II. Tennyson. ST. SIMEON STYLITES AND ST. AGNES. SPECIAL introduction to Tennyson might be desirable, but I can only, in the time and space at my disposal, attempt to place him generally before you, and point to some of the influences which formed him, and upon which he has reacted. Tennyson is emphatically the man of his age; he is intimately connected, in their wider aspects, with the political, social, and intellectual, as well as the poetical and spiritual, movements of the nineteenth century. Born in 1809, he came into public notice between 1830-40, and soon embodied in poetic literature the romantic movement then at its zenith on the continent. But the literary and artistic movement, at home and abroad was only a part of a general upheaval, in politics and religion. |