We belong to quite as many regiments as the German Kaiser. Our
regiments are regiments that are embattled everywhere; they fight an
unending fight against all that is hopeless and rapacious and of evil
report. The only difference is that we have the regiments, but not the
uniforms.
Only one obvious point occurs to me to add. If the Kaiser has more than
any other man the sense of the poetry of the ancient things, the sword,
the crown, the ship, the nation, he has the sense of the poetry of
modern things also. He has one sense, and it is even a joke against
him. He feels the poetry of one thing that is more poetic than sword or
crown or ship or nation, the poetry of the telegram. No one ever sent a
telegram who did not feel like a god. He is a god, for he is a minor
poet; a minor poet, but a poet still.
TENNYSON
Mr. Morton Luce has written a short study of Tennyson which has
considerable cultivation and suggestiveness, which will be sufficient to
serve as a notebook for Tennyson's admirers, but scarcely sufficient,
perhaps, to serve as a pamphlet against his opponents. If a critic has,
as he ought to have, any of the functions anciently attributed to a
prophet, it ought not to be difficult for him to prophesy that Tennyson
will pass through a period of facile condemnation and neglect before we
arrive at the true appreciation of his work. The same thing has happened
to the most vigorous of essayists, Macaulay, and the most vigorous of
romancers, Dickens, because we live in a time when mere vigour is
considered a vulgar thing.
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