-

"Lift thyself up to higher spheres!
When he divines, he'll follow thee."

And the Mystic Choir chants the epilogue which embodies the moral of
the play:--

"All that is perishing
Types the ideal;
Dream of our cherishing
Thus becomes real.
Superhumanly
Here it is done;
The ever womanly
Draweth us on."

ALFRED (LORD) TENNYSON.

1809-1892.

THE SPIRIT OF MODERN POETRY.

BY G. MERCER ADAM.

Of Tennyson what can one write freshly to-day that will not seem but an
echo of what has been said or written of England's noble singer who, on
the death of Wordsworth, now over half a century ago, assumed the
official bays of the English laureateship? Personal homage, of course,
one can pay to the illustrious name, so dear to the heart of the
English-speaking race; but how freshly or vitally can any writer now
speak of that magnificent body of his verse which is the glory of his
age, of the nobility and knightly virtues of its author's character, of
the splendor of his genius, or of the breadth of intellectual and
spiritual interests which was so signally manifested in all that
Tennyson thought and wrote? Among the "Beacon Lights" in the present
series of volumes the Laureate of the age has not hitherto been
included, and to fill the gap the writer of this sketch has ventured,
not, of course, to say all that might be said of the great poet, but
modestly to deal with the man and his art, so that neither his era nor
his work shall go unchronicled or fail of some recognition, however
inadequate, in these pages.

Tennyson's supreme excellence, it is admitted, lies not so much in his
themes as in his transcendent art. It is this that has given him his
hold upon a cultured age and won for him immortality. His work is the
perfection of literary form, and, in his lyrical pieces especially, his
melody is exquisite. Not less masterly is his power of construction,
while his sensibility to beauty is phenomenal. His secluded life brought
him close to nature's heart and made him familiar with her every voice
and mood. In interpreting these, much of the charm lies in the fidelity
of his descriptions and in the surpassing beauty of the word-painting.
In the Shakespearian sense he lacked the dramatic faculty, and he had
but slender gifts of invention and creation. But broad, if not always
strong, was his intelligence, and keen his interest in the problems of
the