Tennyson is essentially a composite poet. Dryden’s famous verses, grand in expression, but questionable in their application to Milton, are perfectly applicable to him: save that, in making him, Nature did not combine two poets, but many. This is a common phenomenon at the close of a great epoch; it is almost peculiar to Tennyson’s age that it should then have heralded the appearance of a new era; and that, simultaneously with the inheritor of the past, perhaps the most original and self-sufficing of all poets should have appeared in the person of Robert Browning. A comparison between these illustrious writers would lead us too far; we have already implied that Tennyson occupies the more conspicuous place in literary history on account of his representative character. [Illustration: CHAPEL HOUSE, TWICKENHAM Tennyson’s first settled home after his marriage Rischgitz Collection] The first important recognition of Tennyson’s genius came from Stuart Mill, who, partly perhaps under the guidance of Mrs. Taylor, evinced [Illustration: _From a drawing by Gustave Doré_ ELAINE (Reproduced from “Illustrations to Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King,’” by kind permission of Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co.)] [Illustration: _From a photograph in 1867 by Mrs. Julia Margaret Cameron_ ALFRED TENNYSON (Reproduced by permission of Mr. J. Caswall Smith)] about 1835 a remarkable insight into Shelley and Browning as well as Tennyson. In the course of his observations he declared that Tennyson needed to be a great poet was a system of philosophy, to which time would certainly conduct him. If he only meant that Tennyson needed “the years that bring the philosophic mind,” the observation was entirely just; if he expected the poet either to evolve a system of philosophy for himself or to fall under the sway of some great thinker, he was mistaken. Had Tennyson done either he might have been a very great and very interesting poet, but he could not have been the poet of his age; for the temper of the time, when it was not violently partisan, was liberally eclectic. There was no one great leading idea, such as that of evolution in the last quarter of last century, so ample and so characteristic of the age that a poet might become its disciple without yielding to party what was meant for mankind. Two chief currents of thought there were; but they were antagonistic, even though Mr. Gladstone has proved that a very [Illustration: _From the portrait in the possession of Lady Henry Somerset, painted by G. F. Watts, R.A., in 1859_ ALFRED TENNYSON]