he has wisely been content with its riches;
and because, in his composition, he has not sought to construct an
elaborate and artificial harmony, but only to pour forth his thoughts in
those expressive and simple melodies whose meaning, truth, and power,
are the soonest recognised, and the quickest felt....

Mr. Tennyson seems to obtain entrance into a mind as he would make his
way into a landscape; he climbs the pineal gland as if it were a hill in
the centre of the scene; looks around on all objects with their
varieties of form, their movements, their shades of colour, and their
mutual relations and influences, and forthwith produces as graphic a
delineation in the one case as Wilson or Gainsborough could have done in
the other, to the great enrichment of our gallery of intellectual
scenery....

Our author has the secret of the transmigration of the soul. He can cast
his own spirit into any living thing, real or imaginary....

"Mariana" is, we are disposed to think, although there are several poems
which rise up reproachfully in our recollection as we say so,
altogether, the most perfect composition in the volume. The whole of
this poem, of eighty-four lines, is generated by the legitimate process
of poetical creation, as that process is conducted in a philosophical
mind, from a half sentence in Shakespeare. There is no mere
samplification; it is all production, and production from that single
germ. That must be a rich intellect, in which thoughts thus take root
and grow....

A considerable number of the poems are amatory; they are the expression
not of heathen sensuality, nor of sickly refinement, nor of fantastic
devotion, but of manly love; and they illustrate the philosophy of the
passion while they exhibit the various phases of its existence and
embody its power....

Mr. Tennyson sketches females as well as ever did Sir Thomas Lawrence.
His portraits are delicate, his likenesses (we will answer for them),
perfect, and they have life, character, and individuality. They are
nicely assorted also to all the different gradations of emotion and
passion which are expressed in common with the descriptions of them.
There is an appropriate object for every shade of feeling, from the
light touch of a passing admiration, to the triumphant madness of soul
and sense, or the deep and everlasting anguish of survivorship....

That these poems will have a rapid and extensive popularity
we do not anticipate. Their very origin