t h " (p. 55). The w i l l i n question i s Lsmarckian, as "Involuntary as the acts of Nature?"i. This fact suggests why the sequence just described i s only part of the t o t a l progress. The Incarnation does not end the story; Part V ("The Future") begins with the modern mind, under the influence of revelation, discovering S c i -ence: "A true Beginning." The re s u l t has been confusion: Theories of s p i r i t without b a s i s — Theories of death and reasonless c r e e d s — Reasoning where mere knowledge should be g u i d e , — Seeking knowledge i n the sphere of reason,— Corrosive cogitations manifold. • ( p . U O ) But t h i s confusion i s inevitable at the beginning of an era. The disturbing element i s that poetry may decline under the influence of fact, so that "hate / And sorrow are the muses 8 f t e r whom / He follows to the shades, or into heaven" ( P . 9 3 ) , but even here, there i s hope inherent i n the process. The view of progress i s not, however, simply l i n e a r . "Each age repeats, productive not the less" (p. 7 ) ; history i s b a s i c a l l y c y c l i c a l , although i t i s unclear whether t h i s c y c l i c a l i t y i s present i n each stage of the progression, or whether the whole thing w i l l be eventually repeated. "Dim memories of faded cycles" (p. 3 8 ) , describing c l a s s i c a l fab-le s , implies the l a t t e r . However, the Lamarckian element— "the W i l l to r i s e / S h a l l be creative of the power" ( P . 48) — i s s t i l l present, and i s synthesized with recurrence into a single a l l e g o r i c a l v i s i o n . 3 3 Arnold's Empedocles on Etna nowhere s p e c i f i c a l l y men-tions evolution, but the tone of the poem implies an aware-ness of the concept and i t s repercussions. The choice of central figure i s s i g n i f i c a n t . Emnedocles was not only a philosopher l i v i n g i n a s c e p t i c a l and troubled time, but perhaps the f i r s t philosopher to propose a theory of organic development i n nature. One of his surviving fragments de-scribes the spontaneous generation of unconnected parts which come together and unite under the pressure of a d r i v -ing i n t e r n a l force derived from God:ft'"On Earth many fore-heads without necks sprang forth, and arms wandered unat-tached, bereft of shoulders, and eyes strayed about alone, needing brows . . . But as the one d i v i n i t y became more and more mingled with the other, these things f e l l together as each chanced, and many other things i n addition to these were continuously produced . . . Many creatures were created with a face and breast on both sides" along with various other q mismingled creatures. U n r e a l i s t i c though'; t h i s theory i s , i t s t i l l q u a l i f i e s as the e a r l i e s t known developmental theory, and so the choice of Empedocles 8S a protagonist suggests a concern f o r evolutionary speculation hidden beneath the sur-face of the poem. Empedocles' long song i n Act I, Scene i i — f o r the purposes of t h i s discussion the most important section of the poem--suggests the atmosphere of r e l i g i o u s doubt r e s u l t i n g from the revolutions i n the natural sciences i n the early nineteenth 39 century. The general symptoms are the same as have been observed i n Tennyson a f t e r his reading of L y e l l . Man i s a toy blown about by the winds (1. 31), incapable of seeing r e a l i t y whole ( 8 5 ) , inhabiting a world f a r older then him-s e l f (131, 208), made fo r other purposes than his own ( 1 8 4 -186). The moral consequence i s that man "hast no right to b l i s s , / No t i t l e from the Gods to welfare end repose" (160-61); the s p i r i t u a l consequence i s fThat we must feign a b l i s s / Of doubtful future date . . . And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose" (402-6). The same type of s p i r i t u a l problem i s dealt with here as i n sections 54-56 of In Memoriam. C e l l i c l e s ' song provides the framework i n which Empedocles' attitudes ere to be seen, by denying them: he emphasizes "The rest of immortels, / The action of-men" (463-4). Empedocles' attitude toward knowledge also somewhat paral-l e l s Tennyson's. He asserts that "Mind i s the s p e l l which governs earth and heaven" (27), to which Pausanias answers, extrapolating from Empedocles' own words, that "Mind i s a l i g h t which the Gods mock us with, / To lead f a l s e those who tru s t i t " ( 3 2 - 3 ) , a position Empedocles' song i n part sup-ports: "the t h i r s t f o r b l i s s / Deep i n man's heart i s born" (168-69), "we bring / A bias with us here" (192-93). The i n -t e l l e c t u a l r e s u l t of t h i s r e a l i z a t i o n i s scepticism about the existence of the Gods. "We . . . Make Gods to whom to impute / The i l l s ' we ought to bear" (273-30); "that i n man's b r i e f 90 term / He cannot a l l things wiew, / Affords no ground to a f f i r m / That there are Gods who do!" (347-50). Even grant-ing hypothetically that there are "Gods we cannot see" (236), Gods whose separate existence i s somewhat invalidated by the monism Empedocles p r e a c h e s — " A l l things . . . Of but one s t u f f are spun" (237-8$)—their power i s limited and f a i l -ure-prone. Empedocles' moral injunction, to be "neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man" ( 1 3 6 ) , although con-sis t e n t enough to teach to Pausanias, i s not emotionally s a t i s f y i n g , even to himself, as he reveals i n Act I I , for p r i v a t e l y he s t i l l f e e l s despair. Arnold's analysis d i f f e r s from Tennyson's i n that he does not avow any f a i t h i n evolu-tionary process which could l i f t one out of the torments of the i n d i f f e r e n t L y e l l i a n world. P h i l i p James Bailey, who has been discussed e a r l i e r , was enjoying a r e v i v a l when he wrote the three works discussed here; substantial portions of a l l three were l a t e r incorpor-ated into Festus, as that work became more encyclopedic. Bailey was an orthodox C h r i s t i a n poet within rather broad lim-i t s ; the ultimate basis of his works i s a theory of atonement 10 s i m i l a r to McLeod Campbell's. In order to assure a decent universe, a l l the hopes of Tennyson's section 54 must be f u l -f i l l e d , and every l i v i n g thing must partake of eventual salva-t i o n . In Fesfeus, even the d e v i l i s saved. Bailey's encyclo-pedic approach required him to include every conceivable idea into his works, subsuming them a l l under C h r i s t i a n i t y . His 91 three p r i n c i p a l works of the early 1#50's do just t h i s . "The Angel World" i s b a s i c a l l y a simple allegory of f a l l and redemption, taking place on another world, where the angels, not men, are the centre of creation. Obvious C h r i s -t i a n symbolism, such as the cross into which the demonic s t a r s i s transformed, i s mingled with c l a s s i c a l myth, such as the Perseus myth, and with organic images of cosmic de-struction: Thick with chaotic matter and unformed— Like the volcanic blood which bounds unseen In veins of lightning through earth's cavernous h e a r t — Mid ruined orbs, l i k e broken ice-lumps, r o l l e d , Melting . . . (p. 57). Cosmic destruction becomes part of God's scheme, and the de-st r u c t i o n of the angel world when i t becomes corrupted i s just one instance of a wider benevolent system. The redemp-ti v e process, seemingly a f a i l u r e because the hero has had to abandon the corrupted planet, i s achieved when the hero turns out to be an other-worldly manifestation of Christ, and secures everybody's salvation by prayer. "The Mystic" does not deal e x p l i c i t l y with C h r i s t i a n ideas at a l l , but presents a world-system based on progressive re-incarnation. The mystic goes through seven progressive stages of existence, each more fa n t a s t i c than the preceding; by the end of the poem, he i s resurrected, outstares a l l the stars, and appears to have become master of the universe--in other words, he achieves Godhead. Bailey probably intended t h i s work as an example of the hidden t r u t h which could be communi-92 cated by myth; i t s l i t e r a l d e t a i l s c o n f l i c t on almost every score except the e t h i c a l with his own b e l i e f s . I t s primary significance f o r t h i s study l i e s i n i t s vest conception of time, beginning with the pre-Adamic kings, and i t s progres-sive sequence, i n which God leads man through stages of s p i r -i t u a l development, and the powers of the mystic are sheped by eech of the environments he i s born into . "A S p i r i t u e l Legend," e much s l i g h t e r work, i s connected with "The Angel World" i n i t s basic conception. In t h i s ver-sion of the creation story, God delegates the job of creation to his lower angels, who instigateathe project i n the f i r s t place, reserving his own intervention f o r the creation of man. However, the angels are seduced by the materiel world, and, s e t t i n g themselves up as i d o l s , f a l l awey from God; the poem represents Beiley's ettempt to selvege the idees of c l e s s i c a l Gnosticism—the d e v i l as creator of t h i s world--and incorpor-ete them into his system. The i n t e r e s t i n g thing i s the extent to which his thought remains steatic and non-evolutionary, even though at one point a great progression i s referred to (p. 1 0 4 ) . The hints at evolution scattered through Bailey's work ere simply the re s u l t of his desire to make his poetic corpus comprehend a l l possible systems. Despite the fact that they arrive at s t r i k i n g l y d i f f e r e n t conclusions, Tennyson and Arnold deal recognizably with the same world-picture that L y e l l prompted; Scott?s evolutionism i s derived from c l a s s i c a l and Eastern sources, rather than from the encounter with nineteenth-century science. Unlike 93 Scott and Bailey, Tennyson does not express his ideas i n language obviously derived from contemporary i d e a l i s t p h i l o -sophy, but rather i n terms which already carry several layers of association i n customary use. Thus, i n expressing a s c i e n t i f i c concept such as the cumulative e f f e c t s of geo-l o g i c a l change, he uses language which suggests not the process of analysis that the geologist must go through i n order to reach his conclusions, but instead the d i r e c t ex-11 perience of an onlooker. To express r e l i g i o u s doubt, he does not say s p e c i f i c a l l y that his f a i t h i n the concept of immortality i s weakened, but instead uses images derived from physical a c t i v i t y : "I f a l t e r where I firm l y trod" ( 55). He translates s c i e n t i f i c facts into the vocabulary most f a m i l i a r to his readers: dinosaurs become "Dragons of the prime" ( (56) , and the word "aeonic" i s constantly used to suggest incompre-hensible stretches of time. Tennyson's key terms, such as w i l l , type, and move, remain ambivalent, charged with v a r i e -t i e s of possible meaning, allowing multiple patterns of thought to beiforwarded through a single image. I t i s t h i s use of ordinary language which caused the poem's tremendous impact, which i t could not have had had i t handled the same ideas i n the highly technical vocabulary of a Bailey. The readers f e l t that t h e i r own knowledge and experience were being developed i n directions previously unknown to them. Many c r i t i c s have f e l t s i m i l a r i t i e s between the philosophi-94 c a l approach of In Memoriam and those of other works. Both Morse Peckham and Robert Langbaum have suggested a p a r a l l e l 1 2 with Kierkegaard. There are obvious a f f i n i t i e s , as with Kierkegaard's i d e n t i f i c a t i o n of God with the unknown, and his continual emphasis on subjective standards of b e l i e f ; but such concepts are not exclusive to his writings, and his important emphasis on the paradox of an h i s t o r i c a l basis f o r 13 C h r i s t i a n i t y moves i n the opposite d i r e c t i o n from Tennyson. Kierkegaard's truth i s determined by a single revelation i n time, which becomes f o r l a t e r generations absurd, because of i t s psychological demands, and therefore must necessarily be believed; Tennyson's truth must be i n t u i t a b l e by the s p i r i t u a l consciousness, and must f i n d a cor r e l a t i v e i n a universal, dynamic process, as opposed to a divine intervention i n history. His r e j e c t i o n of the type of h i s t o r i c a l d i a l e c t i c envisaged by Kierkegaard i s obvious i n a change made i n the 18*75 e d i t i o n of In Memoriam. Following the publication of The Descent of Man, apparently f e e l i n g that the Eden myth could, no longer be used i n an h i s t o r i c a l context, he he altered the l i n e "Since Adam l e f t his garden yet" (24) to "Since our f i r s t sun arose 1L and set." Eugene August has made an even less appropriate comparison with Teilhard de Chardin, whose synthesis of the sciences i s a straightforward application of twentieth-century theology to b i o l o g i c a l data, the imposition of a scheme rather than the 1 *> i n t u i t i o n of one. J A rather more illuminating comparison can be made with 9 5 figures whom Tennyson was i n personal contact with, such as Car l y l e and Maurice, whose analyses of the human condition have a concrete bearing on Tennyson's. C a r l y l e ' s descrip-t i o n of what might be cal l e d a conversion experience i n Sartor Resartus i s too well known f o r a detailed examination to be necessary. I t should be re a d i l y apparent that each of his three stages appears i n In Memoriam: the "Everlasting No," i n the defiant question about the significance of human l i f e i n the L y e l l i a n world ( 5 6 ) , the "Centre of Indifference" i n the calmer though s p i r i t u a l l y uncertain sections from 6 5 to the "calm" Christmas Eve i n 7$, and the "Everlasting Yea" i n the f i n a l celebration of progressive development, i n which the t e r r i f y i n g aspects of world convulsion are answered by Hallam's smile. I t i s well known how Sartor became the v i r t u a l bible of innovative thinkers of the '40's and '50's, from Maurice to Froude and Francis Newman; that Tennyson was also influenced i s apparent from the I d y l l s , i f not from his personal statements. Carlyle's assertion of the fundamental importance of f a i t h which springs from the divine i n man, would have met with strong agreement from Tennyson. Maurice, whom Tennyson defended at a time when his teaching was getting him into trouble (see "To the Reverend F. D. Maur-i c e " ) , s i m i l a r l y dwelt on the importance of subjective cer-tainty, but with d i f f e r e n t implications. Whereas C a r l y l e , for a l l his c u l t u r a l evolution through the medium of "organic filaments," remained unalterably opposed to the thought of 96 b i o l o g i c a l development, Maurice was ambivalent, and some of his comments allow for an evolutionary process i n nature. God's communication to man i s not only to the i n d i v i d u a l consciousness but to the consciousness of the entire race, 16 " i t s ground i n an or i g i n a t i n g W i l l . " However, there i s a double implication i n his discussion of the proper forms of knowledge. Although he declared the individual's d i r e c t and presumably unmediated contact with the holy spirit—w^"- r; "know that we know God . . . to know t h i s i s . . , eternal l i f e " 1 ? — h e nevertheless opposed t h i s " f 8 c t of God's Revela-t i o n " to s c i e n t i f i c f a ct, and simultaneously to a vague, 1 8 generalized "God consciousness." Thi® absolute d i s t i n c t i o n comes p e r i l o u s l y close to what has been c a l l e d 8 "double-realm" theory, the notion that the d i f f e r e n t aspects of man's 1 0 consciousness do not derive from a single source. ' Maurice, however, by asserting the primacy of subjective certainty over empirical, remained committed to a "single-realm" theory, l i k e most i n t e l l e c t u a l s i n the nineteenth century; he f e l t the need f o r a l l types of thought to come from a single, "organic" unity somewhere i n the mind.^O ^ s g r e a t opponent, Henry Mansel, i s almost the f i r s t consistent advocate of the double-realm theory, maintaining that f a i t h and s c i e n t i f i c ? 1 reason are mutually exclusive and independent. Maurice's f r u i t l e s s duel with him i n numbers of t r a c t s bears witness to his d i f f i c u l t y i n comprehending the difference between the two arguments, f o r he could never admit that they were t a l k i n g two d i f f e r e n t languages. 97 At t h i s point, one remembers that a d i s c i p l e of Mansel, Herbert Spencer, sent Tennyson a copy of his P r i n c i p l e s of Psychology with the suggestion that i t closely corresponded to some of Tennyson's ideas, namely, the development of man, or of man's mind, through "lower l i v e s . " The doubt occurs, since Tennyson seems at times 8 m b i v a l e n t on the question of the value of s c i e n t i f i c knowledge, and since a follower of Mansel found s i m i l a r i t i e s between them, of whether hesaccepted the double- or single-realm theory. The f i r s t answer, of course, i s that Spencer i s not a con-sis t e n t follower of Mansel; while using his arguments to demonstrate the fundamental mysteries, or incomprehensions, underlying a l l knowledge and b e l i e f , he nonetheless makes i t his enterprise to determine the single ground for a l l think-23 ing. This ground he finds i n the p r i n c i p l e of b e l i e f , which, as he points out, a l l knowledge can be reduced t o . 2 ^ This much of his argument i s congruent with Tennyson's ideas; Spencer, however, makes his c r i t e r i o n of truth the i n a b i l i t y 25 to conceive the negation of any proposition. He ends his argument by formulating a universal law of evolution as the "advance from the simple to the complex, through a process of successive d i f f e r e n t i a t i o n s . " 2 ^ I t i s obvious that Tennyson adhered to the single-realm theory. Reason and f a i t h may be distinguished from each other i n method, but they must be worked into a single whole i n order to constitute a s a t i s f y i n g truth; and the fact that the 98 truth i s expected to s a t i s f y , to be in:.accord with one's expectations, shows that subjective need i s , as i n Maur-ice, taken to be a s u f f i c i e n t c r i t e r i o n of the truth-value of any idea. Tennyson attempted to find a point i n which a l l his disparate conceptions could be united, and he conceived of t h i s point not as a r a t i o n a l i z a t i o n , a deliberate creation of his own, but rather as the deep inner truth, the awareness which had underlain his actions from the beginning. His attempt to f i n d t h i s central point i n a theory of s p i r i t u a l evolution constitutes a d i f f i c u l t i n t e l l e c t u a l breakthrough, not only for Tennyson, but for his period. CHAPTER SIX FROM IN MEMORIAM TO THE ORIGIN: THE PRINCESS AND POEMS OF THE 16*50'S The advanced i n t e l l e c t u a l response to In Memoriam i n the years immediately after i t s publication may be indicated by an anonymous poem published i n 16*51, e n t i t l e d The Middle Night. 1 I t s debt to Tennyson i s r e a d i l y apparent i n i t s use of the In Memoriam stanza, end i n the three stanzas of section 106 of that poem ("Ring out the care, the want, the si n . . .") af f i x e d as epigraph. I t deals with the problems of f a i t h which are f a m i l i a r from many other sources; the preface explains that i t had o r i g i n a l l y been designed es a sort of philosophical poem about "the s t i r r i n g events of the times," but that the author had given up thet project be-cause of i t s d i f f i c u l t y and putative "unpoetieal" quality. The poem as i t stands consists instead of a series of basic-a l l y r e l i g i o u s meditations, i n which one can see the events of the ege ref l e c t e d , usually i n a rather ebstrect wey. The prefece makes i t clear that the poem i s to be read for i t s s o c i a l commentary as well as f o r i t s psychologicel analysis of the author. As i s perhaps to be expected, metaphors drawn from organic nature are used to describe s o c i a l or p o l i t i c a l phenomena. Referring to the f i r s t f i f t y years of the century, e metaphor which may draw either on L y e l l or on the L y e l l i a n sections of 100 In Memoriam i s used: "We see the growth of many seeds / Which f i f t y suns have brought to f r u i t . . . but at the root / An insect t r i b e destruction breeds" (section 4). Also dominant i n the early sections of the poem i s the fear of the decline or regression of the human race, a concept which was to gain power during the l a s t h a l f of the century. This decline i s generally figured i n moral terms: "the slow signs of swift decline, / The calm i n d i f -ference of despair" (10) characterize both individuals and the condition of a s c e p t i c a l age; the thought of each man "hoard ing the largest heap of pelf" (6) provokes the question "But can you think mankind so base?" (7). However, a more physical metaphor i s also used, that of the sun hav-ing passed i t s zenith and "In growing heat" (4) beginning to set. Balanced against these indications of decline, however, are images of progress. The predictable metaphor of plant-ing seeds i s used (27), and the more abstract prospect of "gathering Knowledge by the grain" (13); p o s s i b i l i t i e s of i n d i v i d u a l growth,are i l l u s t r a t e d by birds learning to f l y and orators learning to speak (15). The most emphatic ex-pression of b e l i e f i n progress comes i n section 3, when i t i s suggested that the nineteenth century w i l l provide the basis for future growth: "The heavenward stairway men s h a l l climb, / And aiming higher blessings l i v e . " I t i s not i n d i -cated whether t h i s figure applies tb the race as a whole, or 101 merely to the greater worth of individuals i n the future. The poem, i n short, uses the abstract concepts of progress and decline without giving them the concrete evolutionary significance that Tennyson does, and employs organic meta-phors without suggesting the p o s s i b i l i t i e s of growth on more than an i n d i v i d u a l l e v e l . The Middle Night thus shows that i t was possible to take Tennyson's poem to heart without examining i t s deeper con-cepts, but i t also shows t h e t a p p l i c a b i l i t y of In Memoriam&s patterns of thought to s o c i a l and p o l i t i c a l problems. A l -ready i n sections 113 and 117 of that work, geological and p o l i t i c a l cataclysms are presented as aspects of the same process, the long-term improvement of humanity inua roughly b i o l o g i c a l sense. This tendency becomes more evident i n the work that follows the v i r t u a l completion of In Memoriam i n 1345, i n which evolutionary thinking i s increasingly connec-ted with thinking about the nature of society and i t s proper management. Although published i n 1347 , more than two years before In 3 Memoriam, The Princess appears to have been written l a t e r . I t s s u b t i t l e , "A Medley," i s apt because, as the f i r s t of Ten-nyson's "modern" long poems, i t mixes genres i n an unprece-dented way, mingling s a t i r e , medieval romance, "verse-novel," l y r i c , and philosophical poem. I t s subject, an imaginary attempt to found a women's university during the middle ages, provides a means of suggesting remedies for contemporary 1 0 2 s o c i a l problems; but concomitant with t h i s main subject, i s a complicated r e f l e c t i o n about the future evolution of the human race. Since the sources f o r Tennyson's thought i n t h i s poem are already well known and documented,^ what i s said i n t h i s chapter need only be a summing-up, r e l a t i n g the material i n t h i s poem to the development of Tennyson's evolutionary speculation as a whole. Like many others i n the second quarter of the nineteenth century, Tennyson was influenced by the s o c i a l philosophies of Saint-Simon and his followers. Saint-Simon, deriving from the eighteenth-century philosophe t r a d i t i o n , adopted the basic formulations of Newtonian mechanism and. t r i e d to discover the operations of universal and unalterable laws i n human behaviour, e s p e c i a l l y i n h i s t o r i c a l development. His followers, such as Enfantin and Fourier, tended to look more favourably on the concept, given currency by Burke and Herder, of an "organic" society, and used t h e i r master's vocabulary of alternating "organic" and " c r i t i c a l " periods with a con-siderable bias i n favour of the organic. The d i s t i n c t i o n , introduced into English culture by C a r l y l e , allowed a con-venient way of explaining the possible action of evolution at the s o c i a l - p o l i t i c a l l e v e l . Saint-Simon, together with his renegade follower Comte, also helped the evolutionary mode of explanation by personifying mankind 8S "the c o l l e c t i v e orgen-ism" or "the Great Being," since i f the species i s seen as a r e a l entity rather than as a c o l l e c t i o n of individuals, i t i s 103 easier to imagine h i s t o r i c a l events as a form of progress that i n some way a f f e c t s the whole species. I t i s probable that a b e l i e f i n l i t e r a l s o c i a l evolution i s not possible without some such pe r s o n i f i c a t i o n of the species or society. Tennyson's sympathy with the Seint-Simonian movement may be inferred from a youthful l e t t e r of his, i n which he says that "the existence of the sect of the St. Simonists i s at once a proof of the immense mass of e v i l that i s extant i n the nineteenth century, and a focus which gathers a l l i t s rays."^ In t h i s uncommitted sympathy, he can be compered 7 with Frederick Meurice, who expressed s i m i l a r opinions; but whatever his precise feelings about the French s o c i a l i s t movements, Tennyson's debt to C a r l y l e is-undeniable, and. C a r l y l e drew many of his ideas from Saint-Simonian sources. The Princess draws on these s o c i a l i s t doctrines, although large l y f o r the questions posed rather than f o r the answers suggested. The main issue i n the poem, the role of women i n society, was of great concern to the Seint-Simoniams, and could be considered as en extension of evolutionery theory q as w e l l . The curriculum of Princess Ida's u n i v e r s i t y i n -cludes the sciences as well as more standard subjects. The main elements of a medieval curriculum, however, are conspicu-ously absent, and. t h i s anachronism, l i k e most others i n the poem, suggests the a p p l i c s t i o n of the story to contemporary problems. C e r t a i n l y the content of women's studies was to some extent a concern of the s o c i a l i s t s ; the learning of 104 s c i e n t i f i c l a w s — " E l e c t r i c , chemic laws, and a l l the rest " (II, 1. 3 6 2 )—formed the basis of any Saint-Simonian pro-10 gram. Princess Ida consistently demonstrates an in t e r e s t i n b i o l o g i c a l and. geological change. "There sinks the nebulous star we c a l l the Sun, / I f that hypothesis of t h e i r s be sound" (IV, 11. 1 - 2 ) , she says, c a r e f u l l y evading a d e f i n i t e opinion. Probably the i n t e l l e c t u a l centre of the poem i s the discussion of creation that follows the discovery of a f o s s i l skeleton. Already, the Princess has wished that human l i f e might be prolonged enough that one might "watch / The sandy footprint harden into stone" (III, 11. 253-54) and see the future consequences of her actions; presumably, because of the time-scale, b i o l o g i c a l as well as s o c i a l consequences are implied, insofar as there i s a d i s t i n c t i o n . 1 1 The sight of the f o s s i l sparks the r e f l e c t i o n that, "As these rude bones to us, are we to her / That w i l l be" (III, 11. 279-30). This hypothesis i s untenable to the Prince, who rejects the idea of a God. subject to development: "Dare we dream of that . . . Which wrought us, as the workman and his work, / That prac-t i c e betters^" (III, 230-82). Ida responds with a paradigm of creation, reminiscent of Raphael's excuses f o r t e l l i n g the story of the war i n heaven i n chronological sequence: the workmen, God, created the world es e t o t a l i t y , a l l at once; men who are parts of that t o t a l i t y and have only par-t i a l v i s i o n must perceive things sequentially that are simul-105 taneous i n eternity, thus making "One act a phantom of suc-cession" (III, 1. 3 1 2 ) . This paradigm shows c l e a r l y the pattern that has been observed taking shape i n previous Ten-nyson poems, that evolution i s seen as the r e s u l t of the entry of God into the world, a view si m i l a r to Browning's paradigm for human l i f e i n Sordello, based on the fundamental 1 ? assumption of "Soul on Matter being thrust." ~ I f i t also reminds one of Gosse's i l l - f a t e d attempt to reconcile geology 1 3 and SeEipture, t h i s fact shows the ways i n which a rather vague and f l e x i b l e concept could be adapted to a l l i n t e l l e c -t u a l positions, and may account for Tennyson's popularity at a l l the c u l t u r a l levels of his time. The theory of evolution i s made evident early i n the poem. The a>rgument of the women i s that man's current superiority over women i s the r e s u l t of conditioning: "Besides the brain was l i k e the hand, and grew / With using; thence the man's, i f more was more" (II, 1 1 . 1 3 4 - 3 5 ) . Women, however, also have d i s t i n c t natural advantages: "But woman ripened e a r l i e r , and her l i f e /Was longer" (II, 11 . 1 3 3 - 3 9 ) . The events of the poem support t h i s view, and the p a r t i c u l a r weakness of the Princess' system i s that i t f a i l s to take into account the means of d i r e c t i n g the evolutionary process, through sex and marriage. Thus the poem ends with the r e c o n c i l i a t i o n of the Princess and Prince, who has declared himself her help-er—"The woman's cause i s man's" (VII, 1. 2 4 3 ) . The quality of the race depends on i t s female members—"If she be small, 106 slight-natured, miserable, / How s h a l l men grow?" (VII, 1 1 . 2 4 9 - 5 0 ) . From a twentieth-century point of view, there i s a curious confusion i n Tennyson's arguments; mental and emo-t i o n a l q u a l i t i e s are l a r g e l y irrelevant from the point of view of reproduction, on which evolutionary change depends. Tennyson's moral approach to evolution causes him to mix the two independent conditions, since he views the evolution of man es necessarily involving s p i r i t u a l development, and never r e a l l y distinguishes between that and b i o l o g i c e l chenge. The r e s u l t of the whole process i n The Princess i s described i n lenguege f i l l e d with sexual implications: Then comes the s t a t e l i e r Eden back to men: Then reign the world's great b r i d a l s , cheste and calm: Then springs the crowning race of humankind. (VII, 1 1 . 2 7 7 - 7 9 ) The reader i s l e f t with the t y p i c a l problems of eugenics. Tennyson thought he had good reason to argue thet some form of femele emencipation wes necessery for the proper evolution of men, but the temptation to personify the human race can be seen i n these l i n e s , with the r e s u l t i n g confusion. I t i s then said that t h i s whole process should be "typed" "In our own l i v e s " (VII, 1 1 . 231-32) as a means of bringing i t about; the implied connection between i n d i v i d u a l and species hes elreedy been observed i n In Memoriam. In post-Darwinien biology, species chenge i s e function of "random," undirected changes i n the gene pool, rather then e s p e c i e l process with an oba servable d i r e c t i o n ; but when Tennyson was writing, not only 107 was evolutionary theory generally inseparable from e t h i c a l and r e l i g i o u s concerns, but ideas on s o c i a l reform were seriously offered i n b i o l o g i c a l t r e a t i s e s . One further aspect of The Princess i s relevant to t h i s discussion because i t offers the most highly elaborated expression of one of Tennyson's evolutionary concents. In the s o c i a l i s t c i r c l e s of the time, the ide8 of the higher form of man—who of course was now beginning to emerge i n accordance with the unalterable laws of h i s t o r y — a s andro-1 gyne was very much i n the a i r . ' Tennyson, at least part, of the time, seems to have conceived of society as devel-oping i n the d i r e c t i o n of a C h r i s t - l i k e man ("the Christ that i s to be"), and he regarded C h r i s t as combining the 1 ft q u a l i t i e s of both sexes. I t i s no surprise, therefore, to find that i n The Princess one of the directions evolu-t i o n w i l l take i s a mingling of sexual c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s : " l i k e r they must grow; / The men be more of womain, she of man; / He gain i n sweetness end i n moral height . . . She mental breadth" (VII, 1 1 . 2 6 3 - 6 7 ) . The description mey leek something i n d e f i n i t i o n , but the whole ergument leads to the conclusion that i n true m a r r i a g e — i n which the part-ners type the evolutionary process within themselves—"Pur-pose i n purpose, w i l l i n w i l l , they grow, / The single pure and perfect animal, / The two-celled heart" (VII, 2 8 7 - 3 9 ) . This concept of the mingling of sexes i s never again stated so emphatically i n Tennyson's writings, although i t s presence 108 occasionally makes i t s e l f f e l t i n l a t e r works. The Saint-Simonians, of course, exercised 8 powerful influence on many other writers, but nowhe.re i n the large number of s o c i a l i s t poems dating from the 1840's and f 5 0 f s i s there such a development of the importance of evolution for s o c i a l development as i n The Princess. In fact, the most s i g n i f i c a n t b i o l o g i c a l passage i n such poetry denies the p o s s i b i l i t y of voluntary control over growth, the con-cept Tennyson elaborated. In Clough Ts Amours de Voyage, Claude speculates that growth depends on unconsciousness of higher p o s s i b i l i t i e s : wtSuld a grain be able to develop to adulthood "Could i t compare, end r e f l e c t , and examine one thing with another?" ( I I I . i i ) . While Tennyson was exploring the s o c i a l and p o l i t i c a l implications of evolution, Robert Browning was taking e somewhet d i f f e r e n t epproech. He had alreedy used p o l i t i -c e l l y r a d i c e l l y ideas i n Sordello, although they are not expressed i n organic terms; there, however, he had been con-cerned, not with the universal law of progress, but with the "everlasting minute of creation," as Luria celled i t (Act V), that l i e s behind. Sordello, e f t e r expressing e theory of p o l i t i c a l progress into e brotherhood of man, achieves a consummating v i s i o n that, unlike Parecelsus', i s b a s i c a l l y non-progressive—or rather, since he i s abstracted "Quite out of Time and t h i s world," leaves no further stage to pro-gress to. In the moment before his death, Sordello learns 109 that a l l temporal events, including those i n Paracelsus' v i s i o n , are only "Time's concern." Once having achieved t h i s stage, the problem of evolution appeared no longer to intere s t Browning u n t i l a f t e r the out-break of the Darwinist controversy. But one of his poems of the 1#50's contains an important r e f l e c t i o n on the sub-ject, and was s p e c i f i c a l l y referred to by Browning i n his l e t t e r to F u r n i v a l l as " a n t i c i p a t i n g " a l l that was proven 17 i n Darwin's theory. The poet Cleon expounds a theory of progression i n nature, but i r o n i c a l l y he cannot perceive the l o g i c a l consequences of his own ideas. The development of l i f e i s sequential: " a l l earth's tenantry, from worm to bird, / Ere man, her l a s t , appeared upon the stage." I t i s furthermore a l o g i c a l and inevitable development, i n which i t i s possible to deduce the next step i n the series--"Thou wouldst have seen them perfect, and deduced / The nerfectness of others yet unseen." Man represents the addition of con-sciousness-in-oneself to nature, thus transcending " l i f e ' s mechanics" by the introduction of the s p i r i t . At t h i s point, Cleon's understanding of the process breaks down, and he con-cludes that the creation of man was i r r a t i o n a l , because "In man there's f a i l u r e , only since he l e f t / The lower and i n -conscious HsicZl forms of l i f e . " The absence of the p o s s i b i l -i t y of continued growth puts an end to human aspirations; without the certainty of a l i f e a f t e r death, human struggle i s meaningless for Cleon, as i t was f o r a large number of 1 1 0 people i n the nineteenth century. The poem ends with Cleon's scornful dismissal of C h r i s t i a n i t y as a d o c t r i n Q which "could be held by no sane man." The irony i n d i -cates that C h r i s t i a n revelation i s the next stage of the process, allowing for the p o s s i b i l i t y of continued human growth. Cleon can i n t u i t the higher stage, hup cannot accept i t when i t i s revealed to him. Thus Browning, l i k e Tennyson, draws a sort of s o c i a l conclusion from the notion of evolutionary process: Chris-t i a n i t y i s the consummation of human development, as man i s the consummation of natural development. However, un-l i k e Tennyson, Browning appears to have become progres-s i v e l y less concerned with the workings of the process, un-t i l , i n "Cleon," i t i s v i r t u a l l y an alternate version of the story i n Genesis. His l a t e r claim to have anticipated Darwin shows that he did not understand the e s s e n t i a l d i f -ference between Darwinian and pre-Darwinian models of evolu-t i o n . Nonetheless, his adoption of what he thought of as Darwinian terms i n his works following 16*71 showstbaescon-t i n u i t y between the early progressivist v i s i o n of Paracelsus and the more apparently conventional c r e a t i o n i s t viewpoint of the works of his maturity. Although Tennyson's period of concentration on the d i r e c t presentation of evolutionary thought had largely come to an and with In Memoriam, i t i s not true to say that his l a t e r works do:;not deal with evolutionary themes. 1^ The applica-111 t i o n of evolution to s o c i a l problems, seen i n The Princess, showed the trend of his development, and the basic concepts to be found i n that work underlie the s o c i a l end p o l i t i c a l ideas of a number of his l a t e r works. This trend reached i t s high point i n the 1 8 5 0's, when Tennyson wrote his l a r -gest emount of d i r e c t l y p o l i t i c a l poetry—much of i t sparked by the p o s s i b i l i t y of war with Fra'nce--and when the theme of p o l i t i c a l progressivism entered his major works. By the completion of In Memoriam, i t has been shown, Tennyson had come to conceive of evolution as the entry of God into the world, as Browning had done during the 1330's. The continuance of thi s model can be seen i n the short noem " W i l l " ( 1 3 5 5 ) . After In Memoriam, the word " w i l l " implies not only i n d i v i d u a l will-power, but also 8 more generel humen w i l l to develop; the i n d i v i d u a l and the species are by now interconnected i n Tennyson's thought by the mysterious correspondence which i s c a l l e d "typing" i n both In Memoriam and The Princess. The man whose w i l l i s strong can endure the world's "random shock"; the man whose w i l l i s weak "betterjlsjnot with time, / Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended W i l l . " The important phrase i s "heaven-descended," showing the divine element i n man, and i t i s e phrese that becomes important i n some of the l a t e r works. The "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" (1352) makes use, i n i t s concluding section, of images of geological 112 change to emphasize the eternal q u a l i t i e s of the soul. Both erosion—"Giant Ages heave the h i l l / And break the shore"—and the p l u r a l i t y of worlds—"world on world i n myriad myriads . . .ceach with d i f f e r e n t powers, / And other forms of l i f e " ( 2 5 9 - 6 4 ) — s i g n i f y change and uncer-tainty, but the immortality of the soul i s affirmed i n the face of these. The narrative poem "Sea Dreams," not published u n t i l 1 8 6 0 , although written three years e a r l i e r , reaches i t s climax with a dream-vision i n which the mingling of s o c i a l and geological motifs occurs with a l i t e r a l n e s s that could not be found outside a dream. The main image i s of waves breaking against a set of c l i f f s , eroding them, but when the dreamer sees c l e a r l y , she sees that the c l i f f s are a c t u a l l y a set of cathedrals of every period and s t y l e . These symbols of past r e l i g i o n s crumble, while men end women, t h e i r voices alweys i n tune with the musical note which accompanies the whole scene, t r y to re-erect them. The obvious implication i s that the collapse of systems of f a i t h i s inevitable and part of the necessary order of nature, even at the cost of the people whose f a i t h has been destroyed, end who ere swept ewey by the return of the de-structive wave. The question i s whether t h i s inevitable collapse includes C h r i s t i a n i t y . The dream ends with the image of the V i r g i n Mother to t t e r i n g , with her c h i l d c l i n g -ing to her. C a r l y l e had long since declared that Chris-113 t i a n i t y was a worn-out system, badly i n need of patching i f not of t o t a l replacement. Tennyson's poem, however, leaves i t uncertain whether i t i s i n s t i t u t i o n a l C h r i s t i a -nity, Roman Catholicism, or C h r i s t i a n b e l i e f i n general that was t o t t e r i n g . An in t e r e s t i n g aspect of the poem, commented on af t e r the narration of the dream has ended, i s the harmony of the music with the "wild c r i e s " of the people: "'Why, that would make our passions f a r too l i k e / The discords dear to the musician'" ( 2 4 9 - 5 0 ) , says her husband. One of the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of the late poetry i s the increasing emphasis on the violence entailed by the evolutionary process, but here, as i n In Memoriam, the violence i s harmonized with the b e l i e f i n progress. More emphatic doubts about the nature of human develop-ment are put i n the mouth of the speaker of Maud. He i s obsessed with the e v i l s of the L y e l l i a n world, which he sees exemplified i n the s o c i a l practices of the day. "Nature i s one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal" (I. i v ) ; the ensuing images of predation form the natural counterpart to the fas c i n a t i o n with war which forms one of the main themes of the poem, as well as to the speaker's fantasies of the destruction of the human race: "At war with myself and a wretched race" ( I . x), "Strike dead the whole weak race of venomous worms, . . . We are not worthy to l i v e " (II. i ) . Ever since Dr. Mann's Vindication, published a few 1 q months a f t e r the poem i t s e l f , 7 i t has been a c r i t i c a l com-1 1 4 monplace to regard the narrator as unbalanced from the beginning, and to see his obsession with the inadequacies of the world as the main source of his madness; but Mann himself pointed out the s a l i e n t fact that the hero's con-cerns r e f l e c t the r e a l i t i e s of the wgrld, so that more than an i n d i v i d u a l njala-Mjustment i s involved. The per-s o n i f i c a t i o n of society as a whole, and the concern with the violence of change, unite the p o l i t i c a l end b i o l o g i c a l spheres of develonment: For the d r i f t of the Maker i s dark, an I s i s hid by the v e i l . Who knows the ways of the world, how God w i l l bring them about? Our planet i s one, the suns are many, the world i s wide. S h a l l I weep i f a Poland f a l l ? s h a l l I shriek i f a Hungary f a i l ? Or an infant c i v i l i s a t i o n be ruled with rod or with knout? ( I . iv) Two stanzas e a r l i e r , the d i r e c t l y evolutionary comparison i s made between man and the "monstrous e f t , " the dinosaur, who once ruled the world. The ideas of In Memoriam are inverted by describing the dinosaur as once "Nature's crowning race" and by suggesting, not the evolution of a higher form of man, but his eventual replacement by a higher species: "He now i s f i r s t , but i s he the last? i s he not too base?" The narretor resolves his c o n f l i c t s by leaving to take part i n the Crimean war. In t h i s he may seem to be a case of f a i l e d development, becoming a part of the L y e l l i a n world on i t s own terms. Tennyson's own description, however, 115 states emphatically that the conclusion i s a sign of s p i r i -t u a l progress: "when he has at length passed through the f i e r y furnace, and had recovered his reason, giving him-s e l f up to work for the good of mankind through the un-20 selfishness born of h i s great passion." The war may perhaps, then, represent a s p i r i t u a l quest on the part of the speaker, the fu l f i l m e n t of his early wish, "ah for a man to arise i n me, / That the man IS.am may cease to be!" (I. x). However, the strong element of national concern i n t h i s war leads to the conclusion that the war i t s e l f i s a means of progress f o r mankind, perhaps one of the "thou-sand shocks" that society must experience. This poem i s p a r t i c u l a r l y i n t e r e s t i n g for i t s a n t i c i p a -tions of the l a t e r development of Tennyson's poetry, i n his increasing emphasis on the violence of the evolutionary process, and i n the gradual fading of the hope for the higher race into the i n d e f i n i t e future, despite hfes essential meliorism. This gradual attenuation of the hopeful v i s i o n followed the advent of Darwinism, but by the end of the 1850's Tennyson's evolutionary thought was complete i n i t s e s s e n t i a l forms; the l a s t stage of t h i s development was the assimila-t i o n of the p o l i t i c a l and s o c i a l worlds into the cosmic process. CHAPTER SEVEN CONCLUSION The O r i g i n of Species was published i n 1 8 5 9 , and immedi-ately became the centre of a controversy that was neither clear-cut nor well understood. Churchmen of the Wilberforce type attacked i t because i t denied the Genesis account of creation; evolutionary s c i e n t i s t s l i k e Owen and Agassiz objected to i t because i t denied progressivism, which was the central doctrine i n t h e i r metaphysic. Probably the l a r -gest portion of the public saw the work as simply a confirma-t i o n or restatement of the evolutionary creeds which were already i n existence. I t took an unexpectedly long time for the Origi n to make an impact on poetry, and even when i t can d e f i n i t e l y be shown as an influence on a poet's thinking, i t i s frequently d i f f i c u l t to d i s t i n g u i s h the r e s u l t s from those of pre-Darwinian metaphysical theories. The f i r s t poem af t e r 1859 to deal concretely with evolu-tionary problems was a v i r t u a l l y forgotten B i b l i c a l er>ic by Edwin Atherstone, e n t i t l e d I s r a e l i n Egypt ( 1 8 6 1 ) . Because of Atherstone's r e l i g i o u s bias, the h e r e t i c a l speculations are given to Satan, thus inadvertently making him a more sympathetic character than he would otherwise have been; the suggestions, however, are nothing new, and could have been written at any time since Byron. Satan proposes a f i r s t cause 117 antecedent to God, a process of development which w i l l make the devi l s into d e i t i e s eventually, and the i d e n t i t y of organic and inorganic matter. 1 I t might have seemed to a contemporary reader that Atherstone was cashing i n on the recent Darwinian controversy, but i f the section was writ-ten with Darwin i n mind, i t cannot be said that he was a p a r t i c u l a r l y perceptive reader. The f i r s t poems which seem d e f i n i t e l y to have been i n -fluenced by a study of Darwin are to be found i n Browning's Dramatis Personae, published i n 1 3 6 4 . "Caliban upon Setebos," although obviously deriving i t s central conception from Shakespeare, appears to have been written with the contem-porary debate on the antiquity of man i n mind, and gives an impression of how a primitive human creature might think. Caliban has formed his conception of deity i n his own image; Setebos i s cruel and s p i t e f u l , p artly out of loneliness end envy of the contentment of the sters, p e r t l y out of pure sadism. He i s , furthermore, e limited god, since he only mede the eerth end solar system, not the heavens. Caliban's thinking shows the early traces of a Platonic concept—"Makes t h i s a bubble-world to ape yon r e a l " — a n d of a sort of prog-ress i n nature, since Setebos "hath made things worthier than Himself." There i s also the beginning of a less anthropo-morphic, or i n t h i s case Celibomorphic, deity, i n the idee of the Quiet which dwells beyond the sters, en epperently omni-potent being which mey come into a Manicheen c o n f l i c t with 118 the lesser c r u e l deity. Caliban worships by sympathetic magic and s e l f - t o r t u r e as a form of penitence; his devel-oping t r a i n s of thought are hindered by his superstitions. The poem partly s a t i r i z e s eighteenth-century concepts of natural theology, but also suggests the innate quality of the basic r e l i g i o u s ideas, even though misunderstood by the primitive creature. L y e l l , however, i s as l i k e l y a source for Browning's poem as Darwin, who refrained from dire c t speculation about man's ancestry for over a decade. However, i t was understood from the onset of the controversy that Darwin's views implied the evolution of man, and the famous debate between Huxley and Wilberforce took place on that issue. S t i l l , however much Browning may have been provoked by the Darwinian contro-versy, his ideas remained b a s i c a l l y unchanged. "Mr. Sludge, 'the Medium,'" i n the same volume, states the doctrine of a s p i r i t u a l world whidh i s independent of the material but nonetheless acts upon i t , a conception which Browning saw 2 as conformable to Darwinism. He p l a i n l y believed that Dar-win wes simply o f f e r i n g s c i e n t i f i c confirmation of the evolu-tionary metaphysic which he had presented i n his own poetry. In his l a t e r works, p a r t i c u l a r l y Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau end F i f i n e at the F a i r , which appeered during the controversy over The Descent of Men, Browning elaborated hypotheses of evolution i n more d e t a i l , without a l t e r i n g s i g -n i f i c a n t l y his already established conceptions. In one of his l a s t works, the "Parleying with Francis F u r i n i , " F u r i n i i s made to propose an alternate, but complementary, way of approaching the problem of man's development, beginning with the single personal fact of self-consciousness, from which he deduces God. He foresees, or at least suggests, a future stage of development i n which man w i l l have ad-vanced to the condition of "Prime Mind," but t h i s stage w i l l not be reached without a r a d i c a l change i n the nature of the developmental process—"some fresh kind of sun and moon." Man's cause i s de-anthropomorphized into an " i n i -tiator-spasm," but the temporal process i s s t i l l conceived of as a manifestation of the o r i g i n a l "eternal moment" of creation. Poetry inspired by Darwin, rather than by pre-Darvrinian theories, does not r e a l l y appear u n t i l the 1370's, a f t e r The Descent of Man had spelled out the implications of natural s e l e c t i o n . Swinburne was to use the concept of man's progressive development i n "Hertha" to suggest the necessity of p o l i t i c a l evolution; "Hertha" i s one of the central poems i n his Songs before Sunrise, and thus becomes 3 part of a gigantic hymn to republicanism. Meredith was to put Darwinism to equally metaphysical purposes i n his poetry, suggesting the esse n t i a l goodness of nature underlying i t s ambivalent and sometimes t e r r i f y i n g surface; for the person who sees the true significance of natural processes, the encounter with nature i s healthy and s e l f - a f f i r m i n g , while 120 f o r those who approach i t with the fears engendered by-t r a d i t i o n a l b e l i e f s and t h e i r breakdown, i t i s d i s o r i e n t -ing: "Enter these enchanted woods, ye who dare."*1" Mathilde B l i n d was to provide a m e l i o r i s t view of evolution for the 1890's, i n which love was the guiding power behind the process, and the current inhumanities of nature—slaughter, war, and personal cruelty—were temporary stages, to be transcended as the true power of love became manifest over unstated periods of time. A l l these, although influenced by Darwin, were l i t t l e d i f f e r e n t i n substance from the progressivist views a v a i l -able before 1859. The l a t e r nineteenth century, however, also saw some more genuinely Darwinian views appearing i n poetry, i n the pessimism of Thomas Hardy, whose works stress the supreme importance of chance i n h u m 8 n l i v e s , and i n the attempt of John Davidson to es t a b l i s h a m a t e r i a l i s t r e l i g i o n i n which power was the highest value.^ The poetry of these men could not have been written before Darwin's emphasis on the action of apparently random causes on the process of s u r v i v a l and speciation. Already, i n Davidson's work, can be seen the influence of " S o c i a l Darwinism," the movement which saw Darwin as providing a confirmation of the c a p i t a l -i s t system, exp l o i t a t i o n being equated with the s u r v i v a l of the f i t t e s t . By the end of the century, new forces were appearing i n evolutionary theory, and simple Darwinism gradually ceased 121 to exercise a single influence, becoming mingled with the anthropological theories of Frazer and the related schools of f o l k l o r i s t s , themselves influenced by Darwin, and. with the genetics of Bates. The l a s t works one can point to as being influenced by "pure" Darwinism are by men who were growing up when the Origin was published. Charles Doughty and Robert Bridges, late i n t h e i r careers, both wrote epic poems using an e s s e n t i a l l y m e l i o r i s t metaphysical evolution l i k e that of Swinburne or Meredith, although with d i f f e r e n t r e s u l t s . Doughty's wartime epic, The Titans, shows primi-t i v e man t r y i n g to cope with natural forces beyond his con-t r o l , but being aided by a sort of divine intervention, u n t i l they symbolically harness the defeated Titans for t h e i r ends. Bridges' Testament of Beauty affirms the progressivism of the evolutionary process i n the face of the events of the 7 world war and modern cynicism. By the time these works were written, however, Darwinism, as known i n the nineteenth century, had merged i n the minds of the younger generation with r e l a t i v i t y theory and the philosophical movements i n -spired by Nietzsche, so that Darwin himself was fast becoming a name rather than a concrete influence. Tennyson had arrived at his basic evolutionary p o s i t i o n by the publication of In Memoriam. After the overtly p o l i t i c a l poetry of the 1350's, evolutionary thinking remained i m p l i c i t i n his work, but i s r a r e l y elaborated i n d e t a i l ; having estab-lished his premises, he was able to use them p o e t i c a l l y with-1 2 2 out needing to repeat the entire process of thought which had led to them. Thus one finds i n his l a t e r poetry con-tinued references to the aeons required for development, to the frightening implications of the sciences—"Astronomy and Geology, t e r r i b l e Muses!" ("Parnassus")—and to the s p i r i t u a l process underlying the physical one, but l i t t l e that i s r e a l l y a new advance. Whether Tennyson perceived the esse n t i a l differences be-tween Darwin's theory and the progressivist evolution he had come to believe i n i s d i f f i c u l t to determine. When Darwin v i s i t e d him, he asked whether "'Your theory of Evolution does not make against Christianity'*: and Darwin answered, 'No, cer-t a i n l y not.'" The emphasis on '^your theory" may imply that Tennyson appreciated i t s r a d i c a l novelty, but i t may simply have been a way of asking for confirmation of what he sus-pected was a view s i m i l a r to his own. A reading of the l a t e r poems brings out strongly an emphasis on the d i f f i c u l t i e s of the process, but, as has been shown, t h i s development could be seen as beginning with Maud. Poems such as "Despair," "Lucretius," and "The Dawn" a l l portray, i n t h e i r d i f f e r e n t ways, the problems of f a i t h i n confronting the apparent mean-inglessness of the world; i n the f i r s t two, the problem i s an in d i v i d u a l one, a r i s i n g from a lack of recognition of the s p i r i t u a l basis of the world, but i n "The Dawn" the problem appears to be Tennyson's. The continuing evidence of man's inhumanity, perhaps coupled with the emphasis on chance i n 123 Darwin's theory, had the eff e c t of pushing the date of the achievement of man's higher stage of being farther into the future: . . . when s h a l l we lay The Ghost of the Brute that i s walking and haunting us yet, and be free? In a hundred, a thousand winters? Ah, what w i l l our children be, The men of a hundred thousand, a m i l l i o n summers away? ("The Dawn") The poem's implication i s that c i v i l i z a t i o n i s going to get worse before i t gets better. S t i l l , despite t h i s sense of doubt that increases i n his l a t e r poetry, Tennyson remained q a m e l i o r i s t . In a cancelled passage of "To E. F i t z g e r a l d , " ' a f t e r a l i s t of the depressing developments immediately i n store f o r the world, "years with lawless voices torn," there i s s t i l l . . . one lean hope, that at the l a s t P e r c h a n c e — i f t h i s smell world endures— Our heirs mey fin d the stormy Pest Has l e f t theirrPresent purer. A more i n d i v i d u a l , indeed s t r i k i n g l y personal, v a r i a t i o n on the seme theme i s found i n "By an E v o l u t i o n i s t , " which he wrote while severely i l l : pain and age free the soul from i t s l i m i t a t i o n s and prepare i t for "a height that i s higher," i n a process that i s compared with evolutionary development: The Lord l e t the house of a brute to the soul ex 0 of a man, And the man said 'Am I your debtor?' And the Lord—'Not yet: but make i t es clean 8S you can, And then I w i l l l e t you a better.' 124 At the same time as t h i s emphasis on the anguish of t r a n s i t i o n , there i s an experimentation with newer f a i t h s and theories based on evolutionary progress. Sp i r i t u a l i s m , i n which Tennyson entertained a b r i e f i n t e r e s t , provided a means of suggesting, as the concept of the p l u r a l i t y of worlds had done i n the early poems, a development into higher forms a f t e r death, as i n %l\he Ring" end "De Profun-dis": "From death to death through l i f e and l i f e . " 1 0 The writings of James Hinton interested him extremely for t h e i r 11 closeness to his own thought; Hinton's L i f e i n Nature, for instance, uses the same concept of the organic and mater-i a l worldgascssimply one manifestation of the s p i r i t u a l as i s to be found i n "The Higher Pantheism." The search f o r a "Faith beyond the forms of F a i t h " ("The Ancient Sage", 1. 69) led Tennyson to an increasing tolerance and respect for a l l r e l i g i o n s , which he regarded es more or less imperfect forms of C h r i s t i a n i t y , and led him to propose, as i n "Akbar's Dream," a v i r t u a l union of a l l f a i t h s . "Locksley H a l l Sixty Years After" provides an in t e r e s t i n g comparison between the younger man's ideas end those of the old, rather d i s i l l u s i o n e d old man. "Cosmos, Chaos!" i s his repeated theme; there i s an uneasy balance between the forces of evolution and reversion, the temptation to return to the beast. The p o s s i b i l i t y i s advanced that "Many an JEon too may pass when earth i s menless and f o r l o r n , " but i s defeated by the confidence that "That which made us, meant us to be 125 mightier by and by." The p o l i t i c a l ideals, l i b e r a l i s m , gradual as opposed to revolutionary change, the triumph of the C h r i s t i a n f a i t h , s t i l l remain l i t t l e changed de-spite the worsening times. The major difference i s that the f a i t h i n immediate progress, or i n man-controlled progress, i s gone, and the future of mankind i s to a large extent l e f t i n the hands of God. 'Forward' rang the voices then, and of the many mine was one. Let us hush t h i s cry of 'Forward' t i l l ten thousand years have gone. An i n t e r e s t i n g aspect of the poem i s the concern f o r the suffering of animals, 8 n d the implied equality of men and the beasts they persecute, whereas e a r l i e r the great d i f -ference between them was i n s i s t e d on. St. Francis i s held up for admiration for having c a l l e d "the very flowers / 1 2 S i s t e r s , brothers." The extent to which evolution permeated Tennyson's thought can be found by examining the I d y l l s of the King, a work not e x p l i c i t l y concerned with evolutionary development. Tenny-son's symbols draw on a wide range of sources and o f f e r wider p o s s i b i l i t i e s of interpretation, but the two basic images i n the poem, those of Excalibur and of Camelot, are intimately connected with the sort of p o l i t i c a l thinking that has been demonstrated i n the references to evolution i n the poems of the IS^O's. In "The Holy G r a i l , " Camelot i s de-scribed as having "four great zones of sculpture" i n i t s main h a l l — 126 And i n the lowest beasts are slaying men, And i n the second men are slaying beasts, And on the t h i r d are warriors, perfect men. And on the fourth are men with growing wings, And over a l l one statue i n the mould Of Arthur, (11. 234-39) a description glossed by Hallam Tennyson as representing human progress: "the savage state of society; the state where man lords i t over the beast; the f u l l development of man; the progress toward s p i r i t u a l i d e a l s . " A l l four of these stages are observable i n the poem. "The Coming of Arthur" opens with a land i n which "there grew great t r a c t s of wilderness, / Wherein the beast was ever more and more" (11. 10-11); Arthur's f i r s t actions are to de-feat his r i v a l kings and to open up the wilderness, sub-duing the beast threat. In constructing his society, Arthur moves on to the t h i r d stage, binding his men with vows of purity and l o y a l t y i n order to make them perfect warriors. Galahad represents the fourth stage, but he quickly leaves the world by achieving his quest for the G r a i l . Camelot's eternal quality, as an incarnation of the higher stages of man's progress, i s made evident by Merlin i n "Gareth and Lynette" when he describes the c i t y as " b u i l t to music, therefore never b u i l t at a l l , / And therefore b u i l t for ever." Galahad can be seen es the pro-phetic type of the higher man, and Camelot as the symbol of progress. Arthur's kingdom, however, i s destroyed. Arthur hes 1 2 7 dedicated himself to the task of service, and confusion erupts when his knights go o f f on the quest of the G r a i l ; they have apparently fixed t h e i r f a i t h on a symbol of a l e v e l of s p i r i t u a l being which i t i s impossible for them to a t t a i n . Arthur also has a v i s i o n of the true s p i r i t , but, as he says at the end of the G r a i l I d y l l , despite a mystic trance state resembling Tennyson's own, he keeps to his a l -lotted task. However, the story i s not t h i s simple. His court collapses because of the s i n f u l love of Lancelot and Guinevere, or, since t h i s love i s never d i r e c t l y presented i n the poem, because of the rumour of s i n ; the court i s cor-rupted because t h e i r f a i t h i s wanting. But again, i t has been made clear from the beginning that Arthur's power was granted for a short time only. The sword Excalibur i s sym-bo l i c of Arthur's power: . . . on one side, Graven i n the oldest tongue of a l l t h i s world, "Take me," but turn the blade and ye s h a l l see, And written i n the speech ye speak yourself, "Cast me away!" ("The Coming of Arthur, 11. 3 0 0 - 3 0 4 ) The impulse to progress, which Excalibur represents, i s basic to the human condition, but i t appears to be limited by the circumstances i n which i t operates; each e f f o r t to create a society seems doomed to f a i l , and i t i s simply the i n d i v i d -ual mode of f a i l u r e that varies. What does t h i s do to the evolutionary process? The frequent comparisons of Arthur with Christ imply that he has i n some way embodied the divine 128 purpose during his term on earth. I t should be remembered that Tennyson himself said that the work " i s not the history of one man or of one generation but of a whole cycle of generations." Arthur's f i n a l l i n e s , retained from "Morte d'Arthur" over t h i r t y years before, carry a suggestion of Car l y l e ' s b e l i e f i n the inevitable obsolescence of human i n s t i t u t i o n s , and of the need for periodic renewal: "The old order changeth, y i e l d i n g place to new, / And God f u l f i l s himself i n many ways, / Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." Even an adaptation which i s b e n e f i c i a l i n i t -s e l f may become harmful to the species i f i t i s not super* seded by more advanced or perfected ones. The collapse of Arthur's kingdom, then, i s i t s e l f a stage i n world progress; the poem reminds one of the systems of C a r l y l e and Comte, i n which the alternation of "organic" and "inorganic" periods of history becomes progressive, i n that each organic period i s somewhat more so than the previous ones. The framework of the seasonal cycle reinforces t h i s impression, in d i c a t i n g why the prospect of Camelot " r e e l i n g back into the beast" i s not e n t i r e l y pessimistic. However, such a b r i e f examination can only indicate a small part of the poem's t o t a l design; the evolutionary theme i s only one aspect of an extremely complex work. The f l e e t i n g quality of the i d e a l remains a dominant im-pression i n the works of Tennyson's old age. Arthur i s "Ideal manhood closed i n r e a l man," according to a l i n e added to the epilogue i n the f i n a l edition; hence he cannot remain for long a potent force on earth, but must become an i d e a l for others 129 to follow. Poems such as "Merlin and the Gleam" and "Locks-ley H a l l S i x t y Years After" express the hope end the possi-b i l i t y of deception i n the pursuit of the i d e e l ; s t i l l i t i s the course that man must take. The precise nature of the s p i r i t u a l r e a l i t y underlying the world of appearances was always ambiguous and undefined i n Tennyson; i n the l a t e r years, i t becomes quite simply en i d e e l , without elabora-t i o n . The only certain fact i s i t s existence, and man's partaking of i t i n his soul. T i l l the end of his l i f e , Ten-nyson asserted the importance of b e l i e f i n immortality; with-out i t , l i f e would not be worth l i v i n g . And bound up with the s p i r i t u a l r e a l i t y behind the material world, end the im-mortality of the soul, i s the concept of man's gradual evolu-t i o n into a higher form, a process i n which the i n d i v i d u a l must par t i c i p e t e , by "typing" the higher forms i n his own l i f e . Tennyson never mede i t clear whether t h i s moral a c t i v -i t y would produce the eventual higher form, or whether the higher form would be naturally more perfect, without man's conscious involvement i n the process--in other words, which was cause and which was e f f e c t . Probably he was never sure himself, but f e l t at least that the attempt to anticipate the higher form would be to the good of the world. His evolu-tionary metaphysic was pre-Darwinien, as defined i n the open-ing chapter, because i t was based, on t e l e o l o g i c a l and e t h i c a l p r i n c i p l e s rather than on s c i e n t i f i c hypotheses, and because of i t s progressivism. I f the concept appeers vague, part i c u -130 l a r l y i n the l a t e r works, i t should be remembered that he was tryi n g , so to speak, to j u s t i f y nature's ways to man, and that t h i s a c t i v i t y entailed extreme d i f f i c u l t i e s . Rather than i n any sense " a n t i c i p a t i n g " Darwin, he grew up i n a generation i n which the s t a t i c , immutable concept of the universe was breaking down, and he provided, a progres-s i v i s t solution to the r e l i g i o u s and e t h i c a l problems gen-erated by the new science of his period. FOOTNOTES CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION i 'William R . Rutland, "Tennyson and the Theory of Evolution," Essays and Studies, 26 (1940), 7. o Lionel Stevenson, Darwin among the Poets (1932; rpt. New York: R u s s e l l and Russell, 1963), p. 55. 3 ^G. J . Romanes, quoted i n Hallam Tennyson, IMnedes Lord Tennyson: A Memoir (London: M 8 c m i l l a n , 1899), p. 136. Halerie P i t t , Tennyson Laureate (London: Barrie and R o c k l i f f , 1962), p. 105. ^George R . Potter, "Tennyson end the B i o l o g i c a l Theory of Mutability i n Species," PQ, 16 (1937), 321-343. ^William Harrold, "Robert Browning and Evolution," Wisconsin Studies i n Literature, 4 (1967), 56-65; Ramsay Col l e s , quoted i n George R. Potter, "Did Thomas L o v e l l Beddoes Believe i n the Evolution of Species?," Modern Philology, 21 (1923), 39-90; H. W. Piper, The Active Universe (London: Athlone, 1962), p. 193. ^Charles L y e l l , Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (London: John Murrey, 18b1), p. 405. t R obert Chambers,J Explanations (London: John Chur-c h i l l , 1855), pp. 71-2. ^Charles Darwin, The O r i g i n of Species, ed. Morse Peckham (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959), p. 165. The quotation i s from the t h i r d e d i t i o n (1860). 1 0Verne Grant, Plant Specietion (New York: Columbia University Press, 197D, p. 38. 1 1Morse Peckham, "Darwinism and Darwinisticism," i n The Triumph of Romanticism (Columbia, S. C : University of South Caroline Press, 1970), pp. 187-139. 132 '^Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hints toward the Formation of a More Comprehensive Theory of L i f e , ed. Seth B. Watson 13]V[orse Peckham, i n "Toward a Theory of Romanticism," i n The Triumph of Romanticism, pp. 8 - 1 6 , discusses the emergence of dynamic organicism and i t s a f f i l i a t i o n s with the evolutionary metaphysic. 1^For the development of theories of organicism i n the arts, see M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (New York: Norton, 1953), pp. 21S-2~2~T. ^ P h i l i p Henry Gosse, Omphalos, or an Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot (London: John van Voorst, 1858)• 1^Erasmus Darwin's theories were given p o e t i c a l expres-sion i n The Botanical Garden (1739-91) and The Temple of Nature (1803). For a study of Lamarck's influence i n France, see Franck Bourdier, "Geoffroy S a i n t - H i l a i r e versus Cuvier," i n C e c i l J . Schneer, ed., Toward 8 History of Geology (Cam-bridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1969), pp. 36-61. ^Georges L. Cuvier, Essay on the Theory of the Earth, t r . Robert Kerr (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1 8 1 5 ) , pp. 1 3 ? - H 6 . 1^Charles L y e l l , P r i n c i p l e s of Geology (London: John Murray, 1830-33). i l l i a m Charles Wells developed a theory of the com-p e t i t i o n and progression of races i n "An Account of a White Female, Part of whose Skin Resembles a Negro," f i r s t presented i n 1813, and included i n his Two Essays: One Upon Single V i s i o n with Two Eyes; the Other on Dew (London: A. Constable, 1818). Patrick Matthew developed a theory of natural selec-t i o n i n On Naval Timber and Arboriculture (Edinburgh: Adam Black, 1831) . O f ) vJohn P. Nichol, Views of the Architecture of the Hea-vens (Edinburgh: William T a i t , 1839), pp. 1 5 3 , 203. 2lMemoir, p. 2 5 0 . 22 Quoted i n Hugh Walker, The Literature of the V i c t o r i a n Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), p. 302. 23piper, p p , 182-186, provides a summary of the i n f l u -ence of Wordsworth's Excursion i n t h i s respect on Keats and Shelley. 2^Some examples of Coleridge's views on the antiquity of man: "the absurd notion . . . of Man's having progressed from 133 an Ouran Outang s t a t e — s o contrary to a l l History, to a l l Religion, nay, to a l l Philosophy," Collected Letters, ed. E. L^ Griggs' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959),XIV, pp. 574-575; "I attach neither b e l i e f nor respect to the Theory, which supposes tfe-e human Race to have been gradually per-fe c t i n g i t s e l f from the darkest Savagery, or, s t i l l more boldly t r a c i n g us back to the b e s t i a l as to our Larve, con-templates the Man as the l a s t metamorphosis, the gay Imago, of some lucky species of Ape or Baboon," quoted i n A l i c e Snyder, "Coleridge on Giordano Bruno," MLN, 42, no. 7, 431• 2 5 ^Coleridge's l a t e r marginal note on t h i s passage, reproduced i n Poetic a l Works, ed. E. H. Coleridge (1912; rpt. London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 140, im-p l i e s that he had turned away from his o r i g i n a l ideas, but was reluctant to admit i t : "hang me, i f I know or ever did know the meaning of them, tho' my own composition." Owen B a r f i e l d , What Coleridge Thought (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1971), pp. 54-57. Norman Fruman, i n Coleridge the Damaged Archangel (New York: George B r a z i l l e r , 1971) i s led. by an apparent unawareness of the multiple meanings of the word "evolution" to l a b e l Coleridge as an a n t i - e v o l u t i o n i s t . 27s nyder, p. 431. ^ S h e l l e y ' s debts to Erasmus Darwin have been outlined, and the interpretations thereof somewhat exaggerated, i n C. H. Grabo, A Newton among Poets (Chapel H i l l : University of South Carolina Press, 1930). For Keats's r e l a t i o n to Darwin, see Bernard Blackstone, The Consecrated Urn (London:, Long-mans, 1959), pp. 3-25. 2 9 P i p e r , p. 193; also his "Keats and W. C. Wells," RES, 25 ( 1 9 4 9 ) , 153-9. ^°Brent E l l i o t t , "The Development of Religious Ideas i n Two of Byron's Plays," B. A. Honours Graduating Essay, Uni-v e r s i t y of B r i t i s h Columbia, 1973. 134 CHAPTER TWO: TENNYSON'S EARLY POEMS AND THEIR BACKGROUND Det a i l s about the publication of the Poems by Two Brothers can be found i n W. D. Paden, Tennyson i n Egypt (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1942), pp. 1, 19-20; and Hallam Tennyson, A l f r e d Lord Tennyson, a Memoir (London: Macmillan, 1899), p. 18. ^Memoir, p. 16, and L i o n e l Stevenson, Darwin among the Poets (New York, R u s s e l l and Russell, 1963), P. 60. ^Paden, pp. 24-26. ^G. L. L. de Buffon, Natural History, t r . William Smellie (Edinburgh: W. Creech, 1780), VII, pp. 392 f f . ^ S i r John Herschel, Astronomy, i n The Cabinet Cyclo-pedia , 7 6 ( 1 8 3 3 ) , p. 203: Sunspots "are the dark . . . s o l i d body of the sun i t s e l f , l a i d bare to our view by those immense fluctuations i n the luminous regions of i t s atmosphere." ^For Byron's use of the theme, see the second act of Cain; for Dr. Chalmers, see Milton Millhauser, "A P l u r a l i t y of After-worlds," Hartford. Studies i n Literature , 1 ( 1 9 6 9 ) , pp. 3 6 f f . ^Millhauser, pp. 39-42. ^There i s s t i l l a hint of the argument from design i n t h i s poem, i n the description of "some" who can "drew strange comfort from the earth" (11. 29-32). However, i t i s not stated whether the "earth" i n question i s t h e i r own world, or the earth that can be seen i n the skies. o 7Phrenology was the f i r s t serious attempt to l o c a l i z e the functions of the brain, instead of assuming thet organ to be one undifferentiated mass; the d i s c i p l i n e ' s mistake was i n assuming that the shape and location of the i n d i v i d u a l organs must necessarily be reflected i n the formation of the cranium. See the account i n Robert M. Young, Mind, Brain and Adeptetion i n the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 9-53, especially 12-14. I t i s also noteworthy that Spurzheim end G e l l (who i s not mentioned i n the poem, but could have been f e m i l i e r to Tennyson from Southwood Smith's Westminster Review e r t i c l e to be discussed below) also did pioneer work i n treeing the enelogy of rediete end vermicular genglie to the humen brain. 135 10 Hallam Tennyson, Materials for a L i f e of A. T. (privately printed, n. d.), I, pp. 35-6. 11 George R. Potter, "Tennyson and the B i o l o g i c a l Theory of M u t a b i l i t y i n Species," PQ, 16 (1937), 323. 1 2 W i l l i a m Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (.18471 wrpt. New York: Johnson Reprint, 1967), I, p. 46. 1 ^ •^Whewell, pp. 54-73 passim, esp e c i a l l y 66-73; D P . 82-88 (pure sciences); pp. 164-7O (mechanical sciences). 1^Graham Hough, "The Natural Theology of In Memoriam," RES, 22 (1947), 254-55. 15craig W. M i l l e r , "Coleridge's Concept of Nature," Journal of the History of Ideas, 25 (1964), 85-36; Owen B a r f i e l d , What Coleridge Thought (Middletown, Conn.: Wes-leyan University Press, 1971), pp. 22-25, for the concept of natura naturans. 1^See M i l l e r , pp. 85-36, f o r Coleridge's use of s a l t a -tions i n his theory of l i f e . The suggested s i m i l a r i t y be-tween Coleridge's thought and that of modern genetics i s more l i k e l y a development of A r i s t o t l e ' s ladder of natural forms, or perhaps even derived from Cuvier's discovery of breaks i n the geological record; unexplained variations could, i n the 1820's, have been accounted for by the theory of the inheritance of acquired c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s , although there i s no i n d i c a t i o n that Coleridge accepted t h i s . 1 7 'Memoir, p. 37. 1^The Writings of Arthur Hallam (New York: MLA of America" 1943), p. 201, and see also his "Prayer." 1 9Hallam, p. 205. 2 0Hallam, p. 204. 21 Memoir, p. 37: "development of the human body"; Materials, I, p. 55: "the evolution of man." Hallam's some-what naive reply may be excused on the example of Smith's a r t i c l e i n the Westminster Review, 9 (1828), which c a r e f u l l y distinguishes brain and ganglia even though rather inconsis-te n t l y pointing out the analogy. 2 2 J o h n Killham, Tennyson and the Princess (London: Ath-lone Press, 1953), pp. 237-240. 136 W e s t m i n s t e r Review, 9;, (1323), 46O. 2/<-Killham, pp. 236-37. 25westminster Review, p. 137. emoir, p. 36: "the brethren . . . I tr u s t , are waxing d a i l y i n r e l i g i o n and radicalism" ( S t e r l i n g ) . 27 C harles Wordsworth, quoted i n Memoir, np. 33-39. 23 Christopher Ricks, i n his edi t i o n of Tennyson's poems, discusses the textual history of "Armageddon" i n the introductory note to that poem; a portion found i t s way into "Pierced through with knotted thorns . . ." 29 Memoir, pp. 263, 315-16. The remark quoted on p. 316, "to assure myself of the existence of my own body, I am sometimes obliged to grasp an object,", reminds one of the devil's Berkeleian speculations'.in "The D e v i l and the Lady," Act II, Scene i . 137 CHAPTER THREE! TENNYSON'S POEMS OF THE 1330'S AND THEIR ANALOGUES The Writings of Arthur Hallam (New York: MLA of America, 1943), pp. 191-192. 2Hallam, pp. 192, 186. ^F. D. Maurice, quoted i n W. D. Paden, Tennyson i n Egypt (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1942), pp. 149-50. 4 See Ca r l y l e ' s description, i n the "Old Clothes" chap-ter of Sartor Resartus, of man as a temple, "the v i s i b l e Manifestation and Impersonation of the D i v i n i t y , " and, i n the chapter on "Organic Filaments," the description of man's history as "a perpetual Evangel," a symbol of the godlike. -tylorse Peckh-am, V i c t o r i a n Revolutionaries (New York: George B r a z i l l e r , 1970), pp. 17-18. Ms-Mam Tennyson, Al f r e d Lord Tennyson, a Memoir (London: Me.cmillan, 1399), p. 100. ?This passage should be remembered i n any discussion of the influence of C a r l y l e on Tennyson, because, despite the Carlylean overtones of eternal truths becoming half-truths or even l i e s as they "clothe themselves" i n creeds, the poem antedates the f i r s t installment of Sartor by at least a year. °Sir John Herschel, Astronomy, i n The Cabinet Cyclo-pedia, 76 (1333), 407: " i s i t nebulous matter progressively concentrating i t s e l f by the effects of i t s own gravity into masses, or so laying the foundation of new s i d e r e a l systems?" The passage i n "The Palace of Art" obviously requires Her-schel' s hypothesis rather than Laplace's because the l a t t e r presents a single creation at one sipaeifie& time, es opposed to a continual and progressive development. 9 John Killham, Tennyson end the Princess (London: Ath-lone Press, 1953), pp. 234-40. 1 Westminster Review, 9 (1323), 451-463. 11 Another example of Tennyson's revisions i n the d i r e c t i o n of greater s c i e n t i f i c accuracy can be seen i n the fact that "the snowy poles on moonless Mars" was changed, i n 1377, a f t e r the discovery of Phobos and Deimos, to "the snowy poles and moons of Mars." 133 1 2 For example, re c a p i t u l a t i o n theory i s upset by the fact that the major processes, such as the notochord and mesoderm, are derived from completely d i f f e r e n t layers of tissue i n d i f f e r e n t classes; and the notochord, supposedly a r e c a p i t u l a t i o n of primitive chordate stages, i s p a r t i a l l y co-extensive i n time with the c e r v i c a l flexure, not a fea-ture of primitive chordates at a l l . For such reasons, re-ca p i t u l a t i o n theory i s today regarded as largely i n v a l i d . 1^Andy Antippas, "Tennyson's S i n f u l Soul," Tulane Studies i n English, 17 (1969), 124, bl a t a n t l y misreads the l i n e s to suggest that the "more widely wise" are at the bottom of the inverted pyramid; "the poet-Soul seems again to be placing man (or the poet) outside the natural order." 1^See William Buckland, Geology and Mineralogy (BaMies? delphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1837), I, pp. 14-15. 1^For period statements on the p l u r a l i t y of worlds, see Isaac Taylor, Physical Theory of Another L i f e (London: William Pickering, 1839), pp. 56 f f : "Is there not a latent, or a h a l f l 8 t e n t i n s t i n c t i n the mind which speaks of a fu-ture l i b e r t y of ranging at w i l l through space?" and Herschel, p. 330: "Now, f o r what purpose are we to suppose such magni-fi c e n t bodies scattered through the abyss of space? Surely not to illuminate our nights," and also pp. 278, 286. ^George R. Potter, "James Thomson and the Evolution of S p i r i t s , " Englische Studien, 61 (1929), pp. 57-65. 1 7 'Letters of Robert Browning Collected by T. J . Wise. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933), p. 199. See Walter Pagel, Paracelsus (Basel and New York: S. Karger, 1953), pp. 91, 315; A l l e n Debus, The English Pera-celsians (London: Oldbourne, 1965), pp. 24-29, traces the influence of Paracelsus' doctrine of creation, and shows the ways i n which i t d i f f e r s from orthodox versions: "Then hee divided Waters, from Waters; that i s to say, the more s u b t i l l , Airy, and M e r c u r i a l l liquor, from the more Thick, Clammy." 1 9 'Morse Peckham,"Guilt and Glory," Diss. Princeton,1947, pp. 169-171. 20 John Stanyan Bigg, Night and the Soul (London: Groom-bridge and Sons, 1354), pp. 103, 41. 21 See Milton Millhauser, " F i r e and Ice," Tennyson Society Monograph No. 4 (Lincoln: Tennyson Research Centre, 1971), p. 15. 22 Memoir, p. 269. 139 CHAPTER FOUR: IN MEMORIAM THE COMPOSITION OF THE POEM •i 'Hallam Tennyson, A l f r e d Lord Tennyson, a Memoir (London: Macmillan, 1899), pp. 186, 250. 2 Memoir, p. 253. 3 T . S. E l i o t , "In MemoriM" i n Essays Ancient and Modern (London: Macmillan, 1936), p. 187. ^Christopher Ricks, Tennyson (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 225. ^George R. Potter, "Tennyson and the B i o l o g i c a l Theory of Mutability i n Species," PQ, 16 (1937), 321-343; Graham Hough, "The Natural Theology of In Memoriam," RES, 23 (1947), 244-256. ^John Killham, Tennyson and the Princess (London: Ath-lone, 1958), pp. 241-43, 2 5 0 - 5 8 ; James Harrison, "Tennyson and Evolution," Durham University Journal, 64 (1971), 26-31. ^Potter, p. 327. Charles L y e l l , S c i e n t i f i c Journals on the Species Question, ed. Leonard G. Wilson (New Haven: Yale University Press, T969), pp. xxxii-xxxiv; Leonard G. Wilson, Charles L y e l l : The Years to 1841 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), p. 440. 9 For a b r i e f discussion of Agassiz' theory, see l y e M ^ , p. x x x i i . 1 0Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Re l i g i o n (Glasgow: William C o l l i n s , 1837), p. 203. 1 1 I s a a c Taylor, Physical Theory of Another L i f e (London: William Pickering, 1871), p. 38. 1 2 T a y l o r , pp. 228, 263. A curious feature of Taylor's cosmology, mentioned on p. 228, i s the idea that there i s a "vast world around which a l l suns are supposed to be revolv-ing." Perhaps t h i s i s a reference to Herschel's discovery that the solar system was moving away from the co n s t e l l a t i o n Hercules, but more l i k e l y i t i s just an elaborate metaphor. One wonders though. ^ E l e a n o r Mattes, IK Memoriam: The Way of a Soul ( New York: Exposition Press, 1 9 5 1 ) , pp. 3 2 - 3 6 . 14AS has been shown i n the t h i r d chapter of t h i s study, the passage about "lower l i v e s " i n "The Two Voices" i s re-incarnationel, and "From state to state within the womb" describes embryological change. 1^Killham, P . 262. 16 William Wordsworth, "Essay upon Epitaphs," i n The Poeti c a l Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, rev. E. De Selineourt (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 728-29. "^Tennyson read L y e l l i n 1837; see Memoir, p. 136. 13 Ricks, i n his edition of Tennyson's poems, quotes L y e l l : "Even i f the more s o l i d parts of our species had d i s -appeared, the impression of t h e i r form would have remained engraven on the rocks, as have the traces of the tenderest leaves of plants." 1 %emoir, p. 2 5 5 . 20 The fact that species could become extinct was p e r i o d i -c a l l y denied almost up to the time of the Origin. See the eighth chapter of that work, espe c i a l l y the section "On Ex-t i n c t i o n , " for a first-hand account of the argument. 2 1Thomas Malthus, On Population, ed. G. Himmelfarb (New York: Random House" 1960) ; chapters 2 and 8 of the " F i r s t Essay," o r i g i n a l l y published i n 1793, discuss the r a t i o s of b i r t h increase and food supply increase. 2? Charles L y e l l , P r i n c i p l e s of Geology (London: John Murray, 1832), I I , pp. 18-22 e s p e c i a l l y . 03 -'Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925; rpt. New York: Macmillan, 1960), p. 113. 24 L y e l l , P r i n c i p l e s , I I , p. 2 7 1 : "Assuming the future duration of the planet to be i n d e f i n i t e l y protracted, we can foresee no l i m i t to the perpetuation of some oi - the memorials of man . . . many works of art might enter again and 8gain into the formation of successive eras, and. escape o b l i t e r a -t i o n even though the very rocks i n which they had been for ages imbedded were destroyed, just as pebbles included i n the conglomerates of one epoch often contain the organized, remains of beings which flourished during a p r i o r ere." 2 5 ^Harrison, p. 2 8 . 26 For example, Washington Irving i n his Knickerbocker's 141 History of New York (1809), Book I, Chapter i v , refers to "the s t a r t l i n g conjecture of Buffon, Helvetius, and Darwin, so highly honorable to mankind, that the whole human species i s descended from a remarkable family of monkeys!" He i s of course being s a t i r i c a l , but the passage shows that the idea could be derived from rea d i l y available sources. 2 ? M i l t o n Millhauser, "Magnetic Mockeries: The Back-ground of a Phrase," ELN, 5 (1967), pp. 109-111. 2^CRobert Chambers,U Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (London: John C h u r c h i l l , 1844). Tennyson or-dered a copy, saying that " i t seems to contain many specula-tions with which I have been f a m i l i a r for years, and on which I have written more than one poem" (Memoir, p. 186). 2 9Hough, p. 251. 3°Potter, p. 339. -^Chambers, pp. 202, 275. Tennyson's use of the word "type;"' although derived b a s i c a l l y from C h r i s t i a n theology, seems to owe a great deal to Chambers' influence. Contrast Hallam as a type of the crowning race with the more conven-t i o n a l usage, as i l l u s t r a t e d by Robert Montgomery i n The Messiah (London: J . T u r r i l l , 1832), p. 17: Nor sea and mountain, thunder-storm and cloud, The glorious miracles of l i f e and form Which f l o a t the waters, or the earth command,— These are but types of His unutter'd power. Tennyson's use of the word i s completely opposite to Mont-gomery's, implying a forecast rather than a s t a t i c r e f l e c t i o n . "Memoir, p. 271. 142 CHAPTER FIVE: IN MEMORIAM THE POEM AND ITS ANALOGUES 'Christopher Ricks, Tennyson (New York: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 213-214. ^ o r s e Peckham, V i c t o r i a n Revolutionaries (New York: George B r a z i l l e r , 197UJ, p. 3 6 . 3 ^Hallam Tennyson, A l f r e d Lord Tennyson, a Memoir (London: Macmillan, 1899), P. 255; James Knowles, "Aspects of Tennyson," Nineteenth Century, 3 3 (18*93), 182. 4 R obert Langbaum, The Modern S p i r i t (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 64-65; E. D. H. Johnson, ''In Memoriam: The Way of the Poet," V i c t o r i a n Studies, 2 (1953), pp. 139-40; E. D. H. Johnson, The A l i e n V i s i o n of V i c t o r i a n Poetry?(1952; rpt. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1963), P P . 17-21; V a l e r i e P i t t , Tennyson Laureate (London: Barrie and R o c k l i f f , 1962), p. W. " ^Ricks, i n his edition of Tennyson's poems, argues that the e a r l i e r arrangement "gave a more accurate impression of the r e l a t i o n s h i p of the Prologue to the succeeding poem." ^Memoir, p. 747. Goethe was, as Tennyson probably knew, an evolutionary t h e o r i s t , and provided one of the f i r s t ex-perimental confirmations of evolutionary theory by his d i s -covery of the intermaxillary bone i n man. ?Alen S i n f i e l d , The Language of Tennyson's "In Memoriam" (Oxford: B a s i l Blackwell, 1971), pp. 106-107. ^William B e l l Scott, The Year of the World (Edinburgh: William T a i t , 18*46); Matthew Arnold, The Poems 1349-18*67 (London: Oxford Uiniversity Press, 1937), PP. 94-126; P h i l i p James Bailey, The Angel World end Other Poems (London: William Pickering, 1850), end The Mystic and Other Poems (London: Chapman and H a l l , 18557^ 9Empedocles, Fragment 100, i n Kathleen Freeman, A n c i l l a to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957). 1 0John McLoed Campbell, The Nature of the Atonement (London: Macmillan, 1873). Campbell's views on atonement led to his being expelled from his congregation. 1 1Walker Gibson, "Behind the V e i l : A D i s t i n c t i o n between Poetic and S c i e n t i f i c Language i n Tennyson, L y e l l , and Darwin," V i c t o r i a n Studies, 2 (1953), 60-68. 143 1 2 Peckham, pp. 2-4; Langbaum, p. 57. 1^For Kierkegaard's i d e n t i f i c a t i o n of God with the un-known, see Philosophical Fragments (Princeton University-Press, 1962), pp. 54-55; for the paradox of h i s t o r i c a l reve-l a t i o n , pp. 112-138. "^Lionel Stevenson, Darwin among the Poets (1932; rpt. New York: R u s s e l l and Russell, 1963), p. 98: "Tennyson had decided that the almost simultaneous publication of The O r i -gin of Species and Essays and Reviews had invalidated the Genesis creation-myth even f o r i n c i d e n t a l f i g u r a t i v e a l l u -sions." He assumes that the l i n e was altered i n i860, where-as Ricks dates the r e v i s i o n at 1875, thus making The Descent of Man the more l i k e l y stimulus, 1 5 Eugene R. August, "Tennyson and Teilhard: The F a i t h of In Memoriam," PMLA, 84 (1969), 217-226. ^^Frederick Denison Maurice, The Kingdom of Christ (Lon-don: Darton and Clark, 1838), I, pp. 102-104. 17 Maurice, Frederick Denison Maurice, a Lj.fe (London: Macmillan, 1884), II , p. 311. ^^Maurice, quoted i n Olive Brose, Frederick Denison Maurice. Rebellious Conformist (University: Ohio University Press, 1972), p. 2 7 1 . 19 The s i n g l e - and double-realm theories are distinguished i n Kenneth Freeman, The Role of Reason i n R e l i g i o n (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), p. 4. 20 Ward Hellstrom, On the Poems of Tennyson (Gainesville: University of F l o r i d a Press, 1972), pp. 30-36, discusses other s i g n i f i c a n t p a r a l l e l s between In Memoriam and the h i s t o r i c a l ideas of the L i b e r a l Anglicans, e s p e c i a l l y J u l i u s Hare. 2 1Henry Longueville Mansel, The Limits of Religious Know-ledge, Bamrton Lectures for 1853 (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1859), pp. 44-66. 22 Memoir, p. 347. 23 ^Herbert Spencer, The P r i n c i p l e s of Psychology (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855), n. 329: "the unity of composition i n a l l i n t e l l i g e n t phenomena." ^"Spencer, p. 12: "Our s t a r t i n g point must be, not any substantive proposition believed, but some canon of b e l i e f i t -s e l f " ; p. 14: "Every l o g i c a l act . . . i s a p r e d i c a t i o n — a n assertion that something jLs; and t h i s i s what we c a l l a b e l i e f . " 144 Spencer, p. 3 1 : "a b e l i e f which i s proved by the i n -conceivableness of the negation to invariably exist, i s true." Note that a b e l i e f i s true more or less i n proportion to the number of people who believe i t . 26 Spencer, p. 422; the quotation i t s e l f comes from his Essays: S c i e n t i f i c , P o l i t i c a l , and Speculative (London: W i l -liams and Newgate, 1868), T] p. 30. 145 CHAPTER SIX: FROM IN MEMORIAM TO THE ORIGIN [Anon. ,~j The Middle Night (London: William Pickering, 1851). A copy i n the possession of Dr. W. E. Fredemen bears a presentation to Francis Newman, stating that the°author had attended his lectures. This raises the in t e r e s t i n g pos-s i b i l i t y that the author may have been Walter Bagehot, but t h i s i s admittedly not l i k e l y . o The b e l i e f i n the p o s s i b i l i t y of r a c i a l degeneration became well-known and controversial i n England, but i n Ger-many i t became a major influence on p o l i t i c a l thought, through the influence of Gobineau and Ernst Haeckel, through t h e i r follower, Houston Chamberlain. For the impact of Darwinism, and Haeckel i n pa r t i c u l a r , on late nineteenth-century r a c i s t thought, see Daniel Gasman, The S c i e n t i f i c Origins of National Socialism (London: Oldbourne" 1969). o ^John Killham, Tennyson and the Princess (London: Ath-lone, 1953), pp. 243-244. ^"Killham, pp. 44-35 passim, for Tennyson's debt to'the feminist controversy end i t s s o c i a l i s t background. ^Maurice Mandelbaum, History, Man, and Reason (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1971), p. 67. Memoir, p. 84. See Killham, p. 25: "he i s saying no more than that Saint-Simonism i s both a product of the s o c i a l e v i l s abounding at the time end an attempt to solve them." 7 Olive Brose, Frederick Denison Maurice, Rebellious Con-formist (University: Ohio University Press, 1972), pp. 219-223. Car l y l e translated Saint-Simon's Le Nouveau Christianisme, although he never published i t . % i l l h e m , pp. 263, 288, discusses the applicetions of Chembers' theories to the feminist problem. 1 ( \ i l l h e m , p. 231: "We might i n feet believe thet he wes i l l u s t r e t i n g the kind of educetion women might demend i n the un i v e r s i t i e s they would one day establish, an educetion which would enable them to come closer to understanding the way society was developing." 11 An interest i n alchemical methods to prolong l i f e was s t i l l extensive i n the early nineteenth century. The alchemicel 146 background to the thought of Goethe and Shelley i s well known, and Thomas L o v e l l Beddoes directed much of his at-tention to si m i l a r problems, pa r t l y through comparative anatomy and partly through a mystical analysis of the soul. The r e s u l t was a plan f o r comprehending the soul through-the study of the forms of things i n a progressive sequence from the c r y s t a l to man, i n consequence of which he has been claimed as a forerunner of Darwin. See Jon Lundin, "T.- L;.' Beddoes at Gottingen," Studia Neophilologica, 44 (1971), 434-499. 12 See Sordello VI: "Small, Great are merely terms we bandy here; / Since to the s p i r i t ' s absoluteness a l l / Are l i k e , " and other references to " F i t t i n g to the f i n i t e his i n f i n i t y . " The concept i s hardly new, of course, as i t can be traced to St. Augustine at le a s t . ^ P h i l i p Henry Gosse, Omphalos, or an Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot (London: John van Voorst, 1858). 14 Chambers, for instance, extended evolutionary theory into s o c i a l realms, with results s i m i l a r to the above. See Killham, p. 261. 1 5 See Goodwin Barmby, cited and described i n Killham, p. 54. Iemoir, p. 274: "What he cal l e d the 'man-woman'1' i n Oh r C h r i s t , the union of tenderness and strength," and Tennyson's l a t e r epigram "On One who Affected an Effeminate Manner": "I prize that soul where man and woman meet . . . But, friend, man-woman i s not woman-man." 17 Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J . Wise (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933), pp. 199-200: "In r e a l i t y , a l l that seems proved i n Darwin's scheme was a con-ception f a m i l i a r to me from the beginning: see i n Paracelsus the progressive development from senseless matter to organized, u n t i l man's appearance . . . Also i n Cleon, see the order of " l i f e ' s mechanics,"—and I daresay i n many passages of my poetry." Whet Browning regarded es "proved" i n Darwin's sys-tem i s precisely what Darwin rejected. For en int e r p r e t a t i o n of Browning that takes his words here at face value, see Wil-liam Harrold, "Robert Browning and Evolution," Wisconsin Stud* ies i n Literature, 4 (1967), $6*65; Harrold does not d i s t i n -guish between evolutionary metaphors and those of simple or-ganic growth. 13 Lionel Stevenson, Darwin among the Poets (1932; rpt. New York: R u s s e l l and Russell, 1963), p. 94: "During the next twenty-five years he was engaged with the I d y l l s of the King, the tales of humble l i f e , and the h i s t o r i c a l dramas, into none of which could contemporary problems r e e d i l y intrude." 147 Robert James Mann, Tennyson's "Maud" Vindicated (London: J a r r o l d and Sons, n. d.). For his statement on the r e a l i t y of the speaker's problems, pp. 76-7: "War does exist i n the great drama of nature. Therefore i t could not be shut out from the l i t t l e drama, which treats, under the suggestion of the wider plan, of the meaning and purpose of moral c o n f l i c t . " ^ Hallam Tennysbn, Alfred Lord Tennyson, a Memoir (London: Macmillan, 1899), p. 334. <14§" CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION-1Edwin Atherstone, I s r a e l i n Egypt (London: Longman, Green, Longman^ and Roberts)!, 1861). 2 Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J . Wise (New Haven: YaletUniyersity Press, 1933), pp. 199-200. ^Algernon Charles Swinburne, Songs before Sunrise (18*71; rpt. London: William Heinemann, 1917), pp. 72-80. ^George Meredith, "The Woods of Westermain," i n Poetical Works (London: Constable and Co., 1919), P . 193; t h i s poem was o r i g i n a l l y published i n 1883. ^Methilde Blind, The Ascent of Man (London: Chatto and Windus, 1889). Davidson neatly parodied theories of human p a r t i c i p a t i o n in the evolutionary process i n his novel E a r l Lavender, but eventually turned to demanding that man emulate the powers of the universe, for example e l e c t r i c i t y , and exercise pure force and dominance of the w i l l . See his series of Testaments or the two plays of the incomplete Mammon t r i l o g y , a l l pub-lished i n the f i r s t decade of t h i s century. 7 Charles Doughty, The Titans (London: Duckworth and Co,, 1916), carr i e s the s u b t i t l e "Subdued to the Service of Man" on the h a l f - t i t l e , but not on the t i t l e page. Robert Bridges, The Testament of Beauty i n Poeti c a l Works,(London: Oxford University Press, 1964). laMam Tennyson, Alfred Lord ^ennyson, a Memoir (London: Macmillan, 1899), p. 464. ^The cancelled passage i s reproduced on page 13?0 of Ricks' e d i t i o n of Tennyson's poems. 10 For an account of the Tennyson brothers' interest i n s p i r i t u a l i s m (Frederick became a convinced follower), see Katherine H. Porter, Through a Glass Darkly (Lawrence: Uni-v e r s i t y of Kansas, 1958), pp. 117-135. " 11 James Hinton, L i f e i n Nature (London: Smith and Elder, 1875), p. 163. On p. 106, he asserts that "no formative power is to be ascribed to those types or standards," thus perhaps influencing Tennyson's attitude toward "Typing" the evolu-tionary process; i n the l a t e r poems, at least, there i s less emphasis on typing, and more on following the gleam, perhaps two d i f f e r e n t concepts. '^James Hinton, i n The Mystery of Pain (London: Smith and Elder, 1870), regarded the s u f f e r i n g of a l l things as equal, and t r i e d to j u s t i f y the presence of pain as nart of the evolutionary process: " i f we may look beyond. £our i n d i v i d u a l painj, and see i n our own sufferings, end i n the sufferings of others, something i n which mankind elso has e stake . . ." (pp. 31-32). 13 Hinton, i n The Mystery of Pain, distinguishes three goods: pleasure, the i n d i v i d u a l good; service to others, the ordinary good; and disinterested s e l f - s a c r i f i c e , the highest or perfect good. U Tennyson said of Christ, with reference to "The Holy G r a i l , " " I t i s enough to look on C h r i s t as Divine and Ideal without defining more." 150 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED Primary Sources a) Tennyson Tennyson, A l f r e d Lord. The Poems of Tennyson, ed. Chris-topher Ricks. London: Longmans, Green, 1969. , et a l . Poems by Two Brothers. London: Mac-mTTTan, 1893 ( 1 8 2 7 ) . b) Romantic and V i c t o r i a n Poetry Anon. The Middle Night. London: William Pickering, 1851 . Arnold, Matthew. The Poems 1849 -1867 . London: Oxford University Press, 193$ . Atherstone, Edwin. I s r a e l i n Egypt. London: Longman, Green, Longman" and Roberts, 1861 . Bailey, P h i l i p James. The Angel World and Other Poems. London: William Pickering, 1850. . Festus. London: William Pickering, 1839. . The Mystic and Other Poems. London: Chapman and H e l l , 1855 . Bigg, John Stenyan. Night and the Soul. London: Groom-bridge and Sons, 1854. B l i n d , Mathilde. The Ascent of Men. London: Chetto and Windus, 1 8 8 9 . Bridges, Robert. Poetic a l Works. London: Oxford University Press, 1964. Browning, Robert. Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J . W i s T I New «aven: Yele University Press, "1933. . Poeticel Works, ed. Augustine B i r r e l l . London: Smith end Elder, 1896. 151 Byron, George Gordon, Lord. Poetic a l Works. London: Oxford University Press" I960. Clough, Arthur Hugh. Poems. London: Macmillan, 1895. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Collected Letters, ed. E. L. Griggs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959. . Hints toward the Formation of a More Com-Prehensive Theory of L i f e , ed. Seth B. Watson. London: John C h u r c h i l l , T84$. . P o e t i c a l Works, ed. E. H. Coleridge. London: Oxford University Press, 1967 (1912). Doughty, Charles. The Titans. London: Duckworth and Co., 1916. Hallam, Arthur. The Writings of Arthur Hallam. New York: MLA of America, 1943. Keats, John. Poetical Works, ed. H. W. Garrod. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939. Meredith, George. Poetical Works. London: Constable and Co., 1919. Montgomery, Robert. The Messiah. London: J . T u r r i l l , 183?. Scott, William B e l l . The Year of the World. Edinburgh: William T a i t , 187^ Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Poems;, New York: Random House, n. d. Swinburne, Algernon Charles. Songs before Sunrise. London: William Heinemann, 1917 (1871). Wordsworth, William. Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, rev. E. De S e l i n c o u r t f London: Oxford University Press, 1967. Secondary Sources a) Tennyson: Biographical and C r i t i c a l Antippas, Andy. "Tennyson's S i n f u l Soul." Tulane Studies i n English, 17 (1969), 113-134. 152 August, Eugene R. "Tennyson and ^ e i l h a r d : The F a i t h of In Memoriam." TOLA, 84 (1969), PJ7-226. E l i o t , T. S. Essays Ancient and Modern. London: Mac-millan, T?W. Gibson, Walker. "Behind the V e i l : A D i s t i n c t i o n between Poetic and S c i e n t i f i c Language i n Tennyson, L y e l l , and Darwin." V i c t o r i a n Studies, 2 (1958), 60-68. Harrison, James. "Tennyson and Evolution." Durham Uni-v e r s i t y Journal, 64 (1971), 26-31. Hellstrom, Ward. On the Poems of Tennyson. G a i n e s v i l l e : University of F l o r i d a Press, 1972. Hough, Graham. "The Natural Theology of In Memoriam." RES, 23 (1947), 244-256. Johnson, E. D. H. The A l i e n V i s i o n of V i c t o r i a n Poetry. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1963 (1952). . "In Memoriam: The Way of the Poet." V i c t o r i a n Studies, 2 (1958), 139-148. Killham, John. Tennyson and the Princess. London: Ath-lone Press, 1958. Knowles, James. "Aspects of Tennyson." Nineteenth Century, 33,(1893) Langbaum, Robert. The Modern S p i r i t . New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Mann, Robert James. Tennyson's "Maud" Vindicated. London: Ja r r o l d and Sons, n. d. Millhauser, Milton. F i r e and Ice. Lincoln: Tennyson Re-search Centre, 1971. . "Magnetic Mockeries: The Background of a Phrase." ELN, 5 (1967), 103-113. . "A P l u r a l i t y of After-worlds." Hartford Studies i n Literature, 1 (1969), 37-49. Paden, W. D. Tennyson i n Egypt. Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1942. Peckham, Morse. V i c t o r i a n Revolutionaries. New York: George B r a z i l l e r , 1970. 153 P i t t , V a l e r i e . Tennyson Laureate. London: Barrie and R o c k l i f f , 1962". Potter, George R. "Tennyson and the B i o l o g i c a l Theory of Mu t a b i l i t y i n Species." PQ, 16 (1937), 321-343. Ricks, Christopher. Tennyson. London: Macmillan, 1972. Rutland, William R. "Tennyson and the Theory of Evolution." Essays and Studies, 26 (1940), 7-29. S i n f i e l d , Alan. The Language of Tennyson's In Memoriam. Oxford: B a s i l Blackwell, 1971. Tennyson, Hallam. Materials toward a L i f e of A. T. P r i -vately printed"! n. d. ._ A l f r e d Lord Tennyson, a Memoir. London: Ma c mi1lan, 1899. ' b) S c i e n t i f i c and Philosophical Works Bourdier, Franck. 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