The Devil's Advocate is very ready to discuss Tennyson's 'thought.' An instance is given by Mr Gladstone in his essay on Locksley Hall (Nineteenth Century, January 1887). He quotes an article 'of singular talent' in the Pall Mall Gazette, December 14, 1886. This 'states rather dogmatically that any criticism which accepts Lord Tennyson as a thinker is out of date,' and Mr Gladstone proceeds: 'I venture to demur to this proposition and to contend that the author of In Memoriam (for example) shows a capacity which entitles him to a high place among the thinkers of the day.'
Now it may be asked whether this demurrer does not concede too much to the Devil's Advocate of the Pall Mall Gazette. 'Thinker' is taken as if it were a simple unequivocal term. What it meant exactly as used by those two parties would be hard to say; but the Index to that volume of the Nineteenth Century, which contains articles by Professor Huxley, Mr John Morley and
