It is about forty-two years since Mr. Tennyson issued his first volumes of poems. The young poet attracted little attention at the time, save from the critics, who could not understand 'this young man from Lincolnshire,' and so did the next best thing—namely, abused his verses. In 1833, Tennyson, nothing daunted, made his second appearance, only to be abused again, but this time in a quarter where virulent condemnation was in that day at least—generally accepted by a new author as the best testimonial to his true merit. The 'Quarterly,' having killed Keats—or, at all events, having gained the reputation for doing it—was ready, like the ogres of the old fables, to annihilate any new victim. Mr. Tennyson, in his earlier poems more evidently than in his more mature efforts, had drawn much of his turn of thought and imagination from the author of 'Endymion.' With a charming expression, therefore, of contrition for its former bad treatment of 'the harbinger of the milky way of poetry'—as, even in its Jesuitical apology, the 'Quarterly' still chose to designate Keats—it pointed its quill for the demolition of the later aspirant to poetic fame; with what ultimate success, the strong hold which Tennyson's writings have since taken on the affections of the reading portion of his countrymen is sufficiently palpable. But it is useful sometimes, if only for the benefit of poets yet unfledged, to point back to the rough handling which men who have now made their names encountered at the outset of their careers. And we do not know whether these very men, now reposing in the calm Hesperides of their success, are not inwardly thankful for the rough lessons which they received in the earlier days of their pilgrimage to fame. Faults and flaws have been pointed out, which the man of true genius has acknowledged to himself as the ordinary results of inexperience, and has accordingly rectified to the best of his power.
In Tennyson's earlier poems, for instance, there was an air of affectation
