ABSTRACT
Tennyson was a great English poet, far the most richly gifted of the past century and a half, who failed to write great poems. In Wordworth s case it was quickly fuelled by the French Revolution. Tennyson had a similar but much more limited phase. He got into a student set at Cambridge, the Apostles and he took part with some of the members in a brief Spanish adventure on behalf of a Liberal conspiracy. There is a sombre contradiction at the heart of imperialism, even if Tennyson cannot admit it of his own empire. At home the agitation leading to the second Reform Act in 1867 was quite enough to flutter Tennyson, whose vivid fancy was always ready to magnify scuffles into cataclysms. At Viviens flattery Merlin Tennyson's poetic Doppelgnger fell mute, So dark a forethought rolld about his brain, As on a dull day in an Ocean cave The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hallIn silence.
