SOURCE: Bradley, A. C. “The ‘Way of the Soul.’” In A Commentary on Tennyson's In Memoriam, pp. 36-48. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1966.

In the following excerpt, originally published in 1910, Bradley provides an explication of Tennyson's work and explains its appeal to readers as the expression of a shared and common experience.

The ‘way of the Soul.’

It is a fashion at present to ascribe the great popularity of In Memoriam entirely to the ‘teaching’ contained in it, and to declare that its peculiar position among English elegies has nothing to do with its poetic qualities. This is equivalent to an assertion that, if the so-called substance of the poem had been presented in common prose,¹ the work would have gained the same hold upon the mass of educated readers that is now possessed by the poem itself. Such an assertion no one would make or consciously imply. The...