That there have been greater English poets, even his most enthusiastic admirers must allow; that there have been few sweeter, all who have read him and others will admit. Indeed, sweetness, with its twin-sister purity, is one of the marked characteristics of Tennyson’s verse. No man ever mistook Tennyson for a Pythoness, a Cassandra, a Jeremiah. He is not heroic like Homer. Much of the idyllic grace, but little of the real massiveness, of Virgil he has. He cannot scoff like Horace, or Byron, or Shelley. He cannot scourge like Dante, observe with the luminous philosophy, the high inspiration of Shakspere, or build up a mighty edifice like Milton. He can do none of these things. In some respects he is perhaps less than the least of these poets. He is a sweet singer, made for sunshine and peace and harmony; the poet of the happy household over whose threshold passes from time to time the sad shadow of a quiet sorrow; not the poet of despair, of wrath, of agony, of the fiercer passions or tumultuous joys, whose very excess is pain. True it is that, as he sang in his earlier days, “The poet in a golden clime was born, With golden stars above; Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love.” But he is not such a poet. Never has he given voice to the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, or to that of which both of these are born—the love of love. Whenever he has attempted it he has failed. He is too retiring, too domestic. “With an _inner_ voice” his river runs, and we have to listen with ears nicely attuned to catch its whisper and its meaning. So inner is it, indeed, that it is often obscure and quite escapes the dull hearing of ordinary men. His first volume, published in 1830, is almost fulsomely dedicated to Queen Victoria, who is certainly not a heroic figure, whatever else she may be. It is a picture gallery filled with Claribels and Lilians, and Isabels and Madelines, and Marianas and Adelines—all very sweet and delicate and dainty, but not inspiring. He sings to “the owl,” he dedicates odes “to memory,” he lingers by “the deserted house,” chants the dirge of “the dying swan,” and so on. In 1832 he enlarges his gallery by the addition of the lovely “Lady of Shalott,” “Mariana in the South,” “Eleänore,” and we come nearer to the poet’s heart in “The Miller’s Daughter,” whom he evidently prefers to the haughty and much-abused “Lady Clara Vere de Vere.” Something, too, of his more marked peculiarities show here in the “Palace of Art” and that dreamy, delicious poem, “The Lotos-Eaters.” He is intensely English—an admirable quality, be it remarked _sotto voce_, in an English poet laureate. He closes the volume with some strong verses: “You ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease, Within this region I subsist, Whose spirits falter in the mist, And languish for the purple seas?