Tennyson's changing world still has a purpose
when Tennyson, in a wild and rather weak manner, welcomed the idea of infinite alteration in society
The allusion is to Locksley Hall, first published in 1842. The inspected 1843 Poems, volume II, p. 110, already has the wording Chesterton quotes immediately after this paragraph; it is not evidence of the exact first-edition reading. John Churton Collins's later apparatus records an 1842 variant with ‘peoples’ where the later text has ‘great world’. 1843 witness_-_Volume_2_of_2.djvu/122); Collins, note 16.
The context complicates Chesterton's characterization. The speaker is recovering from disappointed love, alternately imagining social advance and despairing of his place in it. His projected future culminates in international peace and law; he also asserts that ‘one increasing purpose runs’ through history (lines 137–138). These are purposes for change, rather than change alone as an ultimate value. Chesterton's argument that improvement requires a standard therefore need not refute this particular poem: the poem supplies standards. Its dramatic voice also makes it unsafe to identify every declaration immediately with Tennyson's settled convictions. Locksley Hall, especially lines 119–144 and 181–186, 1843 text/Volume_2/Locksley_Hall).
Sources
Revision 1 of 1 · 2026-11-07 · Suggest an edit