The biography of such a poet, one who has had such an immense influence upon the literary history of the entire Victorian epoch—indeed, upon the nineteenth century, for his work covers two-thirds of the century—will be a work of incalculable importance. There is but one man who is fully equipped for such an undertaking, and fortunately that is his own son—a man of great ability, of admirable critical acumen, and of quite exceptional accomplishments. His son’s filial affection was so precious to Tennyson that, although the poet’s powers remained undimmed to the last day of his life, I do not believe that we should have had all the splendid work of the last ten years without his affectionate and unwearied aid. II. All emotion—that of communities as well as that of individuals—is largely governed by the laws of ebb and flow. It is immediately after a national mourning for the loss of a great man that a wave of reaction generally sets in. But the eagerness with which these volumes {132} have been awaited shows that Tennyson’s hold upon the British public is as strong at this moment as it was on the day of his death. This very popularity of his, however, has sometimes been spoken of by critics as though it were an impeachment of him as a poet. “The English public is commonplace,” they say, “and hence the commonplace in poetry suits it.” And no doubt this is true as a general saying, otherwise what would become of certain English poetasters who are such a joy to the many and such a source of laughter to the few? But a hardy critic would he be who should characterize Tennyson’s poetry as commonplace—that very poetry which, before it became popular, was decried because it was merely “poetry for poets.” Still that poetry so rich and so rare as his should find its way to the heart of a people like the English, who have “not sufficient poetic instinct in them to give birth to vernacular poetry,” is undoubtedly a striking fact. With regard to the mass of his work, he belonged to those poets whose appeal is as much through their mastery over the more subtle beauties of poetic art as through the heat of the poetic fire; and such as these must expect to share the fate of Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley. Every true poet must have an individual accent of his own—an accent which is, however, recognizable as another variation of that large utterance of the early gods common to all true poets in all tongues. Is it not, then, in the nature of things that, in England at least, “the fit though few” comprise the audience of such a poet until the voice of recognized Authority proclaims him? But Authority moves slowly in these matters; years have to pass before the music of the new voice can wind its way through the convolutions of the general ear—so many years, indeed, that unless the poet is blessed with the sublime self-esteem of Wordsworth he generally has to die in the belief that his is another name “written in water.” And was it always