amous _Quarterly_ article on Lord Tennyson's volume of
1832. That article is sometimes spoken of as Croker's, but there can be
no manner of doubt that it is Lockhart's; and, indeed, it is quoted as
his by Professor Ferrier, who, through Wilson, must have known the
facts. Now I do not think I yield to any man living in admiration of the
Laureate, but I am unable to think much the worse, or, indeed, any the
worse, of Lockhart because of this article. In the first place, it is
extremely clever, being, perhaps, the very best example of politely
cruel criticism in existence. In the second, most, if not all, of the
criticism is perfectly just. If Lord Tennyson himself, at this safe
distance of time, can think of the famous strawberry story and its
application without laughing, he must be an extremely sensitive Peer.
And nobody, I suppose, would now defend the wondrous stanza which was
paralleled from the _Groves of Blarney_. The fact is that criticism of
criticism after some time is apt to be doubly unjust. It is wont to
assume, or rather to imagine, that the critic must have known what the
author was going to do, as well as what he had actually done; and it is
wont to forget that the work criticised was very often, as it presented
itself to the critic, very different from what it is when it presents
itself to the critic's critic. The best justification of Lockhart's
verdict on the volume of 1832 is what Lord Tennyson himself has done
with the volume of 1832. Far more than half the passages objected to
have since been excised or altered. But there are other excuses. In the
first place, Mr. Tennyson, as he then was, represented a further
development of schools of poetry against which the _Quarterly_ had
always, rightly or wrongly, set its face, and a certain loyalty to the
principles of his paper is, after all, not the worst fault of a critic.
In the second, no one can fairly deny that some points in Mr. Tennyson's
early, if not in his later, manner must have been highly and rightly
disgustful to a critic who, like Lockhart, was above all things
masculine and abhorrent of "gush." In the third, it is, unfortunately,
not given to all critics to admire all styles alike. Let those to whom
it is given thank God therefor; but let them, at the same time, remember
that they are as much bound to accept whatever is good in all kinds of
critics as whatever is good in all kinds of poets.

Now Lockhart, within his own range, and it was for