ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. 423 



the shock may be great. The reader is interested; he is moved; 

 the force of poetry has mastered him ; every pore of his mind 

 is open to the magic sunlight. Suddenly he is struck by a chil- 

 ling blast which raises the mental goose-flesh. I will give but 

 one instance of this, for the fault, as I have said, is not com- 

 mon in Tennyson's best pieces; but it is too characteristic to 

 pass entirely unnoticed. Let the reader give up his mind to the 

 first ten lines of the following quotation from the "The Miller's 

 Daughter " : 



"■©' 



" But when at last I dared to speak, 



The lanes, you know, were white with may, 

 Your ripe lips moved not, but your cheek 



Flashed like the coming of the day; 

 And so it was — half-sly, half-shy, 



You would, and would not, little one! 

 Although I pleaded tenderly, 



And you and I were all alone. 



" And slowly was my mother brought 

 To yield consent to my desire : 

 She wished me happy, but she thought 

 I might have looked a little higher." 



But such accidents as this are of rare occurrence. Generally 

 the poem will flow on, with an even cadence to the ear and a well 

 ordered sequence to the mind, rising grandly, sinking gracefully, 

 best when most serious and tender. 



The substance of the poems varies more than the style. It 

 is now religious or philosophical, now patriotic; again it is of 

 love or of nature. It is always pure, generally hopeful and 

 believing. 



" There lives more faith in honest doubt, 

 Believe me, than in half the creeds," 



writes Tennyson; and his sympathies are chiefly reserved for 

 those doubts which are full of faith. The son of a clergyman, 

 and born in 1809, — at the height of the reaction against the 

 incredulity of the eighteenth century, — he was a convinced and 

 unwavering Christian; liberal with the liberality of a large 

 mind and especially with the charity of a loving heart; faithful 

 to the faith of his childhood. He is full of hope, too. We feel 

 that his deepest despair is an affair of temper and digestion, 

 that the strong heart of the man and his inmost convictions arc 



