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the deity, and the material manifestation of creation, which is 
‘only sign and symbol of our division from Him.” In a word, 
he shows that it is the spiritualisation of mind rather than of 
matter which makes the ‘‘ Higher Pantheism,” the only one 
possible, because it is the only one reasonably and justifiably 
in accord with known scientific fact. 
Now Tennyson has not only been impressed by the age and 
environment in which he has lived, thereby earning the title of 
a true representative, but he has left his own impression upon 
the age, by giving back in a higher mould that which he has 
received. The style of his early verse produced a profound 
impression, and as he deepened in tone and heightened in 
quality, his reputation increased. 
He has had many imitators of his style, but his thought was 
beyond them all. Indeed there have been many Tennysons, but 
only one Alfred Tennyson, and as he could truly say, 
‘I do but sing because I must, 
And pipe but as the linnets sing ; ” 
while his imitators 
‘‘ Have something of the sort of ring, 
Which goes with a soft flowing swing, 
But lack the thought which noblest poems bring.” 
There is another field in which our poet has scored the greatest 
triumphs of his art. He has given expression to the religious 
disquietude of his time, caused by the present-day discoveries 
of science, and the higher criticism. Few have passed 
through the ordeal as scathless as he. Nay it is he who has 
been our guide through gloom of doubt; it is he who trusts 
that ‘somehow good will be the final goal of ill; and it is he 
who has taught us to ‘trust the larger hope,’’ even if it be but 
“* faintly.” 
In this capacity Tennyson has become what Wordsworth failed 
to become,—the poet of man; in this capacity he outstripped 
all his compeers; outstripped even Shelley, the most ethereally 
spiritual, or imaginative of all our poets, and he did so by 
getting nearer the reality, beyond the spiritually imaginative. 
And yet Tennyson has not escaped the critics. Hven 
Wordsworth charged him with affectation; Lord Lytton attacked 
him in “The New Timon;” Coleridge wrote strictures on his 
bad metres, which are the most pronounced cases of blind and 
blundering criticism the century has produced. Since Gitiord 
ran his indiscriminate tusks into the sweet white flesh of Young 
‘‘ Endymion” the age has had nothing more coarsely uncritical. 
He has been called sceptical : nothing could be more erroneous. 
That he writes at times as one in doubt, ’tis true; but we must 
bear in mind that doubt. disintegrates, disperses, dispels; that 
