642 NATURAL SCIENCE. 



Nov., 



mainly depend, and it is here difficult to select from the crowd of 

 splendid images that rise to our memory. Tennyson's range of 

 botanical observation was wide. He noticed the broad features in 

 the vegetation of a whole hill-side, as how the olive groves " turn all 

 hoary to the wind " ; he studied the seasonal variations of a single 

 tree, as of the yew, whose " gloom was kindled at the tips, and 

 passeth into gloom again " ; or in the minute coloration of a single 

 flower, as of the " horse chestnut's hectic flush." In our national 

 galaxy of poets we have had probably an unusually large share of 

 Nature-poets, but among them all Tennyson is unique in the close- 

 ness of his observation united with the perfect polish of his language. 

 Pope, probably, comes nearest to him in the elaborate care with 

 which his images have been finished, but the classical influences that 

 have moulded the style of the " Essay on Man," prevent its vying 

 in popularity with the purer English of " In Memoriam." Tenny- 

 son, again, was as much Wordsworth's superior in the simple beauty 

 and ease of his language, as he was his inferior in his breadth of view 

 and the depth of his philosophy. Both poets were keen observers of 

 Nature, but whereas Wordsworth was a philosopher, Tennyson was 

 — at least in his allusions to Nature — a miniature painter with a con- 

 summate mastery of the technique of his art. Hence, while Words- 

 worth has left a deep and permanent impression on human thought, 

 Tennyson has bequeathed to us a gallery of artistic gems. A com- 

 parison of the late Laureate with Goethe is still less in his favour ; 

 for whereas many of Goethe's Nature-touches are fully equal to 

 Tennyson's in beauty of thought and expression, the latter has left 

 us none of the important morphological generalisations by which the 

 great German did so much to advance the progress of botanical 

 science. 



Tennyson, in fact, was not a great thinker, and the estimate that 

 accepted him as such has long since been discredited : his work is 

 valuable rather as the expression of one popular school of contempo- 

 rary thought ; his poetry will thus be of the highest service to the 

 future historian of the intellectual development of the Victorian era. 

 As Burke said, "the popular orator is the man who is a little, but 

 only a little, in advance of his time." Tennyson's popularity may 

 demonstrate that this maxim applies also to poets. Tennyson was 

 carried away by the wave of scientific progress of the early part of 

 our era ; and as he tells us he once nourished 



"A youth sublime, 

 With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time." 

 And there were occasions when Tennyson seemed to have grasped the 

 most advanced teaching of his time : the pantheistic conception of the 

 unity of life was never better expressed, even by Goethe, than in 

 Tennyson's " flower in a crannied wall " : — 



" Little flower — but if I could understand 

 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

 I should know wtiat God and man 15 " 



