cible in repeated refinings before their works are fit to remain the last polished evidences to posterity of their innate genius.
Upon this principle, Tennyson is undoubtedly the most polished poet of modern times; but it is a question whether, in his extreme cultivation, he has not sacrificed much of that manly vigour which some of his contemporaries—Browning and Swinburne, for instance—have displayed in their works, either with an unpopular abruptness, or, in the case of the latter poet at times, with a still more unpopular license. Yet Tennyson, with all his weaknesses, is Laureate of the day, as much by a pretty generally recognised right of sovereignty as by title. He has written much that is deliciously sweet —much that is grandly chivalrous. His ear for the music of our fine old Saxon language is perfect. He is almost always intelligible; and, above all, he has never written a word to raise a blush even on the most modest cheek. He is a worthy successor of Wordsworth in the laureateship; and although we have had greater poets even in this nineteenth century, and may yet see greater than those at present in the field before its close, Alfred Tennyson may well claim the first place among living bards.
Indiscriminate praise, which popularity for the time being naturally induces, is always damaging to an author's permanent reputation. For this reason, at the risk of not being seconded in our opinions by the more enthusiastic admirers of the Laureate, let us consider briefly the salient characteristics of Tennyson's writings.
In the first place, except at occasional intervals, his poetry has been essentially objective rather than subjective. A lover of external things of beauty, a student of nature rather than of men, a dreamer rather than a man of action, he—like his own 'Lotus Eaters'— yields rather to the seductive influence of sensuous attractions than to the impulse of more restless minds, who would fain step forth, and, taking the living world for their theme, suggest with prophetic voice the lessons which depend upon the present for the benefit of the unborn future. With rare instances has he touched upon the crying needs of the day—upon the problems which our growing civilisation all over the world is ever presenting. Calm, pensive, retrospective, he is most at his ease when drawing for the fountains of his inspiration from the mellow fancies of the old classical mythology or Arthurian legends.
