e certainly
is variety enough to give us long years of literary enjoyment; and we need
hardly mention miscellaneous poems, like "The Brook" and "The Charge of the
Light Brigade," which are known to every schoolboy; and "Wages" and "The
Higher Pantheism," which should be read by every man who thinks about the
old, old problem of life and death.

CHARACTERISTICS OF TENNYSON'S POETRY. If we attempt to sum up the quality
of Tennyson, as shown in all these works, the task is a difficult one; but
three things stand out more or less plainly. First, Tennyson is essentially
the artist. No other in his age studied the art of poetry so constantly or
with such singleness of purpose; and only Swinburne rivals him in melody
and the perfect finish of his verse. Second, like all the great writers of
his age, he is emphatically a teacher, often a leader. In the preceding
age, as the result of the turmoil produced by the French Revolution,
lawlessness was more or less common, and individuality was the rule in
literature. Tennyson's theme, so characteristic of his age, is the reign of
order,--of law in the physical world, producing evolution, and of law in
the spiritual world, working out the perfect man. _In Memoriam, Idylls of
the King, The Princess_,-here are three widely different poems; yet the
theme of each, so far as poetry is a kind of spiritual philosophy and
weighs its words before it utters them, is the orderly development of law
in the natural and in the spiritual world.

This certainly is a new doctrine in poetry, but the message does not end
here. Law implies a source, a method, an object. Tennyson, after facing his
doubts honestly and manfully, finds law even in the sorrows and losses of
humanity. He gives this law an infinite and personal source, and finds the
supreme purpose of all law to be a revelation of divine love. All earthly
love, therefore, becomes an image of the heavenly. What first perhaps
attracted readers to Tennyson, as to Shakespeare, was the character of his
women,--pure, gentle, refined beings, whom we must revere as our Anglo-
Saxon forefathers revered the women they loved. Like Browning, the poet had
loved one good woman supremely, and her love made clear the meaning of all
life. The message goes one step farther. Because law and love are in the
world, faith is the only reasonable attitude toward life and death, even
though we understand them not. Such, in a few words, seems to be Tennyson's
whole messa