Page:Tennyson - Walter Irving (1873).djvu/19

 follow after him to take the crown from off his head. It is not distance, a lapse of years, which makes Milton as great as we know him to be. It is not Milton who grows greater, as we recede from the time in which he lived. His gigantic stature will never grow less. The hills which, to them who live near them, appear as mountains, only form a part of the upland to them who view them at a greater distance. Their distinction is lost; form and size become indefinite as we leave them behind. But there are other hills which never will merge into the surrounding high lying lands as we increase our distance from them. And their loftiness becomes more imposing when we see them towering, in all their greatness, above an upland of "hills o'er hills." Their solitary greatness gives us a sense of sublimity. They create the idea of a living power, as if the hand that fashioned them, had made them to speak of His strength and tell of His majesty. This, if we mistake not, is the feeling which strikes us with awe when we look upon the drear and companionless hills. So stands out great Milton, purpose-like, above the mass of poets, each of whom, in his own day, was looked upon as great, but whose greatness now only helps to show the greater greatness of another. Mr Tennyson has become even as a little hill

When the Poet Laureate put his tale of chivalry into blank verse, he resembled the dark beauty, who, to preserve her necklace of glass beads, put it into a casket of gold adorned with precious stones. The Idylls of the King is ill suited to maintain the grave dignity of blank verse. The substance has no relation whatever to the form, It is well fitted for expansiveness of thought, for full and swelling periods. It is quite in keeping with the unforced, natural, descriptions of nature, in all her various moods, which we find in the Seasons and the