Tennyson, while believing that the true doctrine was taught by Christ's disciples, believed also that God revealed himself to, and inspired the present generation, just as truly as he did the chosen twelve. To Tennyson the all important question of religion was the question of immortality; if this could be settled in his mind the question of the Fatherhood of God, man's salvation, the brotherhood of man, is life worth living, would all be clear. If immortality could not be accepted then nothing could be accepted. He fought for his belief in immortality in a world full of doubts. Unlike Arnold, he sought

to establish the truth not only through the intellect, but through an appeal to the emotions.

"Immortal life in

God who is immortal Love, and therefore immortal Life,.....

inmortal development

immortal union with all we love;

the never-ending evolution of all into more and more of perfection." (Stopford A. Brooke.)

Tennyson had fixed his belief in immortality and was

about to rest from doubt - when Darwin's theory of evolution shook the world.

This and the so-called "higher

criticism" raised questions regarding the infallibility of

the Bible, the interpretation of the New Testament stories and other related questions. The whole world was full of doubt, men fought with earnestness for the faith of the grey-haired fathers.

It was then that Tennyson wrote

the poem of "Despair" and "The Promise of May," and "By an Evolutionist" which show how deeply these questions affected his sensitive mind. "Vastness" still shows a way

ering note and it is not until his last great poem "Crossing the Bar," that we see doubt vanish.

This spirit of doubt in Browning is more like Arnold's in that it appeals directly to the intellect rather than to emotion, but Browning is far less negative than Between Browning's earlier and later work there

Arnold.

is a great distinction. "In the first the investigation is purely critical, in the last period he fell back upon a denial of knowledge and accepted faith blindly and even against reason." (Professor Jones.)

We see Browning's inner life revealed in the poem "Pauline," where we find these stanzas:

"I have always had one lode-star; now,
As I look back, I see that I have halted
Or hastened as I looked towards that star
A need, a trust, a yearning after God:

A feeling I have analysed but late,
But it existed, and was reconciled
With a neglect of all I deemed his laws,
Which yet, when seen in others, I abhorred.
I felt as one beloved, and so shut in

From fear: and thence I date my trust in signs

And omens, for I saw God everywhere;
And I can only lay it to the fruit

Of a sad after-time that I could doubt
e'en the while I felt

Even his being

His presence, never acted from myself,

Still trusted in a hand, to lead me through
All danger; and this feeling ever fought
Against my weakest reason and resolve.

My God, my God, let me for once look on thee
As though nought else existed, we alone!
And as creation crumbles, my soul's spark
Expands till I can say, Even from myself

I need thee and I feel thee and I love thee.
I do not plead my rapture in thy works
For love of thee, nor that I feel as one
Who cannot die: but there is that in me

Which turns to thee, which loves or which should love."

The poets of doubt, though widely separate in their investigations, were all groping toward a new faith

- a

faith in which the intellect leads a faith in the power While this spirit

of science to test religious questions.

of religious doubt and unbelief pervades the writings of all the Victorian poets, there is a total absence of this spirit among the Elizabethan poets.

They seemed utterly

unconscious of religious questionings; either they ac

cepted the Christian religion or they were totally indifferent to it.

Greville's sonnets, written about 1633, give some

idea of the conceptions of life and death.