Note 16 — Chapter I · Intellectual Fashions

Mr. Harold Nicolson’s recently published book on Tennyson illustrates my point. The book is an acute and, in nearly every respect, a sympathetic piece of thinking, but it is coloured by the circumstance, due to the reaction of which I have spoken, that Mr. Nicolson often thinks Tennyson intellectually very little apples. And in this respect—in this respect alone—he patronises Tennyson, and the result is unfortunate, not for Tennyson but for Mr. Nicolson. It really will not do to say that Tennyson was an exquisite lyric poet but a blundering old prig intellectually. Tennyson’s intellectual approach and expression were not Mr. Nicolson’s, and it is perfectly right for Mr. Nicolson to stand for his own. But he should have remembered that Tennyson was not only the lyrist that he admits him to be, but, when all is said and done, a giant among the minds of a remarkable age. Had he done this he would not have marred what is otherwise a very beautiful piece of critical exposition.