But Tennyson had no clear theory about Man or Nature or God when he began, nor was he afterwards, save perhaps when he wrote the last stanzas of _In Memoriam_, a fully satisfied citizen of the city that has foundations.

He believed in that city, but he could not always live in it.

He grew into this or that opinion about the relations of God and man, and then grew out of it.

He held now this, now that view of nature, and of man in contact with nature.

There was always battle in his soul; although he won his brittle in the end, he had sixty years of war.