ESSAYS.

TENNYSON'S POEMS.

AN essay upon a poet's writings may take one of two forms. It may either confine itself to an analysis of

⚫ those writings with a view to discover the source of their power over the sympathies of men, or it may treat of the place the poet occupies in the literature of his time and country. The latter plan requires not only more knowledge and greater power of comprehensive survey on the part of the writer, but readers who are thoroughly acquainted both with the poet under review and all those with whom he is brought into comparison. This volume might doubtless find a sufficient number of readers thus qualified, among the class to which it is particularly addressed; and

B

a comparison of Mr. Tennyson's genius and productions with those of Byron, Shelley, Scott, Keats, and Wordsworth, would have abundant interest if it were executed with ability and judgment. The motives which, in spite of these reasons, have induced a preference for the former and easier plan, are twofold. In the first place, the writer has no confidence in his own ability for a philosophical estimate of the essential characteristics of the poetry of the first and second quarters of the present century; he fears running into vague generalities and dogmatical assertions, where there is not space for testing his opinions by quotation and analysis of detail and construction. In the second place, his own experience leads him to think that analytical criticism of Mr. Tennyson's poems is likely to be interesting and serviceable to a large class of readers, though, of course, it can have little charm for persons who by talent and study are better qualified than he is to write such a criticism themselves. It has often happened to him to meet with persons of unquestioned talent and good taste, who profess themselves unable to understand why Mr. Tennyson is placed so high among poets as his admirers are inclined to place him; who say they find him obscure and affected, the writer for a class rather than for a people. The object of this paper is to show that

we, who do admire him, have a reason for our faith; that we are not actuated by blind preference for the man who echoes merely our own class feelings and opinions in forms that suit our particular tastes and modes of thought,—but that Mr. Tennyson is a poet of large compass, of profound insight, of finished skill. We find him possessing the clearest insight into our modern life, one who discerns its rich poetical resources, who tells us what we are and may be; how we can live free, joyous, and harmonious lives; what grand elements of thought, feeling, and action lie round us; what a field there is for the various activities fermenting within us. We do not call him a Shakspeare, or even a Chaucer; but what Shakspeare and Chaucer did for the ages they lived in, Mr. Tennyson is doing for our age, after his measure. He is showing it to us as an age in which an Englishman may live a man's life, and be neither a mere man of business, nor a mere man of pleasure, but may find in his affections, studies, business, and relaxations scope for his spiritual faculties.

The main difficulty of the task has lain in the fact that the poems of Mr. Tennyson are never repetitions, in the great variety both of form and matter they exhibit. It has been impossible to do without special mention of a great number of poems, and the result is