but its perhaps eration in its favours; effect at first was not what might be thought. There were (and are) in fact harsh verses in it, break-jaw passages about fixing the limits of knowledge, about nature, red in tooth and claw, and other matters as little poetical. And the critics objected that sorrow does not speak in so long a strain nor with such breaks of philosophy and argument and such pauses for discussion, in all of which objections there was a certain truth. But, notwithstanding, "In Memoriam " has grown into the popular heart. We can find nothing in the language to place beside it. "Lycidas" and "Adonais" are elegies, lamentations over the dead made glorious by his ending, whose going away has filled the earth with sorrow, whose disappearance is as the failing of the sun from the day or the heavenly stars from the night. But Tennyson's inspiration is a different one. It is the reverie of a bereaved and stricken soul, which he puts into a music most tender, most melancholy, the very voice of that grief which cannot exhaust itself in any passion or storm of mourning, but which is the chief occupation, the prevailing sentiment of the mind. The soft cadences of the verse wander from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, like the wild and wandering thoughts which have one centre to which they always return. Sick fancies come and go, and now the mind will follow one suggestion, now another, interrogating the spheres, questioning with itself, soaring like a bird almost out of sight of its trouble, dropping down again low to the grasses of the grave, always returning to the one predominant memory, the loss which never can be forgotten, the pang that will not. be stilled. In this way it is the poem of all others in English, or so far as we are aware in any language, which gives a voice and utterance to the varying moods, the passion and the calm of grief, the longing memories that mingle themselves with a thousand new currents of thought, yet return and return, like the circles of the lark, to the lowly bed in which all centre. To have done this, in poetry which is almost always beautiful and often most touching in its pathos and profound humanity, is glory enough for a man, and the world was so much the poorer when her Majesty began to reign, that there was as yet no such litany and ritual of grief. Other men have raised monuments, and precious ones, to those they have lost; Tennyson alone has embodied the endless vicissitudes of the sorrowing heart, the worldwide atmosphere through which our individual loss breathes a chill and penetrating sense of vacancy which all the universe cannot fill up. There are some critics who affect to despise the sane and wholesome limits within which this great poet has seen it meet to confine himself, who call his high reticence and moral purity feminine, and accuse him of bringing down the issues of life to the atmosphere of the draw. ing-rooms. But Tennyson's poetry will remain, we do not doubt, the highest expression of the mind of his age-an age which unfortunately, is no longer quite this age, the happier simpler period of the reign, when for a time the standard of society seemed altogether higher and purer, when the scandals of the past seemed to have died away in a clearer moral atmosphere, wherein noxious things could not live. It is no reproach either to the Laureate or the Queen if that fine moment did not last. And poetry, like society, when less lofty, more sensual and earthly, is apt to claim for itself the credit of a stronger manhood-a claim as unfounded as it is derogatory both to human nature and to art. Mr Swinburne has carried into more luscious sweetness the melody of words; but that broader and larger nature which stretches far beyond the monotone of passion has little place in the sweetness, long drawn out, of his new fashion. ing, elucidating, and repeating everything he has to say. The defect is invisible in the wonderfully pathetic picture of Andrea del Sarto, in the fine, keen, clear physiognomy of the Greek Cleon, and in some of the other wonderful studies of human thought and meaning which are in this fine collection. The poet throws himself back into the being of his It is more difficult to character- temporary hero with an insight ise Mr. Browning's poetry than and comprehension, a visible force that of his illustrious contempor- and vividness, which give singular ary. He has had the misfortune, reality to the picture a mode of a little from his excellences, but treatment new to poetry, and as still more from his peculiarities effective as it is original. It is which are not excellent, to attract always the most exacting and diffito himself the mystical worship cult of literary studies to set forth of a sect which goes far at present a man in his own language, in a to make the poet ridiculous. But portion of his own existence, not he is not to blame if the difficul- acting even but thinking, disclosties of his enunciation have pro- ing the secrets of his own being, duced a bizarre worship which is and, above all, to do this within to the glorification of the wor- a limited space, which gives no lishippers rather than that of their cence for external description, nor idol. We can only regret that any accumulation of accessories. these uncouth rites have beguiled They highest gifts of the historian him into continuing a series of are sometimes occupied in the acmetaphysical studies which dis- complishment from without of courage the true lover of poetry, such portraits, and there can be and intensify the veil which hangs little doubt that the habit and between SO admirable a poet power of doing this has added a and the appreciation of the rea- wonderful attraction and grace to sonable world. It is unnecessary history. But such characterisato speak of "Sordello" or even of tions are little known in poetry. "Paracelsus," or these finely poeti- They have hitherto been confined cal but impracticable dramas which to the drama, where indeed it is cannot even by the enthusiasm of only by his own interpretation the illuminati be buoyed into life. that we understand the hero; but Perhaps Mr Browning is at his where he has at least the events of greatest in the Men and Women,' a highly wrought episode, an exwhich stand in the middle of his citing series of incidents, to make poetical career, when his faculties his revelation by. Mr Browning were at their finest, and his powers has put aside all such aids in those least hampered by the inadequacy wonderful little pieces of work. of words. There is nothing finer The melancholy painter in his in the language than some of these evening talk, half musing, half poems, especially those in which speech, with the sense of his failhe has confined the redundancy ure aching at his heart, and the into which his laboured utterance still more miserable consciousleads him, the necessity of explain- ness of what he might have been and done-subdued to pa- strain. Once again we disavow thetic calm by that quiet despair all ideas of competition with and sense of the conclusion of all Shakespeare. Mr Browning's possibilities is such a perfect pic- mind is not Shakespearian in any ture as no other art could make, sense of the word. But it is not and overwhelms us with the pathos necessary to be of the stature of of a self-portraiture from which all Jove, in order to to stand high self-deceptions have died away. among the gods. In the persons The completeness of the mourn- of Lord Tennyson and Mr Brownful vision, which is not without a ing, our half-century need not fear smile at itself and at all the de- to hold up its head in the comlusions that are over, and that pany of the ages. profound consciousness of defeat which has so few expositors, yet which is perhaps the most deeply moving of all the experiences of existence, convey to our minds a pang of pity and sympathy. Quite different, on the very opposite edge of life, is the experience of the poet, the all-accomplished, all-fortunate Greek, to whose dignified retirement the offerings and the adoration of princely admirers come, and who is surrounded by everything beautiful and rare, and the consciousness of having done all that genius and good fortune can-yet whose sigh out of his old age and that one inevitable failure of waning life which makes the great poet in his greatness less than the vigorous manhood of the slave whose muscles he casts a passing, admiring, half-contemptuous, half-envious glance at, as he raises his head from his tablets-is little less sad than that of the painter. The reader, whose verdict after all is that of final fame-he who pretends to no profounder insight, but judges the highest poetry as well as the commonest prose by the light of reason and nature-will find in this fine series nothing to alarm him or unduly tax his understanding, and much that he will find nowhere else, the workings of a very powerful and philosophical mind, combined with a poetical genius of the highest We will not discuss the younger band, whose position is yet not wholly ascertained. Mr Swinburne, indeed, has made his mark; and posterity is not likely to reverse the decision with which his own generation has crowned this master of exquisite words and all the music that can be put into verse-all the music, but perhaps less than the due amount of meaning. Rossetti, to whom the completeness of the preterite has come, has his own niche in the Temple of Fame-a conspicuous one, yet never, we think, to be a centre of that universal consent of love and interest which is the meed of a great poet. He is a poet who never ceases to be a painter; nor does he in his most exalted moments of mystic spiritualism ever break that bond of flesh and circumstance which is necessary to his original art. His Blessed Damozel is as ready as any large-eyed model to be reproduced on canvas. No man can paint a soul; therefore it is entirely comprehensible that the heavenly vision, as revealed to a painter's eyes, should warm with the pressure of her bosom the bar upon which she leans, looking out for her lover. But it is not celestial; nor is it thus that the great poets realise the unseen. Mr Matthew Arnold is a most accomplished and distinguished writer; but our own mind is not made up about his poetry, though it has, no doubt, reached a large degree of appreciation, especially among the cultivated classes. So has Mr William Morris. In our present undecided frame of mind, we are disposed to think that the fare provided by both these poets is of the nature of luxury-a something above and beyond the necessities of living. Perhaps some readers will think all poetry partakes of this character. We are not, however, of that opinion. Great poetry is daily bread. It would be at once unjust and untender to pass over, in the record of these fifty years of poetry, the name of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who is perhaps, taken all in all, the greatest Womanpoet whom England has known. No woman, so far as we know, has ever been a great poet, or attained the level of the highest. But among those who have at all approached that level, Mrs Browning holds the first place. Some of her sonnets (so called) from the Portuguese are exquisite in their tenderness and beauty; and her only sustained effort, Aurora Leigh,' has much power and sweetness, and a force of subdued but sustained enthusiasm which is very impressive. Although it touches upon a loathsome subject, with that curious attraction in repulsion which seems to move the feminine mind towards what it most hates, the poem is full of the finest thought and of that love of love and all things lovely which gives one of its deepest charms to poetry. The fresh and peaceful English landscape, the "old miraculous mountains heaving forth," as Italy, almost more beloved than England, comes in sight and the corresponding pictures of life and thought, the glow of feeling in the young enthusiasts who feel it their mission to reclaim the world, and the profounder passion of maternal love which conquers shame-are very fine and true. This poem has fallen a little out of sight amid the crowds of modern competition, as everything does; but it must always find an honourable place in the literary records of Queen Victoria's reign. In the dignified realm of history during those fifty years, we have the growth of a new and brilliant school to record. History was more serious than entertaining fifty years ago. It aimed at an authoritative standing, and to fix the canon of what was and what was not to be believed. In those days Hallam was in in the front of literature, with his grave and deeply considered record of the English constitution-one of those unique and final books which may originate an entire school, but are never themselves put out of date; and we had the brilliant military pictures of Sir William Napier to carry on the existing recollection, which had not yet died out of men's minds, of the great wars which England hoped had pacified the world. And Sir Archibald Alison had begun that great history of Europe--great in volume and in subject-which so many years were necessary to complete. But in these great works the subjects were approached from the point of view of a scientific perspective, and the writers did not propose to themselves to rival the most vivid romancer in imaginative realisation and reproduction. Napier, it is true, was always vivid, always brilliant, with the energetic genius of his race-a soldier even when a historian. But the muse of History, in all her seriousness, still led the serious footsteps of her servants through the straight road, the king's highway of important events. The first historian of her Majesty's readers breathless through even reign, Lord Mahon, continued in the survey and estimate of the the same traditions, in his pre- condition of the country at the cise, correct, and not inelegant great Revolution, which in almost history of the eighteenth century, any other hands would have been which continues to hold its place a chapter of reference, to be folas a trustworthy and impartial lowed to its end only by the narrative of an age full of import- plodding reader or careful student. ant decisions, more picturesque This book, we may venture to say, than our own, and in many re- changed the fashion of historical spects the turning-point of national writing, and was in itself a literary life. The first of the Victorian revoluton. It was not an imparhistorians was not a brilliant tial history. There are those who writer, nor was there much that affirm that it is not even trustwas novel or striking in his views; worthy in many details; that its but he did his work with great view throughout is a Whig view; accuracy and care, and at one por- that its author carried his party tion of his narrative, that in which prejudices with him, and darkened the unhappy house Stuart the shadows and heightened the made its last romantic attempt to lights in a manner which added recover the throne, and under- relief and animation to the picture went the last disastrous catas- as well as splendour to the trophe, almost rises into the heroic achievements of his hero; but style which becomes so tragic a which was anything but that subject. But eloquence was not calm balance and judicial estimate the characteristic of the book, which had been expected from which, in general, was very calm, history. No doubt there was a regular, and systematic-a duty certain foundation for those comand necessity, rather than a plea- plaints; but this new impulse has sure, to read. been carried so much further since then, and has found its issue in so many partisan records and highly coloured narratives, that we turn back to Macaulay with relief, feeling that the malicious pleasure he perhaps felt in lightly impaling a Quaker courtier was at least pardonable, and that the careless contempt with which he sometimes sweeps aside explanations and motives which on the other side he gives the utmost force of his skill to elaborate and set forth, was, on the whole, less wilfully injurious to the opposite party than naturally favourable to his own. It is one thing to incline with a higher appreciation to those views and leaders on whom one's eyes have been bent by all the traditions of breeding and party, and another to fix with This work however was, at the moment of its appearance, and as a matter of literature, far less important than the great outburst of a new style and school, the brilliant and dazzling volumes in which a writer already known, who had leapt into the literary field, with a style singularly formed and polished, in the very heat of youth, now took the world by storm. Macaulay had already gained an important reputation in various fields. He had made his mark in Parliament, he had done excellent work in India, he had contributed many striking essays to the Edinburgh Review.' But the public was scarcely prepared for a work which was as enthralling in its interest as any romance, and carried its |