Scientific method invades the art of the Victorian age. Inaccuracy of detail it would be impossible to rival the scenic descriptions of Tennyson, whose nature poetry is like the work of an inspired scientist; and if we pass from poetry to history and fiction, we can see the dominance of the scientific method more clearly. In the poetry of Tennyson and the novels of Thomas Hardy, nature no longer remains a,” kindly mother” with a “holy plan” of her own.
Tennyson speaks of Nature as,” red in tooth and claw”; he is conscious of the grim struggle for survival which goes on within her. Thomas Hardy is even more explicit. He paints both ugly and the beautiful in Nature, and regards “mutual butchery “as the law of Nature. He gives a knock – out blow to the romantic exaltation of Nature, as makes us see her in her true colour. Impelled by scientific rationalism, he scoffs at the Cause of Things, and conceives of Him as blind power workings ceaselessly, unmindful of human suffering.