Poetry in the late nineteenth centurystone may have been prompted to write the article because he saw in the
poem's attack on the age "in part an attack on himself." Consequently, "the
article becomes an externalization of the usually unspoken antagonism that
the two men felt" (560).
This antagonism is well documented. Yet it was Gladstone who in 1884
had offered Tennyson his peerage. Given the differences between them the
gesture can be read as one of great magnanimity. But it can also be
interpreted in a more ambiguous way: since you have your peerage, you
can give up the Laureateship. Martin hints that this was a possible motive
behind Gladstone's offer:
On the occasion of great anniversaries and honours, old men in the public eye
are showered with good wishes, as Tennyson had been, but in between them
there is occasionally a feeling that they have been around too long. As
Gladstone had once had to listen to Tennyson bringing the Queen's proposal
for his retirement from public life, now Tennyson in his turn had to put up
with the younger poets who felt that he had long since written his best and
that there was little more to expect of him. Lewis Morris, who had wanted to
speak for the other poets of England in congratulating Tennyson on his
peerage, now said that it was the duty of the "Commander in Chief" to step
down in favour of the "subaltern," as Morris had his eye on the post of
Laureate, regarding himself as Tennyson's natural heir even if no one else did
so. When Morris spread rumours that Tennyson was on the verge of
retirement, Hallam wrote to Theodore Watts to assure him that his father had
"not really the slightest intention of resigning until he feels that he can no
longer do the work. It was by the personal wish of the Prince Consort 8c the
Queen that he accepted the Laureateship: & he has had too much from HM,
to think of resigning except into her own hands & with her full concurrence."
As a snub to Morris's hopes he added that it was probable that the Laureate-
ship would be abolished on the death of Tennyson. (561)Although Martin does not give chapter and verse for his suspicions that the
Welsh poet Lewis Morris was maneuvering to succeed to the Laureateship
Morris assumed would soon be vacant, there seems no reason to doubt
that younger contemporaries were indeed jostling to knock the aged eagle
from his perch. And Lewis Morris by no means lacked supporters. When
his Ode of Life appeared in 1880, the left-leaning Westminster Review
claimed that it ought to prove the most popular of Morris's works: "People
flock to hear Mr Stopford Brooke, or Dean Stanley, or the Bishop of
Manchester preach, but in this book they will hear a voice more eloquent
than theirs, dealing with the most important subjects that can ever occupy
the thoughts of man." 12 Similarly, the Nineteenth Century praised "the
high devout purpose and wide human sympathy [that] ennoble all the
writer's work." 13
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