‘Better Fifty Years of Europe than a Cycle of Cathay’

The classical universe allows Tennyson perspective on China. While ‘Locksley Hall’ appears to endorse British progress and deride China, the metre distances the poet from modernity: Tennyson’s line has probably Persian or ancient Greek origins. Tennyson’s patriotism celebrates ancient values but is suspicious of Victorian progress. ‘Recollections of the Arabian Nights’ considers the paradox that Britain deems Asia both accomplished and stagnant. Britain was culpable for hindering China as the East India Company became increasingly reliant on the illegal opium-trade. In the ‘Lotos-Eaters’ Tennyson responds to the opium crisis in China as well as addiction in his family. Sara Coleridge wrote her own version of the ‘Lotos-Eaters’, intensifying the Chinese analogues by reference to her father’s ‘Kubla Khan’. In ‘The Ancient Sage’ Tennyson finds an alternative to Victorian progress in Laozi’s Dao De Jing, as translated by John Chalmers, although Tennyson interprets the philosopher in Augustinian terms.