424 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, 



healthy and sunny. In his worst moods he never sneers — but 

 at a mob, or a Frenchman. His patriotism is intense and 

 unquestioning. Had we to judge from the internal evidence of 

 his poems, we might believe that he had never strayed from 

 English ground. His imagination has never travelled else- 

 where, save for those little excursions with the classic muse 

 which the Cambridge or Oxford man absolutely owes to his 

 schoolmasters. If, in reading him, we are startled by an echo of 

 Dante, or even of Walt Whitman, it is but a faint and distant 

 echo, soon dying away. In England Tennyson was at home, 

 and none of her sons have loved her more nobly. Every flower 

 of the English field, every cloud of the English sky, had its 

 word for him. And like his patriotism is his purity of- heart, — 

 a positive quality, elevating the whole nature of the man, the 

 whole work of the poet. 



There are three distinctly marked periods in Tennyson's poeti- 

 cal life. The first includes his early poems, and ends with the 

 two volumes issued in 1842, at the close of the long time of com- 

 parative silence that followed the death of Arthur Hallam. 

 The poetry of this period is chiefly lyrical, consisting of ballads 

 with a slight thread of narrative running through them, like 

 "The Lady of Shalott," "(Enone," "The May Queen," or "A 

 Dream of Fair Women " ; or of songs entirely without story, 

 such as "It is the miller's daughter." Occasionally in this 

 period a hint was given of the forms which the poet's genius 

 was to take in the future. Thus the " Morte d' Arthur " gives 

 promise of the " Idylls " ; " The Two Voices " is a prelude to 

 "In Memoriam," The poetry of this earlier part of the poet's 

 life is often exquisite ; the lyrics are nearly, if not quite, as good 

 as his best. Indeed, "Love that hath us in the net," and 

 "Break, break, break," are among the very best things in that 

 line that he ever accomplished, — among the sweetest songs in 

 the English language. Yet if Alfred Tennyson had died in 1845, 

 he would not have ranked among the greatest of British poets. 

 His place would have been with Campbell and not with Scott, 

 with Moore and not with Byron. He was not destined to leap, 

 like Keats and Shelley, to the first rank while under thirty. It 

 was in the second period of his life, in the strength of his man- 

 hood, that Tennyson achieved the height of his greatness. In 

 the twelve years from 1847 to 1859 appeared " The Princess " 

 and its lyrics, "In Memoriam," and the first collection of 



