Thus he claimed for his disciples not
only the average thoughtful men, but the very best and finest minds
of his generation who wished to link the past and the present
together, and not to break with the old sanctities.
Tennyson's art suffered from the consciousness of his enormous
responsibility, and where he failed was from his dread of
unpopularity, or his fear of alienating the ordinary man. Browning
was interested in ethical problems; his robust and fortunate
temperament allowed him to bridge over with a sort of buoyant
healthiness the gaps of his philosophy. But Tennyson's ethical
failure lay in his desire to improve the occasion, and to rule out
all impulses that had not a social and civic value. In the later
"Idylls" he did his best to represent the prig trailing clouds of
glory, and to discourage lawlessness in every form; but he was more
familiar with the darker and grosser sides of life than he allowed
to appear in his verse, which suffers from an almost prudish
delicacy, which is more akin to respectability than to moral
courage.
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