Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism | In Memoriam, Alfred, Lord Tennyson - J. M. Cohen (essay date 1949)

J. M. Cohen (essay date 1949)

SOURCE: Cohen, J. M. “‘In Memoriam’: a Hundred Years After.” Cornhill Magazine 164, no. 980 (autumn 1949): 151-64.

[In the following essay, Cohen states that Tennyson's In Memoriam is the record of the author's own experience following the death of contemporary poet and friend, Arthur Hallam.]

‘Answer for me that I have given my belief in “In Memoriam,”’ Tennyson would instruct his son Hallam when dealing with one of those numerous correspondents who questioned his Christian belief. To whom could a doubting reader turn with more assurance than to the Laureate for confirmation of his wavering faith? The answer in the passage to which Tennyson referred his troubled applicant was unequivocal:

And so the Word had breath, and wrought
          With human hands the creed of creeds
          In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought....

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