mere verbal beauty, redeem the poems from insignificance. There are scarcely any in the dramas—apart from the lyrical interludes—which are either worthy of their setting or worthy of being taken out of their setting.
I can well remember the disastrous effect the epic and dramatic periods had on Tennyson's reputation during the 'seventies.' We that were interested in the future of English letters had lost all hope in Tennyson: our eyes were turned to Rossetti and Mr. Swinburne. It became the fashion to think and speak slightingly of the great master, who was all the while maturing to a final creative outburst which was to raise him far above any contemporary, far above most of his predecessors in English song, except the two greatest names of all. The fifth act of the drama of Tennyson's poetic career fulfils all, and more than all, the promise of the earlier ones.
Since Sophocles there has been nothing in all literature like that St. Martin's summer of Tennyson's muse. The old age of Goethe, which seems at first sight a parallel, was devoted to science; the vital portions of the second part of Faust were written years before they were published. The vigour and virility of the volume of Ballads, the Teiresias volume, the New Locksley Hall, and the Demeter volume were astounding: Rizpah, Vastness, the Ballad
