ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. 431 



men now in middle life for Alfred Tennyson. Later generations 

 have different problems to solve, or have to answer the old rid- 

 dles propounded in new forms. Knowledge, wisdom, and poetry 

 have to he expressed again from time to time to suit new 

 demands. Therefore all poets (unless preserved by some fortu- 

 nate accident, like Milton, the mouthpiece of a great religious 

 party, or Burns, the especial poet of a small and distinct nation) 

 have to go through a time of retirement. We all know that 

 Shakespeare himself was once thought to be a simple-minded and 

 obsolete person. The greatest of his successors could speak 

 patronizingly of his "native wood-notes wild." As the clothes 

 of our fathers seem to us merely ridiculous, while those of the 

 last century appear picturesque, so the poets that delighted our 

 grandfathers are too often foolish and contemptible in our ears, 

 while those of the age of Elizabeth or of Charles charm us by 

 their quaintness. "We reject the affectations of Moore to delight 

 in those of Herbert. From the period of oblivion thus created, 

 the minor poets hardly emerge at all. A page or two in a vol- 

 ume of collected verses, a couple of songs in an anthology, — 

 such are the claims to immortality of Sidney and Wither, of 

 Lovelace and Suckling. The great poets come out with their 

 literary baggage much reduced. From such a time of oblivion 

 Dry den and Pope are just emerging. In its depths are Scott 

 and Byron. To Wordsworth has fallen the singular fortune that 

 his voice has been most clearly recognized by a generation sub- 

 sequent, but not long subsequent, to his own. It may be that 

 he will prove an exception, and that he will live and drop his 

 Idiot Boys, and silly old men, and most of his Prelude and 

 Excursion, keeping his noble sonnets and the best of his lyrics 

 without a dormant time. But Tennyson seems likely to share 

 the common fate, and its coming will probably not be long 

 delayed; for he is a poet of the early part and the middle of 

 this century, whose life was prolonged to extreme old age, but 

 who learned nothing very new after fifty, any more than the 

 rest of us do. What is likely to be his place when, in a future 

 age, the lover of poetry collects on his shelves the besl volumes 

 of English verse? What will the "Abridged Works of Lord 

 Tennyson " contain? A perfect answer to such a question can- 

 not be given, but I think we may approach it. The volume 

 will not be a small one. There will be in it, many ballads ami 

 short pieces, some of them treating of classical subjects, like 



