and industrial development.  Whatever he may say or do in an occasional fit, he cannot long either cross or lose its sympathies; for while he elevates as well as adorns it, he is flesh of its flesh and bone of its bone.  We fondly believe it is his business to do much towards the solution of that problem, so fearful from its magnitude, how to harmonise this new draught of external power and activity with the old and more mellow wine of faith, self devotion, loyalty, reverence, and discipline.  And all that we have said is aimed, not at Mr. Tennyson, but at a lay-figure which he has set up, and into the mouth of which he has put words that cannot be his words.

We return to our proper task, “Maud,” if an unintelligible or even, for Mr. Tennyson, an inferior work, is still a work which no inferior man could have produced; nor would it be difficult to extract abundance of lines, and even passages, obviously worthy of their author.  And if this poem would have made while alone a volume too light for his fame, the defect is supplied by the minor pieces, some of which are admirable.  “The Brook,” with its charming interstitial soliloquy, and the “Letters” will, we are persuaded, always rank among Mr. Tennyson’s happy efforts; while the “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington,” written from the heart and sealed by the conscience of the poet, is worthy of that great and genuine piece of manhood, its immortal subject.

We must touch for a moment upon what has already been mentioned as a separate subject of interest in the “Princess.”  We venture to describe it as in substance a drama, with a plot imperfectly worked and with characters insufficiently chiselled and relieved.  Its author began by presenting, and for many years continued to present, personal as well as natural pictures of individual attitude or movement; and, as in “Oenone” and “Godiva,” he carried them to a very high pitch of perfection.  But he scarcely attempted, unless in his more homely narrations, anything like grouping or combination.  It now appears that for the higher effort he has been gradually accumulating and preparing his resources.  In the sections of the prolonged soliloquy of “Maud” we see a crude attempt at representing combined interests and characters with heroic elevation, under the special difficulty of appearing, like Mathews, in one person only; in the “Princess” we had a happier effort, though one that still left more to be desired.  Each, however, in its own stage was a preparation for an enterprise at once bolder and more mature.

We now come to the recent work of the poet—­the “Idylls of the King.”  The field, which Mr. Tennyson has chosen for this his recent and far greatest exploit, is one of so deep and wide-reaching an interest as to demand some previous notice of a special kind.