... contemporary poetry addressed contentious issues such as these, whether deliberately or simply through their influence on the author, and poetry maintained its cultural authority in spite of the rise of the popular novel during this period. Much of the work could be described as the poetry of doubt; witness the agonisings of Tennyson and Arnold over a world without a god or Browning's questioning of the very nature and purpose of humanity. Many eminent Victorians underwent years of inner conflict and uncertainty as they attempted to reconcile polaric ideas and attitudes in order to achieve a unity of vision and a decisive moral standpoint from which to view this world, struggling to discern what Matthew Arnold called the spirit of the whole1. Hopkins himself did not want to emulate the work of his immediate predecessors or that of his contemporaries. He found their subject matter old fashioned and their treatment ...

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