SOURCE: Gliserman, Susan. “Early Victorian Science Writers and Tennyson's In Memoriam: A Study in Cultural Exchange.” Victorian Studies 18, nos. 3 and 4 (March and June 1975): 437-59.

In the following excerpt, Gliserman looks at the works of nineteenth-century scientists Peter Mark Roget, William Whewell, and Charles Lyell as representative of the science writers read by Tennyson and explores the ways in which In Memoriam uses scientific language in reference to scientific discovery and as a literary style.

A number of commentators, most recently Milton Millhauser, have identified passages in [Tennyson's] poetry as reflecting awareness of specific scientific issues.¹ References of this kind are often straightforward and incontestable. For example, in “The Palace of Art,” the Soul uses recent descriptions of the stages of embryonic development in the human fetus: “From change to change four times within the womb / The brain is moulded.” John Killham has identified these lines as referring to...