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. 

Had his convictions and his poetry remained throughout on this pedestrian level, had the...