MELODY gives a sensuous existence to poetry; for does not the meaning of a poem become embodied in melody? - Beethoven. As long as the English language is spoken, the word-music of Tennyson will charm the ear; and when English has become a dead language, his wonderful concentration of thought into luminous speech, the exquisite pictures in which he has blended all the hues of reflection, feeling, and fancy, will cause him to be read as we read Homer, Pindar, and Horace. - George Eliot. COLOR, like the dawn, flows over the horizon from his pencil in waves so rich that we do not miss the central form. Through all his refinements, too, he has reached the public, - — a certificate of good sense and general power, since he who aspires to be the English poet must be as large as London, but in his own kind. But he wants a subject, and climbs no mount of vision to bring its secrets to the people. He contents himself with describing the Englishman as he is, and proposes no better. There are all degrees in poetry, and we must be thankful for every beautiful talent. Emerson. NOT of the howling dervishes of song, Who craze the brain with their delirious dance, Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong, For thy allegiance to the poet's art. - Longfellow. No English poet, with the possible exception of Byron, has so ministered to the natural appetite for poetry in the people as Tennyson. Byron did this- unintentionally, as all genius does-by warning and arousing their dormant sentiment: Tennyson by surprising them into the recognition of a new luxury in the harmony and movement of poetic speech. Bayard Taylor. II. TENNYSON. ENGLISH literature divides itself into well defined periods. The age of Elizabeth cannot be mistaken for that of any other, and its great leading features have not since been repeated. Not less marked was the eighteenth century, a time of skepticism in philosophy, classicism in literature, courtly formality in social life, and Deism in religion. Reaction from that period, under the influence of Methodism, the French revolution, German idealism, and the growth of naturalism, led to the great literary era of the first half of the nineteenth century. That era exhibited a love of the romantic, as seen in Walter Scott; of the natural world as the dwellingplace of the Divine, as seen in Wordsworth; of faith in a new social era for mankind, as seen in Shelley. Throughout the revolutionary period was exhibited a remarkable faith in the regenerating power of ideas. Men expected to see a new world rise out of the old order of formal and stagnant life. In all directions burst forth an eager desire for fresh and spontaneous thought, and for a natural expression of the human faculties. Freedom in political and social life was not more clearly demanded than in literature and art. The human mind burst its bonds, and soared away into an atmosphere of pure inspiration. It seemed to have gained a new access of power, to have found itself capable of higher things than it had before dared undertake. The classical habit of mind of the era of Pope and Johnson was now discarded. The new law of literary composition was that of the old saying, "Look in thy heart and write." Sentiment, passion, sympathy, aspiration, were now free, and spoke themselves out with abandon and joy. Burns singing of rustic life and of a humanity knowing no distinctions but those which pertain to man as man; Wordsworth turning to nature as a mystical revelation of God, and to the simple life of the plainest people; Shelley crying out for liberty and an unrestrained utterance of the thoughts which were in him, make plain to us the nature of the revolutionary era, as it was ex |