He was, perhaps, not exactly a scholar in what I may call the narrow professional sense; but in the broadest and deepest and truest sense he was a _great_ scholar. Direct imitations of classical form, even when they show such power and poetry as Swinburne's "Atalanta" and "Erechtheus," have always something artificial about them. But in all Tennyson's classic pieces--"Œnone," "Ulysses," "Demeter," "Tithonus," the legendary subjects--and in the two historic subjects, "Lucretius" and "Boädicea," the classical tradition is there with full detail, but by the poet's art it is transmuted. "Œnone" is epic in form, the rest are brief monodramas; the material is all ancient, and in many subtle ways the spirit; the handling is modern and original. In translations--too few--Tennyson can only be called consummate: his version of one passage of the _Iliad_ (viii. 552) makes all other translations seem second-rate. Let me quote a few lines: And these all night upon the bridge of war Sat glorying; many a fire before them blazed: As when in heaven the stars about the moon Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, And every height comes out, and jutting peak And valley, and _the immeasurable heavens Break open to their highest_,[86] and all the stars Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart: So many a fire between the ships and stream Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy, A thousand on the plain; and close by each Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire; And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds, Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn. The passage, let me add, is a crucial test of the power of a translator, for this reason: it is a plain, simple description of the Trojan camp-fires in the darkness, with a simile or comparison of the sight to a clearance of the sky at night and the sudden shining of the multitude of stars. With the infallible instinct of Greek Poetry there is a rapid lift in the style, a sudden glorious phrase [Greek: huperragê aspetos aithêr], to suggest adequately the magnificent sight of the sudden clearance. It is this effect that is difficult to give in the translation; and it is exactly this splendid climax that Tennyson's incomparable rendering, "And the immeasurable heavens break open to their highest," so perfectly conveys. Again, in the metrical imitations--which are deliberately somewhat in the vein of sport and artifice--Tennyson alone, it seems to me, has exactly done what he intended, and shown what English effects can be produced by a master's hand, even in these unfamiliar measures.