more than elaborated lyrics thrown arbitrarily into an inert dramatic form. That is to say, lacking the theatre, and the formative influence of the theatre, the objective quality which is the first essential of drama never came into full play at all. Shakespeare, as I suggested above, was a skilled playwright because he had this objective faculty in a measure only equalled, perhaps, by Homer, and a great playwright because he impregnated it with a subjective sense of equal supremacy. But, whereas it needs a subjective sense to make a great drama, drama of sorts can come to a kind of life in the theatre through the objective faculty alone, while without the objective faculty you cannot have drama which will hold the stage at all. And it was the opportunity to develop that objective sense in dramatic terms that was denied the poetic genius of the Victorian age, as it had been denied the poetic genius since the passing of the Restoration comedies. So that anything that is worth saying about the drama of the Victorian poets will be covered by the consideration of their poetry in general, and we may dismiss the specifically dramatic intention in it. Chapter III _“The Idylls of the King”--Tennyson’s Critics--His Method--A Debatable Element in Tennyson’s Work--Moral Judgment in Poetry--Tennyson’s Public Authority_ The point of attack chosen by most of Tennyson’s detractors is the _Idylls of the King_. Detraction is ultimately a very inconsiderable force in the world, being exposed readily enough by the minds that know anything of the thing against which it is directed, and being of no consequence either way in its action on minds that know nothing of it. People who really read Tennyson can readily enough rebut the unthinking and often envious charges that are made against him, while it does not matter what effect these may have upon the people who do not read him at all. There is, nevertheless, in the evolution of a poet’s reputation the necessary sifting from time to time of the evidence and a revaluation of the old judgments. The reaction against Tennyson that set in, as with all poets, for a period after his death, discovered many faults in his work which clearly enough were faults, but it has allowed these far too great an importance in the general estimate of his poetry.