Page:Tennyson - Walter Irving (1873).djvu/27

 flower grown ten thousand fold and the flashing of a shield. We have often read of the power and strength of the sun, and the feeling of awe it excites in the breasts of multitudes of the human race; but we were really not prepared to learn that it could strike any one, much less our Poet Laureate, with the sense of "rounded foolishness." We are astonished that Mr Tennyson's exquisite fancy did not suggest the propriety of completing his metaphor, by giving us the horrible hissing of the waters, when the Noonday Sun fell into the stream. Now Mr Tennyson may consider all this very fine, but most people will regard it as absurdly extravagant. Who can believe in a knight who is so very like the sun—the little sun, we mean? Such wild descriptions destroy the realism of the characters in the poem. They are not men, but abstractions. And this strange perversion runs through the whole poem. Where a passage so egregiously foolish like this is to be found, we know not. Through Southey's lengthy poems there are many commonplace and even poor passages; but the poorest is infinitely better than this rank nonsense of Mr Tennyson's. And yet Mr Tennyson is a great poet; he is the prince of dactylists; he is vigorous and archaic; his similes are beautiful; he is profound; few can fathom him; fewer understand him. Such are the phrases which are bandied about the character and style of the poet's poetry. Never was there a tamer poet than Mr Tennyson. An imitator of Homer, he is a complete antithesis to him:—

His vigour is not vigour of thought. It is one of style. And