Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/199

 advance in his art from the beginning of his career till its close. Nor has Milton the same wide command of all the keys. Tennyson is undoubtedly the greatest poetic artist of England, and he will thus remain at once the people's poet and the poets' poet of these isles.

It is no world-poet that England now is mourning with commingled pride and grief. No world-pain throbs through his lines. No world-problem finds in him expression or solution. The sweet domesticities, the manly and refined ideals of English life in the middle period of the nineteenth century—Tennyson was the fluted voice of these. To these he has given immortality while he has gained immortality from them. For us he has helped to express the English ideals which are destined to be an abiding influence in the national life. He spoke not to the world at large: he spoke only to his beloved England. He was, and is, our own Tennyson.