In Memoriam is one of the cardinal documents of the mid-Victorian mind, ...

In Memoriam is one of the cardinal documents of the mid-Victorian mind, its ardent curiosity, its exquisite sensitiveness to nature, and, not less, perhaps, its un-willingness to quit, and its incapacity to follow, any chain of reasoning which seems likely to result in an unpleasant conclusion. In his highest mood, Tennyson sometimes speaks like an archangel assuring the universe that it will muddle through.

The age was learning, but it had not mastered, the lesson that truth lies not in the statement but in the process: it had a childlike craving for certitude, as if the natural end of every refuted dogma was to be replaced by another dogma.

Raised in the dark and narrow framework of Evangelical and economic truth, it wilted in the sunlight and waved for support to something vaguely hopeful like the Platonism of Maurice, or loudly reassuring like the hero worship of Carlyle. New freedom is a painful thing, most painful to the finest minds, who are most sensitive to the breaking-up of faiths and traditions and most apprehensive of the outcome.

The stress of the age is incarnate in Arthur Clough.