To explain our meaning, it will be necessary, perhaps, to go back to Mr. Tennyson’s earlier writings, of which he is said to be somewhat ashamed now—­a fastidiousness with which we will not quarrel; for it should be the rule of the poet, forgetting those things which are behind, to press on to those things which are before, and “to count not himself to have apprehended but—­” no, we will not finish the quotation; let the readers of “In Memoriam” finish it for themselves, and see how, after all, the poet, if he would reach perfection, must be found by Him who found St. Paul of old.  In the meantime, as a true poet must necessarily be in advance of his age, Mr. Tennyson’s earlier poems, rather than these latter ones, coincide with the tastes and speculations of the young men of this day.  And in proportion, we believe, as they thoroughly appreciate the distinctive peculiarities of those poems, will they be able to follow the author of them on his upward path.

Some of our readers, we would fain hope, remember as an era in their lives the first day on which they read those earlier poems; how, fifteen years ago, Mariana in the Moated Grange, “The Dying Swan,” “The Lady of Shalott,” came to them as revelations.  They seemed to themselves to have found at last a poet who promised not only to combine the cunning melody of Moore, the rich fulness of Keats, and the simplicity of Wordsworth, but one who was introducing a method of observing nature different from that of all the three and yet succeeding in everything which they had attempted, often in vain.  Both Keats and Moore had an eye for the beauty which lay in trivial and daily objects.  But in both of them, there was a want of deep religious reverence, which kept Moore playing gracefully upon the surface of phenomena without ever daring to dive into their laws or inner meaning; and made poor Keats fancy that he was rather to render nature poetical by bespangling her with florid ornament, than simply to confess that she was already, by the grace of God, far beyond the need of his paint and gilding.  Even Wordsworth himself had not full faith in the great dicta which he laid down in his famous Introductory Essay.  Deep as was his conviction that nature bore upon her simplest forms the finger-mark of God, he did not always dare simply to describe her as she was, and leave her to reveal her own mystery.  We do not say this in depreciation of one who stands now far above human praise or blame.  The wonder is, not that Wordsworth rose no higher, but that, considering the level on which his taste was formed, he had power to rise to the height above his age which he did attain.  He did a mighty work.  He has left the marks of his teaching upon every poet who has written verses worth reading for the last twenty years.  The idea by which he conquered was, as Coleridge well sets forth, the very one which, in its practical results on his own poetry, procured him loud and deserved ridicule.  This, which will be the root idea