In his new volume Tennyson has thrown out some verses, graceful, defiant, triumphant, and yet a little touched with sadness, in which he assails the thieves who have stolen his seed of poetry, and made the flower so common that the people call it—­as, indeed, they did when first it blossomed—­a weed.  It may be for the reason here indicated that he has chosen for his later poems a form—­that of the Idyl—­the versification, construction, and use of which he has made his own by a delicate and yet indisputable stamp of sovereignty:  whatever may be the reason, let us be thankful for the choice.  He has worked in no field of whose resources he was more completely master, or which has yielded him more full and varied development of his rare genius.  The work of his riper years, with the results of his fidelity in discipline, his generous culture, his catholic and earnest intercourse with men, and his clear and thoughtful observation lying ready for his use, he has crowned the green glory of his past with a chaplet that will grow more sure of permanence with the scrutiny of every succeeding year.  In his “Idyls of the King” we recognized the best moral qualities of many of his previous works; and in “Enoch Arden,” which gives the title to his last volume, he has turned the full light of his perfected genius on the simple scenes of domestic joy and sorrow.

We have always deemed it one of the greatest of Tennyson’s great and good qualities, that he is unfaltering in the tribute of honor which he pays to the sterling virtues and to the beauty and heroism which he rejoices to point us to in the daily walk of the humblest life.  A blameless character, pure desire, manly ambition, a fervent faith, and a strong will, resting on the firm innermost foundation of a Christian spirit, are as real to him in the fisherman as in the peerless prince.  The temptations, the strength, and the temper of the hero are so common to both, and so clearly brought out in each, that we feel the Man in the Prince, and the high aim of the Prince in the true Man.  There is the “grand, heroic soul” in Enoch as in Arthur,—­

    “Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
    Whose glory was redressing human wrong;
    Who spoke no slander, no, nor listened to it;
    Who loved one only, and who clave to her.”

Our poet never strays from Nature; which has for him two sides,—­the old duality, which is also forever,—­the real and the ideal.  To the one he brings the most patient fidelity of study; the other he reflects in every part of his poems in glowing imagery.  “Enoch Arden” contains scenes which a Pre-Raphaelite might draw from,—­as that “cup-like hollow in the down” which held the hazel-wood, with the children nutting through its reluctant boughs, or the fireside of Philip, on which Enoch looked and was desolate.  On the other hand, no poet has so planted our literature with gorgeous gardens from which generations of lesser laborers will be enriched and prospered.  The figures in which Tennyson uses Nature are not, moreover, strained or artificial; they do not distort or cover the inner meaning, but bloom from it, revealing its beauty and its sweetness.  All bear the mark of loving thought,—­now so delicate that its very faintness thrills and holds us, now strong and spirited and solemn.