former age, Shakspeare, Milton, and whoever were greatest among their predecessors and successors, would not, of course, have escaped his studious attention.

It may be said that these remarks are superfluous, since, in an age of culture, every poet may be concluded to have made himself master of the poetic wealth of his country. But I am impressed with the idea that an altogether peculiar relation subsists between the poetry of Tennyson and that of the great masters by whom he was preceded, more especially of those near his own time. The spirit of former schools appears to me to have passed into his poetry, determining its character though undergoing perfect transformation. If, to change the figure, I might imagine the great poets of the language pouring the contributions of their genius into one golden chalice, I should call the poetry of Tennyson a delicately tinted, exquisitely refined foam, mantling on the top. This comparison, I need hardly say, does not necessarily assign to Tennyson a higher place than belongs to any of the poets who preceded him. You may excel any number of masters in single effects, yet be, on the whole, inferior to them all. On this point I do not speak. Nor does the figure impugn the essential originality of Tennyson's genius. Originality is to be judged by the result: so long as the hues of the flower are blended in the unity of life and nature, and compel you to feel the magic and freshness of their beauty, you cannot affect its essential newness by naming its scientific elements, or by telling how the soil was dressed in which it grew. But bearing these things in mind, it is an interesting and quickening application of the critical faculty, to trace, in the poetry of Tennyson, the effects of that complex influence under which his genius developed. His figures are more definite in form and more finished in detail than those of Scott: but

in the bright, wandering gleams from the days of chivalry, which flit across the page of Tennyson, may we not detect the influence of the great romancer of Scotland? In his occasional bursts of passion, may we not, though dubiously, suffer ourselves to be reminded of Byron? The spirit of Wordsworth is ever near, as a mild, pervading presence; breathing not only in the high and unsullied morality, but perceptible at times, in idyllic passages of liquid sweetness, in a whispered suggestion of Wordsworthian childishness. The influence of Coleridge and Shelley we can hardly err in discovering in the delicate harmony and inwoven richness of the versification, perhaps, also, in the choice of imagery. Nor must we fail to recollect those foreign influences to which allusions has been made, as playing an important part in moulding the ideas of the most cultivated minds in the period of Tennyson's education. The poetry of Dante became then the object of very careful study, and the manner of Dante, the sternest of poetical realists, is perpetually exhibited in the poems of Tennyson. That intense realization too, of the idea of art, which was represented by Goethe, and that absolute elaboration which his works exhibit, had beyond question left an ineffaceable impression on the mind of Tennyson. But of all the teachers of Tennyson, there was none with whose genius his own was more strictly consonant, or whom he has, or appears to have more diligently studied, than John Keats. So close, indeed, is the affinity between the poetical genius of Tennyson and that of Keats, that the mention of the latter conducts us naturally to what must be the central problem in a critique on any poet, the question as to what is the particular quality and order of his imagination.

A truce to philosophers. If we once permitted ourselves to dive into the subterranean regions of discussion, analysis,

and definition, we should emerge into the fair fields and open skies of objective poetry, only with jaded limbs and exhausted patience. Whether there is an essential difference between fancy and imagination, in what exact sense imagination can be pronounced creative, whether its operation is of the nature of that of the reason, conscious and deliberate, or of the nature of dreams, involuntary and hardly conscious, are questions on which I may have a decided opinion or not, but which I beg leave not to discuss at present. Our object will be attained with equal completeness, and far greater comfort, by considering merely two modes, broadly discriminated and perhaps allembracing, in which different poets produce their effects, or in which the same poets write on different occasions.

The first of these modes might be styled that of the imagination stimulative: the second that of the imagination delineative. The one deals in bold, dashing, single strokes. It casts a flash of light over a wide surface of country, causing every mountain ridge, every valley stream, every castled crag, to gleam for a moment on the eye, but revealing no geographical details. It evokes the imagination of the reader, by striking but comparatively indefinite epithets. It says a face was lovely, a storm terrible, a lake beautiful; but it does not dwell on the "snow-androse-bloom" in the maiden's face, it does not particularize the terrors of the storm, it does not speak of every cloud that wandered over the lake, or mention the flowers that glassed themselves in its mirror. It runs with wizard hand over a thousand cords of association, sympathy, affection, touching the string but trusting to nature for the vibration. Not so with imagination in her other mood. She then seems to draw near to the painter, that she may imitate the definiteness of his colors, to the sculptor, that FIRST SERIES. 7

she may reach the perfection of his forms. She exhausts her subject. She deals in measurement and detail. Her aim is not to arouse but to satisfy, not to stimulate but to delineate; or if both to rouse and stimulate, then by the effect of minute and elaborate painting.

But old Hume reminds me that criticism will not be of much use until it deals in abundant instance and illustration. I shall attempt, therefore, to make good my position, respecting the modes of imaginative operation which I have defined, and to afford illustration of those modes, by one or two references and citations. I premise. that, as there is no such thing as a mathematical line in nature, neither have we here an exact boundary line. No poet has ever exhibited either of the imaginative modes to the complete exclusion of the other. Some poets exhibit both in proportions difficult to define. lean so manifestly towards the one, and others so generally to the other, that the fact affords a satisfactory means of classification.

But certain poets.

Of imagination stimulative, I suppose Homer would be cited as having furnished examples hardly to be surpassed. The old man is of course garrulous and minute, but he is fond also of the single flash, of the daring sweep, of the word that kindles a whole dawn, of the comparison which evokes a whole shadowy host of thoughts, sympathies, imaginings. His heroes are so often lion-like! His many sounding sea draws on our imagination so endlessly! Stentor bawls as loud as fifty; a great indefinite bellow, only beyond the reach of any dozen of ordinary mortals. Achilles wanders by the surf, looking unutterable things, but the curtains of his sublime sorrow are not drawn. Milton, with all his austerity, and though his rhythm is as the measured and martial music of angelic armies, is one

of the greatest masters of this from of imagination. Generation after generation will ponder his immortal words, and every new form of apprehension, distress, dismay, terror, or the reverse, that the ages exhibit, will be compelled by his irresistible imagination to minister to its ends. The eyes of men will ever peer into that "darkness visible," and never will they cease to discover in it

"sights of woe,

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell.”

Celestial music ever new in tone, celestial fragrance never to be exhausted, breathe round his Raphaels and Uriels; and the deep scars of thunder, sublimely indefinite, will never cease to be gazed at, with awe and terror, on the brow of the fallen Angel. But the finest example of this form of imagination in existence is beyond question the description of the horse in Job. "Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage; neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha! and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting." There is, under all this description, a stern and accurate realism. The abstract qualities of the horse, his strength, courage, and the majesty of his movements, are discerned with unerring truth. But what words can