Page:Tennyson - Walter Irving (1873).djvu/6

 proclaimed. False sentiments and emotions, affectation and unnaturalness, absurd metaphors, bizarre imagination, want of animation, realism, and movement, poverty of description, inability to produce a complete picture of things animate or inanimate,—all these things are as prominent in any other part of Mr Tennyson's lengthy, frivolous poem, as in Gareth and Lynette. It is Mr Tennyson's eulogisers who have changed their opinion about his merit—not he who has changed his style. On the contrary, he has gone on improving it, until he has reached that high state of excellence, that condition of mind which the great literary lawgiver declared as absolutely necessary for him who would become a great poet. Let us indulge the hope that Mr Tennyson, starting from this great vantage-ground, may yet produce something equal to the reputation which he enjoys, and the office which he holds.

Mr Tennyson is possessed with an inordinate love of gallantry. Our poetic Don Quixote lives through his days in one long day-dream of chivalry and renown, among fair ladies and noble youths, tournaments, castles, and barons bold. His fancy, trained by daily exercise, leads him from the contemplation of the vulgar affairs of the present race of uninteresting mortals, to see again the antic capers of a rude people, hear their barbarous jargon, and note their savage customs. For Mr Tennyson's sake we regret there are no tilts now-a-days, no grim castles and iron-bars with prisoners fair, and love-sick knights to the rescue. The strain of thirteen hundred years, looking back, would not have put the vigour of his mind in jeopardy every hour. We can understand what this strain must have been, how it must have taken from the pith and marrow of his achievements. We can forecast the great things he might have accomplished, had he not imposed upon himself the tremendous