Hugh Walker

The Age of Tennyson Hugh Walker

Poetry is so clearly the head and front of literaturethat in most periods the first and chief attention mustbe paid to the poets. The Victorian age is anexception, at least as regards the order in whichprose and poetry claim notice, and perhaps partly asregards their relative prominence. The man who firstgives us a key to the significance of the age ofTennyson is not Tennyson himself, nor Browning, norany writer of verse, but one who believed that the dayof poetry was past, -Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). Considerably older than the poets, he had, notwithstanding his early difficulties, notwithstandingtoo the slow ripening of his own genius, made a namein literature and stamped his mark on his generationbefore either of them was widely kno