Page:Tennyson - Walter Irving (1873).djvu/5



Macaulay took down Mr Robert Montgomery from the high place to which public favour had raised him, no poet has enjoyed such a bubble reputation as Mr Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. We readily concede Mr Tennyson a niche in the Temple of Fame where the "mighty Homer shone;" but we will place him in the rank to which he is entitled, and not in that to which he has undeservingly been exalted, without discrimination, by popular acclamation. We cannot account for this great popularity otherwise than in the words of Mr Lewes, who says, "Men are for the most part like sheep, who always follow the bell-wether: what one boldly asserts, another echoes boldly; and the assertion becomes consolidated into a traditional judgment." This is Mr Tennyson's case. One prominent journal overloaded him with fulsome flattery, and then another, until the whole press took up the cry, and people hearing all this readily believed that a greater than Milton was in their midst. Mr Tennyson is now reaping the bitter fruits of excessive praise, for advantage has been taken of his last poem to tell him he only writes prose. Now, Gareth and Lynette is neither better nor worse than any of the Idylls of the King. It is full of the same faults and absurdities. In the former-instance these were overlooked—now they are loudly