I need hardly say that I do not suggest that the poets from whom these examples--almost at random--are given, and many who could be placed in their company, are merely imitators of Tennyson. Men like Clough, Dixon, and de Tabley were fine spirits finely touched to song. Clough, to speculate idly, with a little more energy, might have found his way into the great group of his age. Dixon was a lyric poet who has been eulogised by so fastidious a critic as Mr. Bridges, which is warrant enough for any man. And de Tabley constantly got to the summits, only to find them too slippery for long foothold. But, individual as these and the others were in their gifts, the extracts given are enough to show clearly how susceptible the poetry of the age was to Tennyson’s diction. Generally speaking, this was all to the good. Predominating influences are inevitable among any generation of poets, and it was no bad fortune for a large number of the Victorians to find so good a preceptor. With one possible exception, everything that these poets of real but not commanding achievement got from Tennyson was gain. They took from him no eccentricity, but each according to his own powers something of his new interpretation of a tradition that was the common heritage. The possible exception was de Tabley, who, the more he is read, the more he impresses with his very rare potentialities. He, perhaps, alone among the poets of anything like his natural endowment, made at times too complete a surrender to example. A careful study of his verse convinces me that the lapses from excellence, of which it is in danger at every turn, are almost entirely the result of an habitual recollection, in relaxed moods, of Tennyson’s manner, which in happier moments influenced him wholly for good. If, as I have already suggested, he more than the others could sometimes catch the particular enchantment in Tennyson’s use of words, the enchantment that save for a stray note here and there came and went with the master, he also suffered more than the others by reason of his very sensibility. He could write-- Say what you will and have your sneer and go. You see the specks, we only need the fruit Of a great life, whose truth--men hate truth so-- No lukewarm age of compromise could suit. Laugh and be mute! but he could also write-- “And what is Love by nature?” My pretty true-love sighs. And I reply, in feature A child with pensive eyes. An infant forehead shaded With many ringlet rings, And pearly shoulders faded In the colour of his wings.