case is not parallel; for Tennyson was a passive mourner over the loss of a friend under circumstances with which he had no connection, while Jeremiah had contended strenuously for years on the field of action. Could a man with such a history have set himself to work up its most doleful experiences into the embroidery of a peculiarly artificial form of versification? That is the gravest difficulty. Other objections of minor weight follow. In the third elegy Jeremiah would seem to be giving more prominence to his own personality than we should have expected of the brave, unselfish prophet. In the fourth the writer appears to associate himself with those Jews who were disappointed in expecting deliverance from an Egyptian alliance, when he complains-- "Our eyes do yet fail in looking for our vain help: In watching we have watched for a nation that could not save."[94] [94] iv. 17. Would Jeremiah, who bade the Jews bow to the scourge of Jehovah's chastisement and look for no earthly deliverer, thus confess participation in the worldly policy which he, in common with all the true prophets, had denounced as faithless and disobedient? Then, while sharing Jeremiah's condemnation of the priests and prophets, the writer appears to have only commiseration for the fate of the poor weak king Zedekiah.[95] This is very different from Jeremiah's treatment of him.[96] [95] iv. 20. [96] Jer. lii. 2, 3. It is not a serious objection that our poet says of Zion, "Yea, her prophets find no vision from the Lord,"[97] while we know that Jeremiah had visions after the destruction of Jerusalem,[98] because the general condition may still have been one characterised by the silencing of the many prophets with whose oracles the Jews had been accustomed to solace themselves in view of threatened calamities; nor that he exclaims, "Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?"[99]