their tone, so tranquilly beautiful is their world. Who could lay down _The Miller’s Daughter, Dora, The Golden Year, The Gardener’s Daughter, The Talking Oak, Audley Court, The Day Dream_ without something of the feeling which Goethe felt when he first laid down _The Vicar of Wakefield?_ In the best lyrics in these volumes, such as _Break, Break_, and _Move Eastward_, _Happy Earth_, the most fastidious of critics must recognise flawless gems. In the two volumes of 1842 Tennyson carried to perfection all that was best in his earlier poems, and displayed powers of which he may have given some indication in his cruder efforts, but which must certainly have exceeded the expectation of the most sanguine of his rational admirers. These volumes justly gave him the first place among the poets of his time, and that supremacy he maintained—in the opinion of most—till the day of his death. It would be absurd to contend that Tennyson’s subsequent publications added nothing to the fame which will be secured to him by these poems. But this at least is certain, that, taken with _In Memorium_, they represent the crown and flower of his achievement. What is best in them he never excelled and perhaps never equalled. We should be the poorer, and much the poorer, for the loss of anything which he produced subsequently, it is true; but would we exchange half a dozen of the best of these poems or a score of the best sections of _In Memoriam_ for all that he produced between 1850 and his death? [1] In _The Keepsake_, “St. Agnes’ Eve”; in _The Tribute_, “Stanzas”: “Oh! that ’twere possible”. Between 1831 and 1832 he had contributed to _The Gem_ three, “No more,” “Anacreontics,” and “A Fragment”; in _The Englishman!s Magazine_, a Sonnet; in _The Yorkshire Literary Annual_, lines, “There are three things that fill my heart with sighs”; in _Friendship’s Offering_, lines, “Me my own fate”. III The poems of 1842 naturally divide themselves into seven groups:— (i.) _Studies in Fancy._ _Claribel_. _Lilian_. _Isabel_. _Madeline_. _A Spirit Haunts_. _Recollections of the Arabian Nights_. _Adeline_. _The Dying Swan_. _A Dream of Fair Women_. _The Sea-Fairies_. _The Deserted House_. _Love and Death_. _The Merman_. _The Mermaid_. _The Lady of Shalott_. _Eleanore_. _Margaret_. _The Death of the Old Year_. _St. Agnes._ _Sir Galahad_. _The Day Dream_. _Will Waterproof’s Monologue_. _Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere_. _The Talking Oak_. _The Poet’s Song_. (ii.) _Studies of Passion._ _Mariana_. _Mariana in the South._ _Oriana_. _Fatima_. _The Sisters_. _Locksley Hall_. _Edward Gray_. (iii.) _Psychological Studies._ _A Character_. _The Poet_. _The Poet’s Mind_. _The Two Voices_. _The Palace of Art_. _The Vision of Sin_. _St. Simeon Stylites_. (iv.) _Idylls._ (_a_.) Classical. _Œnone_. _The Lotos Eaters_. _Ulysses_. (_b_.) English.