This early volume may be said to contain, in the germ, all the great original qualities of Tennyson, except the humour of his rural studies and the elaboration of his Idylls. For example, in _Mariana_ we first note what may be called his perfection and accomplishment. The very few alterations made later are verbal. The moated grange of Mariana in _Measure for Measure_, and her mood of desertion and despair, are elaborated by a precision of truth and with a perfection of harmony worthy of Shakespeare himself, and minutely studied from the natural scenes in which the poet was born. If these verses alone survived out of the wreck of Victorian literature, they would demonstrate the greatness of the author as clearly as do the fragments of Sappho. _Isabel_ (a study of the poet’s mother) is almost as remarkable in its stately dignity; while _Recollections of the Arabian Nights_ attest the power of refined luxury in romantic description, and herald the unmatched beauty of _The Lotos-Eaters_. _The Poet_, again, is a picture of that which Tennyson himself was to fulfil; and _Oriana_ is a revival of romance, and of the ballad, not limited to the ballad form as in its prototype, _Helen of Kirkconnell_. Curious and exquisite experiment in metre is indicated in the _Leonine Elegiacs_, in _Claribel_, and several other poems. Qualities which were not for long to find public expression, speculative powers brooding, in various moods, on ultimate and insoluble questions, were attested by _The Mystic_, and _Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind not in Unity with Itself_, an unlucky title of a remarkable performance. “In this, the most agitated of all his poems, we find the soul urging onward ‘Thro’ utter dark a full-sail’d skiff, Unpiloted i’ the echoing dance Of reboant whirlwinds;’ and to the question, ‘Why not believe, then?’ we have as answer a simile of the sea, which cannot slumber like a mountain tarn, or ‘Draw down into his vexed pools All that blue heaven which hues and paves’ the tranquil inland mere.” {16} The poet longs for the faith of his infant days and of his mother— “Thy mild deep eyes upraised, that knew The beauty and repose of faith, And the clear spirit shining thro’.” That faith is already shaken, and the long struggle for belief has already begun.