The question as to Tennyson's precise rank in the glorious roll of the Poets of England can never be determined by us, if in any case or at any time such determinations can be made. We do not, or should not, ask whether Virgil or Lucretius, whether AEschylus or Sophocles, is the greater poet. The consent of mankind seems to place Homer and Shakespeare and Dante high above all. For the rest no prize-list can be settled. If influence among aliens is the test, Byron probably takes, among our poets, the next rank after Shakespeare. But probably there is no possible test. In certain respects Shelley, in many respects Milton, in some Coleridge, in some Burns, in the opinion of a number of persons Browning, are greater poets than Tennyson. But for exquisite variety and varied exquisiteness Tennyson is not readily to be surpassed. At one moment he pleases the uncritical mass of readers, in another mood he wins the verdict of the raffine. It is a success which scarce any English poet but Shakespeare has excelled. His faults have rarely, if ever, been those of flat-footed, "thick-ankled" dulness; of rhetoric, of common-place; rather have his defects been the excess of his qualities. Akind of John Bullishness may also be noted, especially in derogatory references to France, which, true or untrue, are out of taste and keeping. But these errors could be removed by the excision of half-a-dozen lines. His later work (as the Voyage of Maeldune) shows a just appreciation of ancient Celtic literature. A great critic, F.
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