For whatever else Tennyson was, he was a great poet; no mind that feels itself free, that is, above the ebb and flow of fashion, can feel anything but contempt for the later effort to discredit him in that respect. It is true that, like Browning and almost every other Victorian poet, he was really two poets. But it is just to him to insist that in his case (unlike Browning's) both the poets were good. The first is more or less like Stevenson in metre; it is a magical luck or skill in the mere choice of words. "Wet sands marbled with moon and cloud"--"Flits by the sea-blue bird of March"--"Leafless ribs and iron horns"--"When the long dun wolds are ribbed with snow"--in all these cases one word is the keystone of an arch which would fall into ruin without it. But there are other strong phrases that recall not Stevenson but rather their common master, Virgil--"Tears from the depths of some divine despair"--"There is fallen a splendid tear from the passion-flower at the gate"--"Was a great water; and the moon was full"--"God made Himself an awful rose of dawn." These do not depend on a word but on an idea: they might even be translated. It is also true, I think, that he was first and last a lyric poet. He was always best when he expressed himself shortly. In long poems he had an unfortunate habit of eventually saying very nearly the opposite of what he meant to say. I will take only two instances of what I mean. In the _Idylls of the King_, and in _In Memoriam_ (his two sustained and ambitious efforts), particular phrases are always flashing out the whole fire of the truth; the truth that Tennyson meant. But owing to his English indolence, his English aristocratic irresponsibility, his English vagueness in thought, he always managed to make the main poem mean exactly what he did not mean. Thus, these two lines which simply say that "Lancelot was the first in tournament, But Arthur mightiest in the battle-field" do really express what he meant to express about Arthur being after all "the highest, yet most human too; not Lancelot, nor another." But as his hero is actually developed, we have exactly the opposite impression; that poor old Lancelot, with all his faults, was much more of a man than Arthur. He was a Victorian in the bad as well as the good sense; he could not keep priggishness out of long poems. Or again, take the case of _In Memoriam_. I will quote one verse (probably incorrectly) which has always seemed to me splendid, and which does express what the whole poem should express--but hardly does. "That we may lift from out the dust, A voice as unto him that hears A cry above the conquered years Of one that ever works, and trust."