My dear Mrs Pollock
I am sorry to confess to you the existence of the word “impossible” in my vocabulary. But some time ago the pressure of my work was so heavy, the completion of my book2 so doubtful that in my extreme need I swore by Zeus that excepting on Sundays, until the 20th of March I would not dine out. I am now bound by this chain. and it must be borne until the performance of my vow enables me to shake it off.
Ever yours | John Tyndall
Monday night
My vindication of Tennyson3 is the most triumphant piece of physical poetical demonstration hitherto produced. I have smitten all his critics into everlasting dumbness—their pestilent voices will annoy him no more
RI MS JT/1/TYP/6/2015
RI MS JT/1/T/1219
[late February to early March 1860]: Dated with reference to the comment about not going out until 20th March in letter 1685.
completion of my book: Tyndall was completing the final stages of Glaciers of the Alps.
My vindication of Tennyson: Tyndall mentions Tennyson in ‘Physics and Metaphysics’ published in the Saturday Review, 10 (4 August 1860), p. 141: ‘Tennyson…is full not only of the imagery derived from strict study, but also of intuitive applications of scientific truth’, and had perhaps shown a draft to Juliet earlier. This piece was to have been a chapter in Glaciers of the Alps until he was dissuaded from publishing it there. The article, though published anonymously, is the first substantive public statement of his ‘materialist’ philosophy.
Please cite as “Tyndall1686,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on