We find, then, that Shakespeare was profoundly interested in an immense range of life and not at all in moral points of view, that Milton was interested in a range of life still immense though less variously peopled, and also passionately interested in moral points of view, and that Wordsworth was as vitally concerned with a range of life far more limited, the very nature of which, however, absolved him from the necessity of consciously applying a moral point of view which had already been allowed for by his art. In considering Tennyson’s position in this matter we have to remember first that he was one of the very few great English poets that have come to a very wide popularity in their own time. Shakespeare was popular, so far as the records of the theatre of his day tell us anything, but he was popular because he told a good dramatic story on the stage and satisfied the needs of theatre audiences. The moral grandeur with which he invested his plays would in its absence no doubt have left them far less powerful in their contemporary appeal, but it was not by this grandeur that primarily he achieved his popularity. Milton was not popular in his own lifetime at all, and Wordsworth, although he secured general fame before his death, was never a voice for which the multitude waited. Dryden and Pope had great reputations in their time, but it was rather among an exclusive and small literary society than among the masses. Byron caught the general ear by his gift of pure romantic narrative, but he and Scott in their time were satisfying the demand for good stories, which has since produced the immense crop of modern fiction. But Tennyson was in a different case from all of these. Here was a poet who was impressing, as no other poet in England had ever done before, his moral and philosophic views upon all sorts and conditions of men, and this without using the great circulating medium of the theatre or beguiling with a tale. The time was not one of any deeper intellectual or spiritual life than any other, but one in which that life was more diverse in its interests. Whether the educational and scientific and industrial developments that were going forward have been for good or bad in the welfare of the community may be doubted, but there is no question that they were stimulating the average mentality of the country to a fresh activity. Religious and philosophic speculation, the adjustment of scientific discovery to faith, the economics of the new order, and the precise significance of the growing Imperial idea, these and other questions were the daily concern of the man in the street, and disputation was the common practice of nearly every hearthside. Perplexity followed on perplexity, and they were perplexities not only of private spiritual experience, but of public passion also. And upon these Tennyson’s judgment was awaited with an unparalleled eagerness. Apart from the interest in his poetic genius,