Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/39

 friend of several archangels. The scenes are set in Space, in Elsewhere, in Everywhere, in Chaos, and in various parts of the earth, where he develops, with a perfect serenity of conscience, a complete series of different affections for different women. At the end of the poem is the last judgment, and it is worth noting that he was the first of the poets tq teach universal redemption. All the human race are saved; evil has only existed for the development of good; and since the work of Satan has been God's instrument to draw forth good, he and all the rebel host are called back by God to take their original places in heaven, /7dérassons nous, mes enfants, disait le bon Dieu, tout's' expligue.

This universalism was only one of the various phases of religious thought which arose in this time of intellectual excitement, and were naturally represented by the poets. Indeed, more and more, theories and questions of religion caught hold of the poetry of England from 1840 to 1860. /n Memoriam appeared in 1850. The controversy between Newman and his opponents was still hot in Oxford in the forties, and had extended far and wide over England. A liberal theology, into whose tenets I need not enter here, had been well begun, and gathered disciples round it year after year. The authority of the Church was set up against the claim a large class of men made to complete freedom of investigation, criticism, worship, and belief. Others tried to hold the balance between these two extremes, to discover and pave a via media, but instead of one v7a