before my window, I take part in its exist-
ence, and pick with it, about the gravel."
(P. 67, vol. i.) Elsewhere he speaks thus
of that form of poetic genius which belonged
to him, and which he contra-distinguishes |
from the "egotistical sublime." "It has
no self. It is everything and nothing-it
has no character-it enjoys light and shade
-it lives in gusts, be it foul or fair, high or
low, rich or poor, mean or elevated-it has
as much delight in conceiving an Iago as
an Imogen." (P. 221, vol. i.) In this pas-
sage, as elsewhere, he seems to confound
versatility with the absence of personal char-
acter. That versatility of imagination is,
however, by no means incompatible with
depth of nature and tenacity of purpose we
have already observed; and our opinion is
confirmed by a remark of Mr. Milnes, whose
life of Keats, from which we have so largely
quoted, is enriched with many pieces of ad-
mirable criticism. Keats's versatility show-
ed itself, like Mr. Tennyson's, not only in the
dramatic skill with which he realized various
and alien forms of existence, but also, though
to a lesser degree, in the fact that the char-
acter of his poetry varied according to the
model he had been studying. In "Endym-
ion" he reminds us of Chaucer and Spen-
ser; in "Hyperion" of Milton; in his "Cap
and Bells" of Ariosto; and in his drama,
the last act of which is very fine, of Ford.
Mr. Milnes remarks, with reference to the
last two works, that Keats's occasional re-
semblance to other poets, though it proves
that his genius was still in a growing state,
in no degree detracts from his originality.
He did not imitate others, Mr. Milnes ob-
serves, so much as emulate them; and no
matter whom he may resemble, he is still
always himself.

truth in adverse systems. His mind had
itself much of that "negative capability"
which he remarked on as a large part of
Shakspeare's greatness, and which he de-
scribed as a power of being in uncertain-
ties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable
reaching after fact and reason." (P. 93, vol.
i.) There is assuredly such a thing as philo-
sophical doubt, as well as of philosophical
belief: it is the doubt which belongs to the
mind, not to the will; to which we are not
drawn by love of singularity, and from which
we are not scared by nervous tremors; the
doubt which is not the denial of anything,
so much as the proving of all things; the
doubt of one who would rather walk in
mystery than in false lights, who waits that
he may win, and who prefers the broken
fragments of truth to the imposing com-
pleteness of a delusion. Such is that uncer-
tainty of a large mind, which a small mind
cannot understand; and such no doubt was,
in part, that of Keats, who was fond of say-
ing that "every point of thought is the
centre of an intellectual world." The passive
part of intellect, the powers of susceptibility
and appreciation, Keats possessed to an al-
most infinite degree: but in this respect his
mind appears to have been cast in a feminine
mould; and that masculine energy which
Shakspeare combined with a susceptive tem-
perament unfathomably deep, in him either
existed deficiently, or had not had time for
its development.

If we turn from the poet to the man, from the works to the life, the retrospect is less painful in the case of Keats than of Shelley. He also suffered from ill-health, and from a temperament which, when its fine edge had to encounter the jars of life, was subject to a morbid despondency but The character of Keats's intellect corre- he had many sources of enjoyment, and his sponded well with his large imagination and power of enjoyment was extraordinary. His versatile temperament. He had not Mr. disposition, which was not only sweet and Shelley's various and sleepless faculties, but simple, but tolerant and kindly, procured he had the larger mind. Keats could neither and preserved for him many friends. It form systems nor dispute about them; has been commonly supposed that adverse though germs of deep and original thought criticism had wounded him deeply but the are to be found scattered in his most care-charge receives a complete refutation from less letters. The two friends used sometimes to contend as to the relative worth of truth and of beauty. Beauty is the visible embodiment of a certain species of truth; and it was with that species that the mind of Keats, which always worked in and through the sensibilities, held conscious relations. He fancied that he had no access to philosophy, because he was averse to definitions and dogmas, and sometimes saw glimpses of

a letter written on the occasion referred to. In it he says, "Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. . . I will write independently. I have written independently without judgment. I may write independently, and with judgment, hereafter. The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in I was never afraid of failure."

a man.

a man,

The genius of the poet whose latest work we have discussed at the beginning of this paper has been more justly appreciated than that of either of them: But it will now probably be asked to which of the two great schools of English poetry illustrated by us he is to be referred? The answer to that question is not easy, for in truth he has much in c mmon with both. His earlier poems might sometimes be classed in the same cate

There are, however, trials in the world from which the most imaginative cannot escape; and which are more real than those which self-love alone can make important to us. Keats's sensibility amounted to disease. "I would reject," he writes, "a Petrarchal coronation on account of my dying dayand because women have cancers!" A few months later, after visiting the house of Burns, he wrote thus,-" His misery is a dead weight on the nimbleness of one's quill: Igory with those of Shelley and Keats: For, tried to forget it... it won't do. . . . We can see, horribly clear, in the works of such his whole life, as if we were God's spies." (P. 171.) It was this extreme sensibility, not less than his ideal tendencies, which made him shrink with prescient fear from the world of actual things. Reality frowned above him like a cliff seen by a man in a nightmare dream. It fell on him at last! The most interesting of all his letters is that to his brother (p. 224, vol. i.), in which he, with little anticipation of results, describes his first meeting with the Oriental beauty who soon after became the object of his passion. In love he had always been, in one sense and personal love was but the devotion to that in a concentrated form which he had previously and more safely loved as a thing scattered and diffused. He loved and he won; but death cheated him of the prize. Tragical indeed were his sufferings during the months of his de line. In leaving life he lost what can never be known by the multitudes who but half live and poetry at least could assuredly have presented him but in scant measure with the consolations which the Epicurean can dispense with most easily, but which are needed most by those whose natures are most spiritual, and whose thirst after immortality is strongest. Let us not, however, intrude into what we know not. In many things we are allowed to rejoice with him. His life had been one long revel. "The open sky," he writes to a friend, "sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown: the air is our robe of state; the earth is our throne; and the sea a mighty minstrel playing before it!" Less a human being than an Imagination embodied, he passed, "like a new-born spirit," over a world that for him ever retained the dew of the morning; and bathing in all its freshest joys he partook but little of its stain.

Shelley and Keats remained with us only long enough to let us know how much we have lost

the three have in common an ardent temperament, a versatile imagination, and an admirable power of embodying the classical; but in other respects they differ widely. Tennyson has indeed, like Keats, with whom he has most in common, a profound sense of the beautiful, a calm and often soft intensity, a certain voluptuousness in style, that reminds us of the Venetian school of painting, and a marvelous depth and affluence of diction-but here the resemblance ends. We do not yet observe in his works, to the same degree, that union of strength with lightness and freedom of touch, which, like the unerring but unlabored handling of a great mas ter, characterized Keats's latest works. On the other hand, Tennyson has greater variety. Wide, indeed, is his domain-extending as it does from that of Keats, whose chief characteristic was ideal beauty, to that of Burns, whose songs, native to the soil, gush out as spontaneously as the warbling of the bird or the murmuring of the brook. Even in their delineation of beauty, how different are the two poets! In Keats that beauty is chiefly beauty of form; in Tennyson that of color has at least an equal place: one consequence of which is, that while Keats, in his descriptions of nature, contents himself with embodying separate objects with a luxurious vividness, Tennyson's gallery abounds with cool far-stretching landscapes, in which the fair green plain and winding river, and violet mountain ridge and peaks of remotest snow, are harmonized through all the gradations of aerial distance. Yet his is not to be classed with that recent poetry which has been noted for a devotion, almost religious, to mere outward nature. His landscapes, like those of Titian, are for the most part but a beautiful background to the figures. Men and manners are more his theme than nature. His genius seems to tend as naturally to the idyllic as that of Shelley did to the lyrical, or that of Keats to the epic.

The moral range of Mr. Tennyson's poetry, markable how little place, notwithstanding

"We have beheld these lights, but not possessed too, is as wide as the imaginative. It is re

them."

the ardor of Shelley and of Keats, is given | ulty to other subjects instead of the dram a in their works, to the affections properly so All his important poems are complete embodcalled. They abound in emotion and pas-iments, not merely illustrations of the subject sion: in which respect Mr. Tennyson resembles them; but he is not less happy in the delineation of those human affections which depend not on instinct or imagination alone, but which, growing out of the heart, are modified by circumstance and association, and constitute the varied texture of social existence. His poetry is steeped in the charities of life, which he accompanies from the cradle to the grave. He has a Shakspearean enjoyment in whatever is human, and a Shakspearean indulgence for the frailties of humanity; the life which his verse illustrates with a genial cheer or a forlorn pathos, is life in its homely honesty, life with its old familiar associations and accidents, its 66 merry quips," remembered sadly at the death of the old year, its "flowing can" and its "empty cup." The truth of this statement will at once be recognized by all who have read his "Miller's Daughter," his "May Queen," and May Queen," and "New Year's Eve," with their beautiful "Conclusion;" his "Dora," " Audley Court," "Talking Oak," or his "Lyrical Monologue."

Nor is his intellectual region less ample. Many of his poems are the embodiment of deep philosophical speculations on the problem of life. We allude to such pieces as the "Palace of Art," "The Two Voices," the "Vision of Sin," and those brief but admirable political poems, "You ask me why though ill at ease," and "Of old sat Freedom on the Heights." In these poems, whether metaphysical or ethical, there is a characteristic difference between the style of Mr. Tennyson and Shelley; the latter of whom was essentially dogmatic in the corresponding part of his works, while the former, with an interest not less deep in the intellectual and political progress of the human race, speaks only in the way of suggestion, and in his significant hints reminds us of Mr. Keats's expression, "Man should not dispute or assert, but whisper results to his neighbor." In this department of Mr. Tennyson's poetry we can, perhaps, trace the influences of German literature, modified by an English mind, and, we are glad to observe, by English traditions.

Mr. Tennyson's genius, so far as we can pretend to judge of what is so large and manifold, is perhaps, on the whole, most strikingly characterized by that peculiar species of versatility which, as we have already observed, is the application of the dramatic fac

treated. Each is evidently the result of long musings, meditative and imaginative; and each represents, in its integrity and distinctness, an entire system of thought, sentiment, manners, and imagery. Each is a window from which we have a vista of a new and distinct world. In each, too, we come to know far more of the characters than is explicitly stated; we know their past as well as their present, and speculate about their associates. How much, for instance, of our time and country do we find in "Locksley Hall," that admirable delineation of the modern Outlaw, the over-developed and undisciplined youth, the spoilt child and cast-away son of the nineteenth century! How many tracts against asceticism are condensed in his St. Simeon! Whether idyllic or philosophic in form, not a few of these poems are at heart dramas. If it were true, which we cannot believe, that the drama is amongst us but an anachronism, such poems would be perhaps the most appropriate substitute for it. They are remarkable also as works of art. Mr. Tennyson is a great artist; nor would it have been possible without much study, as well as a singular plastic power, to have given his poems that perfection of shape which enables a slender mould to sustain a various interest.

It is frequently asked whether Mr. Tennyson is capable of producing a great and national work. Hitherto such has obviously not been his ambition; nor can we think any man wise who, instead of keeping such a design steadily before him, and making all his labors a preparation for it, embarks on the execution of it at a period earlier than that at which his faculties and his experience approach their maturity. A great poem is a great action; and requires the assiduous exercise of those high moral powers with which criticism has no concern, and action much;-courage, prudence, enterprise, patience, self-reliance founded on self-knowledge, a magnanimous superiority to petty obstacles, a disinterested devotion to art for its own sake, and for that of all which it interprets and communicates. Should Mr. Tennyson devote himself to a great work, he has already exhibited the faculties necessary for his success: But, whether he writes it or not he has taken his place among the true poets of his country. With reference to a national poem, and to our previous observations concerning the ideal and the national in poetry,