Page:The Victorian Age.djvu/43

 the great Victorians has no parallel in history, except in ancient Greece. The great Attic tragedians lived as long as Tennyson and Browning; the Greek philosophers reached as great ages as Victorian theologians; but if you look at the dates in other flowering times of literature you will find that the life of a man of genius is usually short, and his period of production very short indeed.

Tennyson is now depreciated for several reasons. His technique as a writer of verse was quite perfect; our newest poets prefer to write verses which will not even scan. He wrote beautifully about beautiful things, and among beautiful things he included beautiful conduct. He thought it an ugly and disgraceful thing for a wife to be unfaithful to her husband, and condemned Guinevere and Lancelot as any sound moralist would condemn them. A generation which will not buy a novel unless it contains some scabrous story of adultery, and revels in the 'realism' of the man with a muck-rake, naturally 'has no use for' the Idylls of the King, and calls Arthur the blameless prig. The