Balin looked with profound admiration upon Lancelot and marveled that he himself was so far surpassed by this favorite of the king, muttering: These be gifts, Born with the blood, not learnable, divine, Beyond my reach.18 The wife and mother who had deserted her husband and child for a man who was a dwarf in stature but a giant in intellect, when she made her confession to her mother, sought to comfort herself with the words: "But if sin be sin, not inherited fate, as many will say.' 9947 The An cient Sage takes up the theme and says: In the fatal sequence of this world An evil thought may soil thy children's blood." 'Locksley Hall Sixty Years After" gives us a cautious yet positive statement of the same doc trine: She the worldling born of worldlings father, mother - be content, Ev'n the homely farm can teach us there is something in descent.49 But the most dramatic portrayal of the principle occurs in "The Promise of May," in which the poet puts into the mouth of Harold the words: 48" Balin and Balan," p. 372. 47"The Wreck," p. 543. 48 Poems, pp. 551, 552. O this mortal house, Which we are born into, is haunted by The ghosts of the dead passions of dead men; His belief in heredity was to him, however, not a cause for despair, but rather a call to conflict. In the course of his talk with a young man who was going to the university he said: "The real test of a man is not what he knows, but what he is in himself and in his relation to others. For instance, can he battle against his own bad inherited instincts, or brave public opinion in the cause of truth." 51 Tennyson not only believed and taught that bad inherited instincts may be conquered, but himself sounded the call to battle with those instincts. Perhaps no writer has ever given to the world pictures of English home and country life more original and beautiful in form than those given by Tennyson in such poems as "The Gardener's Daughter," "Dora," "Audley Court," "The Talking Oak," "Locksley Hall," Godiva," "Lady Clare," "The Lord of Burleigh," and several others. He believed and taught that the stability and greatness of a nation depend largely upon the home life of the people. He had true 50 Act II, p. 789. 66 joy in the family duties and affections. It is only the simple truth to say, as his son has said, that this was one of the secrets of his power over mankind.52 52 Ibid., p. 189. CHAPTER VI SOCIETY It is not to be expected that a poet, viewing life from the standpoint of the artist, will deal largely in the technical terms of the sociologist. A man may have an important message to deliver concerning the needs and destiny of society, even though he use some other phrase than "the social organism to embody his profoundest thought. We shall look in vain in the writings of Tennyson for terms which are regarded by some as words of magic in social science. He has none such. Practical students of sociology will regard this as a virtue rather than a defect. What he has to say of the nature and vices and mission of human society he says as a poet. He is, to be sure, especially attracted by the dramatic phases of the social problem, but these are to him, after all, only outward signs of inner conditions, only incidents in a journey whose end no man can clearly foresee nor fully foretell. His critics accused him of living in the past. Carlyle described him to Sir J. Simeon as "sitting on a dung-heap among innumerable dead dogs." 'Memoir, Vol. I, p. 340. 1 He said of himself: "The far future has been my world always." 2 He did study the past and sing of its greatest achievements, but the past was to him a prophecy of the future. He did live in the far future as his world, but it is a future which is the natural fulfilment of the prophecies of the present and the past. His ideal of society is really determined by his ideal of man. Man is a free spiritual being dwelling in a body. He is in part a product of evolution, yet aspires after infinitely greater things than he has ever attained. Endowed with such unmeasured capacities crying for development, he has claims for recognition in the social body which must not be ignored. In general, the interests of the individual and the interests of society are one, but there are times when this seems not to be the fact. The well-being of society is largely dependent upon the sacredness of the family The highest interests of the family are largely dependent upon the sanctity of the marriage bond. That sanctity must be maintained, even though it seems to work hardship for the individual. This is well illustrated in "The Wreck." The exception gives added weight to the rule. He entitles his lines on pantheism "The Higher Pantheism," because, unlike this doctrine in the |