Everything reminds him of the dead.  Every joy or sorrow of man, every aspect of nature, from

The forest crack’d, the waters, curl’d,
   The cattle huddled on the lea.

The thousand waves of wheat
That ripple round the lonely grange.

In every place where in old days they had met and conversed; in every dark wrestling of the spirit with the doubts and fears of manhood, throughout the whole outward universe of Nature, and the whole inward universe of spirit, the soul of his dead friend broods—­at first a memory shrouded in blank despair, then, a living presence, a ministering spirit, answering doubts, calming fears, stirring up noble aspirations, utter humility, leading the poet upward, step by step, to faith, and peace, and hope.  Not that there runs throughout the book a conscious or organic method.  The poems seem often merely to be united by the identity of their metre, so exquisitely chosen, that while the major rhyme in the second and third lines of each stanza gives the solidity and self-restraint required by such deep themes, the mournful minor rhyme of each first and fourth line always leads the ear to expect something beyond, and enables the poet’s thoughts to wander sadly on, from stanza to stanza and poem to poem, in an endless chain of

Linked sweetness long drawn out.

There are records of risings and fallings again, of alternate cloud and sunshine, throughout the book; earnest and passionate, yet never bitter; humble, yet never abject; with a depth and vehemence of affection “passing the love of woman,” yet without a taint of sentimentality; self-restrained and dignified, without ever narrowing into artificial coldness; altogether rivalling the sonnets of Shakespeare; and all knit together into one spiritual unity by the proem at the opening of the volume—­in our eyes, the noblest English Christian poem which several centuries have seen.

We shall not quote the very poems which we should most wish to sink into men’s hearts.  Let each man find for himself those which suit him best, and meditate on them in silence.  They are fit only to be read solemnly in our purest and most thoughtful moods, in the solitude of our chamber, or by the side of those we love, with thanks to the great heart who has taken courage to bestow on us the record of his own friendship, doubt, and triumph.

It has been often asked why Mr. Tennyson’s great and varied powers had never been concentrated on one immortal work.  The epic, the lyric, the idyllic faculties, perhaps the dramatic also, seemed to be all there, and yet all sundered, scattered about in small fragmentary poems.  “In Memoriam,” as we think, explains the paradox.  Mr. Tennyson had been employed on higher, more truly divine, and yet more truly human work than either epos or drama.  Within the unseen and alone truly Real world which underlies and explains this mere time-shadow, which