and groves where the schools used to congregate, the
dialogues consisting of bald atheism under sheep's clothing to trap
the unwary, and termed "The _Religion_ of Humanity," of abuse and
personality in lieu of argument, of buffoonery called wit, of airing
pet hobbies alien to the subject instead of disputating, of shouting
vulgar claptrap instead of rhetoric, etc.--I sadly fear these stout
old Greeks, having power for the nonce, would, throwing philosophy to
the dogs in a moment of paroxysmal indignation, despite physiognomies
trained to resemble their own, have these fellows casked up in tubs
without lanterns, but with the appropriate "snuffers," fit emblems of
their faiths, and dropped far outside Sandy Hook. A proper finale to
the vapid utterance made by one of these gentry that all "Reformers
should be annihilated," Imagine Plato or Epicurus offering such a
suggestion. O tempora! O mores!]

"To those who are too strongly possessed with our common habit of
classifying writers into kinds, as historians, poets, scientific and
speculative writers, and so on, it may seem strange to include Mr.
Tennyson in this list. But as I have advisedly referred to Wordsworth
as one of the representatives and powers of British philosophy in the
age immediately past, so I advisedly named Tennyson as succeeding him
in the same character. Though it is not power of speculative reason
alone that constitutes a poet, is it not felt that the worth of a poet
essentially is measured by the depth and amount of his speculative
reason? Even popularly, do we not speak of every great poet as the
exponent of the spirit of his age? What else can this mean than that
the philosophy of his age, its spirit and heart in relation to all the
great elemental problems, find expression in his verse? Hence I ought
to include other poets in this list, and more particularly Mr.
Browning and Mrs. Browning, and the late Mr. Clough. But let the
mention of Mr. Tennyson suggest such other names, and stand as a
sufficient protest against our absurd habit of omitting such in a
connection like the present. As if, forsooth, when a writer passed
into verse, he were to be abandoned as utterly out of calculable
relationship to all on this side of the boundary, and no account were
to be taken of his thoughts and doings, except in a kind of curious
appendix at the end of the general register? What if philosophy, at a
certain extreme range, and of a certain kind, tends of neces