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every detail is so fitting that the special device is forgotten in the 
general excellence. Thenceforward slovenly work from any 
quarter was subject to instant rebuke by contrast, and the force 
of metrical elegance made its way with wonderful rapidity and 
carried everything before it. 
Tennyson had come to the knowledge at this period, not only 
that Art, when followed for its own sake, is alluring, but that, 
when used as a means of expressing what cannot otherwise be 
quite revealed, it is seraphic. The duty of life and manly 
independence was never more fitly portrayed than when one is 
taught by Pallas, the goddess of wisdom, that, 
“ Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power, 
Yet not for power (power of herself 
Would come uncall’d for) but to live by law, 
Acting the law we live by without fear; 
And, because right is right, to follow right 
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.” 
This has been made the basis of some of the most profound 
modern thought. Carlyle never taught more effectively than 
that: nay, we should require more than seven volumes to make 
us believe that ‘‘might was right’’ but only seven lines are 
sufficient to belief that, ‘“‘ because right is right to follow right 
were wisdom.”’ 
The next work of the poet was his Idylls in 1842 composed in 
blank verse. This effort brought him a distinctive reputation, 
for it was enriched by a style entirely his own. But we can 
only pass in quick review these poems of charming interest, in 
order to reach those directly bearing upon modern thought. 
In this volume we have ‘‘ Dora,” the paragon of its kind; 
“‘ Godiva ’*‘ and ‘‘ The Gardener’s Daughter,’’ descriptively felicit- 
ous in another way; and the wonderfully compact and expressive 
‘‘Ulysses.’’ Here we have ‘‘ The Talking Oak,’ that marvel of 
grace and fancy; and here too is found, composed in the minor 
key, the enduring and suggestive songs, ‘‘ Break, break, break,’’ 
and ‘ Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,”’ in the former of which 
we have those matchless lines, 
‘‘But O for the touch of a vanished hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still.” 
Tennyson’s humour is at its best, in that half pensive, half 
rollicking, wholly poetic composition dear to wits and dreamers, 
‘Will Waterproof’s Lyrical Monologue.” 
In this volume of 1842 we also have the pveren lover reciting 
“‘Tiocksley Hall,’ which, despite its sentimental egotism, 
furnishes genuine illustrations of the age, and of the poet’s own 
breadth of sympathy and aptitude to represent every phase of 
