But he was not a social agitator. He never set a rick on fire. "He held aloof, in a somewhat detached position, from the great social seethings of his age" (Mr Frederic Harrison). But in youth he helped to extinguish some flaming ricks. He spoke of the "many-headed beast" (the reading public) in terms borrowed from Plato. He had no higher esteem for mobs than Shakespeare or John Knox professed, while his theory of tyrants (in the case of Napoleon III. about 1852) was that of Liberals like Mr Swinburne and Victor Hugo. Though to modern enlightenment Tennyson may seem as great a Tory as Dr Johnson, yet he had spoken his word in 1852 for the freedom of France, and for securing England against the supposed designs of a usurper (now fallen). He really believed, obsolete as the faith may be, in guarding our own, both on land and sea. Perhaps no Continental or American critic has ever yet dispraised a poetical fellow-countryman merely for urging the duties of national union and national defence.
A critic, however, writes thus of Tennyson: "When our poet descends into the arena of party polemics, in such things as Riflemen, Form!
Hands all Round, . . . The Fleet, and other topical pieces dear to the Jingo soul, it is not poetry but journalism." I doubt whether the desirableness of the existence of a volunteer force and of a fleet really is within the arena of PARTY polemics. If any party thinks that we ought to have no volunteers, and that it is our duty to starve the fleet, what is that party's name? Who cries, "Down with the Fleet! Down with National Defence! Hooray for the Disintegration of the Empire!"?