represent the material on which he has worked as the Homeric parodies in the Eneid indicate their originals. It is here that I trust my illustrations may be of service to those for whom they are intended to be of service, that is to say, to serious students of a poet who is worth serious study. From all the higher work of the critic, from all attempts at the kind of criticism which is supposed to reflect any sort of credit on a critic, I have refrained. Nobis in arcto et inglorius labor. But I should not like it to be supposed that because I have instituted a comparison between Lord Tennyson and Virgil, I have assumed that they stand on the same level. The distance which separates the author of In Memoriam and the Idylls of the King from the author of the Georgics and the Eneid, is almost as considerable as the distance which separates all other poets now living from the author of In Memoriam. It measures indeed the difference between a great classic whose power and charm will be felt in all ages, and in all regions coextensive with civilised humanity, and a poet who will be a classic intelligible to those only who speak his language and think his thoughts. In tone. and temper Lord Tennyson is, to borrow an expression of M. Taine, the most insular' of eminent English poets, as he is assuredly the most conventional. And it is this which explains the extraordinary fascination which for nearly half a century he has exercised over his countrymen. A gift of felicitous and musical expression which it would be no exaggeration to describe as marvellous, an instinctive sympathy with what is best and most elevated in the sphere of the commonplace of commonplace thought, of commonplace sentiment and activity-with corresponding N representative power, a most rare faculty of seizing and fixing in very perfect form what is commonly so inexpressible because so impalpable and evanescent in emotion and impression, and a power of catching and rendering the charm of Nature, of meadow, wood, and mountain, of sky and stream, of tree and flower, with a fidelity and vividness which resembles magic, and lastly, unrivalled skill in choosing, repolishing, and resetting the gems which are our common inheritance from the past: in these gifts is to be found the secret of his eminence. And these gifts will suffice for immortality. But it is well that we should not accustom ourselves to talk and judge loosely. It requires very little critical discernment to foresee that among the English poets of the present century the first place will ultimately be assigned to Wordsworth, the second to Byron, and the third to Shelley. Had the Poet Laureate fulfilled the promise of the Morte d'Arthur he might have stood beside his master, and England might have had her Æneid. As it is, he will probably occupy the same relative position in English poetry as De Quincey occupies in English prose. Both are Classics-immortal Classics -but they are Classics in fragments. INDEX ACH ACHILLES TATIUS, 44; quoted, 40 ESCHYLUS, quoted, 26, 145, 153, ALCMAN, 29, 139; quoted, 108 ANACREON, Psuedo, 29; quoted, 39, 42 Anamnesis: illustrations of psuedo- Arabian Nights, 25 ARISTOTLE, 43, 162; his quotation BACCHYLIDES, quoted, 115 BEATTIE, James, 40, 41 BROWNING, quoted, 85, 173 BROWNE, Sir Thomas, 101; quoted, BURNS, quoted, 62, 69 CALLIMACHUS, quoted, 41, 159, 167; CAL CALPURNIUS SICULUS, quoted, 107 CAREW, quoted, 56 CATULLUS, 33, 162; quoted, 104, 124 CELEUS, 174 CHAUCER, study of Tennyson's work CLEVELAND, John, quoted, 26 COBHAM, Lord, 163 COLERIDGE, Tennyson's debt to, 28; CONGREVE, quoted, 102 COOPER, J. G., referred to, 44 CRANMER: Preface to his Bible CRASHAW, Richard, quoted, 111 CROKER, Crofton, quoted, 152 DANIEL, Samuel: poem to the Decamerone, Boccaccio's, 160 GUA De Haloneso, quoted, 85 DIOGENES LAERTIUS, 74, 110 Donna di Scalotta, Italian romance, DONNE, Dr. John, quoted, 91, 99 DUMAS, Alexandre, quoted, 118 ECCLESIASTES, Book of, 43 ELLIS, Mr. Joseph, 163 EURIPIDES, debt of Virgil to, 6, 25, EUSEBIUS, Chronicle of, 71 Exeter Book, 26 EXETER, Earl of, 65 FERRIER, Miss S. E., 7 FITZGERALD, Mr.: his version of the FORD, John, quoted, 32, 50 GASKELL, Mrs., (and footnote) 69 GOETHE, (and footnote) 98 GRAY, a type of the imitative class GREENE, Robert, quoted, 58, 157 - Pseudo, quoted, 83 HEYWOOD, Thomas, quoted, 26 HOGGINS, Sarah: the story of her 5; the Eneid modelled on, 7; LANG, Mr. Andrew, 136 LAURA DE SADE, 92 LAU-TZE, 168; quotations from the LECAN, Yellow Book of, 163 LEWIS, David, reference to, 44 LINGARD, Dr. John, quoted, 155, 156 LONGFELLOW: his hexameters, 95; LONGINUS, 12; quoted, 84, 85 LUCRETIUS, Tennyson's use of, 6, LYTTON, Lord, 108 |