guished young men of his University, his poems present but faint evidence of this. He seems to have deliberately abstained from any attempt to paint the actual human life about him, or to give a poetical form to such impressions of real life as he might have obtained from reading. No one who knows the men with whom he lived, or who has read his later poems, can doubt that the sympathies with human emotion, the noble views of human character and destiny, that distinguish his mature poems, must have then existed in the man; and we must therefore infer that he did not feel his mastery over the instruments of his art sufficient to justify him in delineating human life. His knowledge of the modes in which emotion and character manifest themselves, must have appeared to him too imperfect to attempt their exhibition in rhythmical forms—these forms being no mere conventional arrangement of words to please the ear, but the expression of the delight of the poet at the beauty and completeness of the pictures vividly present to his imagination; and in their highest symbolic value, representing the poet's insight into the moral meaning of life, and his vision of a perfect order and harmony in the universe, of the triumph of good over evil. To attain skill in the employment of rhythmical forms, -to sing nobly and naturally, to form a style capable

of musically expressing his ideas, as ripening intellect and enlarged experience should supply him with ideas demanding musical expression, may be set down as the aim, more or less conscious, of this first poetical series. Probably to the avoidance of subjects beyond his powers, to the careful elaboration of his style, the world may be indebted for the perfection of his later poems. Had he begun with Balder or Festus, he would not have afterwards produced The Morte d'Arthur, The Gardener's Daughter, Locksley Hall, and In Memoriam. Mariana in the Moated Grange marks the highest point of the first flight, and in that the power of the artist is shown, in the complete presentation of a limited and peculiar view of the subject, rather than in the ethical or poetical value of the conception.

Mr. Tennyson's second volume bears the date of 1833. It contains some poems which their author has not thought worthy of preservation, and some others which take their place among his collected poems, considerably altered. But characterised as a whole, in comparison with the first volume, it marks a surprising advance, both in conception and execution. Mariana, and perhaps Recollections of the Arabian Nights, are the only poems of the first series that would have had a chance of being remembered for their own merits,

and they are both admirably executed, rather than interesting. But in the second volume, The Miller's Daughter, Enone, The Palace of Art, The May Queen, and The Lotos Eaters would, even in their original forms, have been enduring memorials of a rare poetic faculty. In The Miller's Daughter and The May Queen the affections of our every-day life, and the scenery with which they associate themselves, become for the first time the subject of Mr. Tennyson's art; and we appreciate the important principle of treating landscape as dynamically related to emotion when we see it applied to feelings which powerfully affect us, and with whose action we are sufficiently familiar to sympathize. In the two Marianas this principle is carried thoroughly out, but under conditions which interfere with our hearty enjoyment of the poems. Partly, no doubt, the contemplation of unmixed pain that serves no disciplinal aim is painful, however exquisitely it may be delineated, and hardly consistent with the delight we expect from every work of art; but the absence from both the Marianas of any but the faintest traces of the previous story, and of any traits of individual character, has more to do with this want of popular interest. They are, as was said before, not women whose history and character we can realize sufficiently to care about them, but

abstract types; and the consequence of this is, that the landscape element predominates too much. Instead of serving simply to reflect and render legible the misery of the women, it becomes itself the principal object, and the women are lost in its details. Besides, we feel that no human life could possibly endure a loneliness and wretchedness so unmixed as are depicted, and that these pictures are not true because they leave out elements essential to the real drama, which they present in part. But in The Miller's Daughter there is a story which tells the leading incidents of a life,—there are real persons presented, with their distinguishing traits; and the scenery, though intimately blended with the life, and entering as an indispensable element in the story, because indissolubly connected with the memories of the speaker, becomes subordinate, and no longer overrides the human interest. And it is only in this way, when emotion is presented in connection with the incidents out of which it rises, and with the persons who experience it, and when the scenery is made to reflect, not simple emotion, but the emotion of distinct persons, that an interesting poem can be written, and the affections of the reader sincerely touched. So long as the emotion is presented without a distinct conception of the person

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experiencing it, and the cause why, and the scenery is presented through the medium of this abstract emotion, as it may be called, the skill of the artist may be admired, but he will not be a popular poet; and a poet who does not write at the heart of a people is no poet at all. The Miller's Daughter and The May Queen at once established Mr. Tennyson's capacity for becoming a popular poet, and made him one within a limited circle. Their charm consists in the real interest of lives moved by the simplest affections and the simplest enjoyments, and in the skill with which these lives are presented as complete dramas, though each poem is extended in time only through an ordinary conversation. It is in each case a life reviewed by the speaker under the emotion that belongs to a particular moment; and the golden calm that rests upon the one, and the sweet innocence that shines through the other, belong naturally to the circumstances under which the reminiscences are uttered. Nothing of truth is sacrificed to ideality, but such ideality as gives both unity of colouring throughout, and guides the selection of details, is the true result of the emotion of each speaker. Thus the charm of completeness, which is the aim of narrative, is united with the power over the sympathies possessed by the spon