The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

STEWED PRUNES AND PRISM: THE TENNYSON CENTENARY Tue judicious may possibly wonder why one should dig so deep into the tumulus of oblivion to: rescue (though but for execration) the bones of so very dead a dog as Alfred Tennyson. But the truth is not so near the surface. He can hardly be called dead who never lived; and a trodden worm writhes longer than a felled ox. So therefore Tennyson succumbed to contempt, not to hatred; men twitched their robes away from the contamination of the unclean thing—there was no fight, no bloodshed. Now therefore the smirking approval of the neuters of England continues unashamed, until the younger generation (some of them) may be inclined to class Tennyson with the poets, rather than with the Longfellows and Cloughs. They can hardly imagine any creature, however vile, so crapulous as to prostitute the noble legend of England herself to dust-licking before that amiable Teutonic prig, the late Prince Consort. Yet this busy buttock-groom gives the best part of his flunkey’s life to the achievement. Even his own friendships—his sdiyspusiaj—are made but the pretext fora new servility. 393