Page:Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day.djvu/145

 which, though pretty enough in its way, and a novel characteristic to a certain extent, yet betrayed a latent weakness. The same quality attaches to the Laureate's productions even now, to a limited extent. In fact, we doubt whether Tennyson could altogether get rid of the old trick; but his youthful effusions were overladen to a degree with these affectations.

The critic of the 'Quarterly' took good care to seize the weak points of the young Lincolnshire poet, and went mercilessly to work.

If only as amusing pictures of the old style of criticism, which in this more polite age has rarely been seen—except a few years ago in the coarse but vigorous criticisms of the 'Saturday Review,' when that journal possessed a power in the world of letters it has since lost by the death or secession of the men who made it famous—we may be excused for giving a few specimens of the reviewer's manner.

The poet has sung :

'Now, what,' says the critic of the 'Quarterly,' 'would an ordinary bard wish to be told under such circumstances? Why, perhaps how his sweetheart was, or his child, or his family, or how the Reform Bill worked, or whether the last edition of the poems had been sold;—papæ! our genuine poet's first wish is:

When, indeed, he shall have been thus satisfied as to the woodbines—of the blowing of which, in their due season, he may, we think, feel pretty secure—he turns a passing thought to his friend, and another to his mother.

But such inquiries, short as they are, seem too commonplace; and he immediately glides back into his curiosity as to the state of the forwardness of the spring.