It is the literary rather than the political opinions, however, that will bring every generation of readers afresh to Coleridge's _Table Talk_. No man ever talked better in a few sentences on Shakespeare, Sterne, and the tribe of authors. One may not agree with Coleridge in regarding Jeremy Taylor as one of the four chief glories of English literature, or in thinking Southey's style "next door to faultless." But one listens to his _obiter dicta_ eagerly as the sayings of one of the greatest minds that have interested themselves in the criticism of literature. There are tedious pages in _Table Talk_, but these are, for the most part, concerned with theology. On the whole, the speech of Coleridge was golden. Even the leaden parts are interesting because they are Coleridge's lead. One wishes the theology was balanced, however, by a few more glimpses of his lighter interests, such as we find in the passage: "Never take an iambus for a Christian name. A trochee, or tribrach, will do very well. Edith and Rotha are my favourite names for women." What we want most of all in table talk is to get an author into the confession album. Coleridge's _Table Talk_ would have stood a worse chance of immortality were it not for the fact that he occasionally came down out of the pulpit and babbled. XIII.--TENNYSON: A TEMPORARY CRITICISM If Tennyson's reputation has diminished, it is not that it has fallen before hostile criticism: it has merely faded through time. Perhaps there was never an English poet who loomed so large to his own age as Tennyson--who represented his contemporaries with the same passion and power. Pope was sufficiently representative of his age, but his age meant, by comparison, a limited and aristocratic circle. Byron represented and shocked his age by turns. Tennyson, on the other hand, was as close to the educated middle-class men and women of his time as the family clergyman. That is why, inevitably, he means less to us than he did to them. That he was ahead of his age on many points on which this could not be said of the family clergyman one need not dispute. He was a kind of "new theologian." He stood, like Dean Farrar, for the larger hope and various other heresies. Every representative man is ahead of his age--a little, but not enough to be beyond the reach of the sympathies of ordinary people. It may be objected that Tennyson is primarily an artist, not a thinker, and that he should be judged not by his message but by his song. But his message and his song sprang from the same vision--a vision of the world seen, not _sub specie æternitatis_, but _sub specie_ the reign of Queen Victoria. Before we appreciate Tennyson's real place in literature, we must frankly recognize the fact that his muse wore a crinoline. The great mass of his work bears its date stamped upon it as obviously almost as a copy of _The Times_. How topical, both in mood and phrasing, are such lines as those in _Locksley Hall:_