arger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be!"

What our formative, high-wrought English literature has suffered in
Tennyson's passing from the age on which he has shed so much glory those
can best say who are of his era, and have been intimate, as each
appeared, with every successive issue of his works. To the latter, as to
all thoughtful students of his writings, his has been the supreme
interpreting voice of the past century, while his influence on the
literary thought of his time has been of the highest and most potent
kind. Especially influential has Tennyson been in carrying forward, with
new impulses and inspiration, the poetic traditions of that grand old
motherland of English song to which our own poets in the New World, as
well as the younger bards of the British Isles, owe so much. If we
except the Laureate, there have been few who have worn the singing robe
of the poet who, in these later years at least, have spoken so
impressively to cultured minds on either side of the ocean, or have more
effectively expressed to his age the high and hallowing spirit of modern
poetry. It is this that has given the Laureate his exalted place among
the great literary influences of the century, and made him the one
indubitable representative of English song, with all its tuneful music
and rare and delicate art. To a few of the great choir of singers of the
past Tennyson admittedly owed something, both in tradition and in
art,--for each new impulse has caught and embodied not a little of the
spirit and temper, as well as the culture and inspiration, of the
old,--but his it was to impart new and fresher thought and a wider range
of harmony and emotion than had been reached by almost any of his
predecessors, and to speak to the mind and soul of his time as none
other has spoken or could well speak. From the era of Shakespeare and
Milton and their chief successors, it is to Tennyson's honor and fame
that he has given continuity as well as high perfection to the great
coursing stream of noble British verse.

AUTHORITIES.

Brooke, Stopford A. Tennyson: his Art and Relation to Modern Life.

Van Dyke, Henry. The Poetry of Tennyson.
Bayne, Peter. Tennyson and his Teachers.
Brimley, George. Essays on Tennyson.
Tainsh, Ed. C. Study of the Works of Tennyson.
Waugh, Arthur. Tennyson: A Study of his Life and Work.
Stedman, E. C. Victorian Poets.
Buchanan, R. Master Spi