It may be said that opinion is the same now as it
was in the middle of the nineteenth century--the same, but turned. All
that was not worth having of admiration then has soured into detraction
now. It is of no more significance, acrid, than it was, sweet. What the
herding of opinion gave yesterday it is able to take away to-day, that
and no more.
But besides the common favour-disfavour of the day, there is the tendency
of educated opinion, once disposed to accept the whole of Tennyson's
poetry as though he could not be "parted from himself," and now disposed
to reject the whole, on the same plea. But if ever there was a poet who
needed to be thus "parted"--the word is his own--it is he who wrote both
narrowly for his time and liberally for all time, and who--this is the
more important character of his poetry--had both a style and a manner: a
masterly style, a magical style, a too dainty manner, nearly a trick; a
noble landscape and in it figures something ready-made. He is a subject
for our alternatives of feeling, nay, our conflicts, as is hardly another
poet. We may deeply admire and wonder, and, in another line or
hemistich, grow indifferent or slightly averse. He sheds the luminous
suns of dreams upon men & women who would do well with footlights; waters
their way with rushing streams of Paradise and cataracts from visionary
hills; laps them in divine darkness; leads them into those touching
landscapes, "the lovely that are not beloved;" long grey fields, cool
sombre summers, and meadows thronged with unnoticeable flowers; speeds
his carpet knight--or is that hardly a just name for one whose sword
"smites" so well?--upon a carpet of authentic wild flowers; pushes his
rovers, in costume, from off blossoming shores, on the keels of old
romance.
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