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༄མ་ ༠༦ pIG

radiant words, can suggest, but you can-sage of future glory, then Alfred may not not see him; he is too subtle to be grasped anticipate the brightening of his star in the like a palpable essence; he is too spiritual horizon of posterity; but if even the to be seen; he is the soul that permeates "prince of critics" is fallible, and the prethrough and vivifies the modifications of his cedent of Wordsworth is a reed worth the VOL. XIII. No. III.

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ALFRED TENNYSON is an English clergy- thoughts, investing them with life and man's son. He was born in Lincolnshire, motion, but which loses its personality in was taught Greek and "the humanities" at the multiplicity of forms which it assumes. Trinity College, Cambridge, imbibed a spe- There are no distinctive marks of a woolcies of poetic mysticism from Shelley, comber, or a poacher, or a second-rate learned metaphysics and simplicity of diction player, or a punch-quaffing wit, that could from Wordsworth, and studied poetry from make the shafts of raillery flash round the nature. There is little known of Tennyson brow of jolly Ben like the lightnings of personally. All that can be said of him Jove round the brow of old Titan. There individually might be written upon his is nothing of Shakspeare's self, but the tombstone, and his epitaph would neither philosophy of human nature, which belongs be redundant nor very particular. He is more or less to all men as well as to him, in said to be of a retiring, reflective disposi- all he says or sings, so that it is not to his tion, and this is almost the only character- writings that man will go for a history of istic of the man that you could discover his habits. It is not in Tennyson's poems through the medium of his poetry; for you that men will discover the great lineaments might as well seek to discover the peculiar of his nature. It is true that the individumood and chief mode of Shakspeare's spirit al human soul may be said to have no parin his plays as Tennyson's in his two little ticular aspect, that even in its successive volumes. The one is an impersonality, an passions and moods there is a seeming but abstraction, with no material form, but no real identity; still there is an individusoul enough to supply a legion of inferior ality of mind when in repose a uniformity beings to himself with vitality, sensation, in its periods of rest which all men believe and thought; his creations tremble on the they can perceive, and even this Tennyverge of his own spirituality, and graduate son's mind-mirror fails to show us. Tennydown from a Prospero to a Caliban. You son is a poet, even a great poet, although feel Shakspeare in his dramas, you know his productions are not numerous, and these him to be superior to all you read, or all productions cannot be said to be popular. that even his electric thoughts, clothed in If present popularity is the only safe pre radiant words, can suggest, but you can- sage of future glory, then Alfred may not not see him; he is too subtle to be grasped anticipate the brightening of his star in the like a palpable essence; he is too spiritual horizon of posterity; but if even the to be seen; he is the soul that permeates "prince of critics" is fallible, and the prethrough and vivifies the modifications of his cedent of Wordsworth is a reed worth the VOL. XIII. No. III.

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