Discussion: Mary E. Church
Subject: -- Resolved that Tennyson is a Greater Poet than Longfellow

Longfellow was an American.  Longfellow was a poet, and we are proud of him.  To attempt to deprive him of his merited fame would be ignoble.  To attempt to tarnish his name by ill-formed assertions, to sneeringly disparage his poems would be the part of villainy. Honesty would blush at it, and truth would have us remand each to his proper place, be he American or English.  The man’s genius, the man’s poetry are to be examined, and by subtle analysis, close study of the works, persistent effort to understand even the least important productions, must we attempt to arrive at a just conclusion.

Let us then lay aside all prejudice. With careful investigation with justice, let us discuss the question, allowing the poetry alone to be taken into account, and not the nationality of the poets.  In the first place I argue that Tennyson is a greater poet than Longfellow because he possesses in a higher degree those qualities which the most reliable authorities consider essential to a great poet.  What are these qualities?  A fertile imagination, a deep emotional nature, a great command of language, an artist in form and expression, a noble purpose.  All these belong to Tennyson, and it is mine to prove that he possesses them in a higher degree than Longfellow.   

In the second place, Tennyson is a better teacher of the people.  That it is the poet’s duty to do more than please will be acknowledged.  Rhymes can be so skillfully arranged that they will tickle the popular ear, if the poet is to impart pleasure, but the great poet must attempt to instill into the hearts of the people a love of right, of justice, of all good—in a word, the great poet must be a preacher—so thought Milton and Lord Bacon.    

In the third place I argue that Tennyson is a greater poet than Longfellow because he has written more poems of excellence.  “In Memoriam” is considered the finest elegiac poem in the world.