beauty of the word-painting.  In the Shakespearian sense he lacked the dramatic faculty, and he had but slender gifts of invention and creation.  But broad, if not always strong, was his intelligence, and keen his interest in the problems of the time.  Though living apart from the world, he was yet of it; and in many of his poems may be traced not only the doings, but the thought and tendencies, of his age.  His Christianity, though undogmatic, was real and pervasive, and his love for nature was a devotion.  In national affairs, as befitted the official singer of his country (witness his fine ’Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington’), he showed himself the historic as well as the modern Englishman, and great was his reverence for law and freedom.  Attractive also, if at times somewhat commonplace, is the quiet domestic sphere which Tennyson has hallowed in the many modern idylls which depict the joys and sorrows of humble life.  No trait in the poet’s many-sided character is more beautiful than the sympathy he has manifested in these poems with the world’s toilers; while nothing could well be more touching than the pathos with which he invests their simple annals.

Typical of the Victorian age in which he lived, Tennyson is also representative of its highest thought and culture.  This is seen not only in the thought of his verse, but in its splendid forms, and especially in the technical equipment of the poet.  In his dialogues there is much movement and action, and he had consummate skill in the handling of metres.  Few poets have approached him in the successful writing of blank verse, which has a delightful cadence as well as calm strength.  Above all his gifts, he was an artist in words, his ear being most sensitively attuned and his taste pure and refined for the delicate artistry of the poet’s work.  In this respect he is a matchless literary workman.  Besides the music of his verse, his thought is ever high, and in his serious moods consecrated to noble and reverent purposes.  In the midst of the negations and convulsive movements of his day his spirit is always serene, and his thought, while at times dreamily melancholy, is conserving and full of faith’s highest assurance.  His sympathy with his fellow-man was keen and wide-souled; and though he stood aloof from the conflict and struggle of his day, he was far from indifferent to its movements, and with high purpose strove if not to direct at least to reflect them.  This was specially characteristic of the man, and in the conflict with doubt no poet has more keenly interpreted the mental struggles of the thoughtful soul and the deep underlying spirit of his time, or more beneficently given the age an assured ground of faith while conserving its highest and dearest hopes.  Happily, too, unlike many poets, his own character was lofty and blameless, and hence his message comes with more consistency, as well as with a higher inspiration and power.  Nor is the message the less impressive for the note of honest doubt which finds utterance in many a poem, or for the intimation of a creed that is at once liberal and conservative.  With the evidences before the reader that the poet himself had had his own soul-wrestlings and periods of mental conflict, his counsellings of courage and faith are all the more effective, as they are in unison with his belief in the upward progress of the race, and his unshaken trust in a higher Power.