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his earliest volume Alfred Tennyson had already attempted a great variety of lyrical measures; and Arthur Hallam had spoken of this variety with praise, as exhibited in the Poems of 1830. The author of "Christabel," indeed, in 1833, accused Tennyson of writing verses which he could not scan, and recommended him, as a corrective, to write for the next few years in none but the most common and strictly-defined metres. But with this one exception, even his severest critics have allowed him to be a perfect master of melody. "Tennyson is endowed," says Emerson, "precisely in points where Wordsworth wanted. There is no finer ear, nor more command of the keys of language."

Tennyson's early command of blank-verse, as