taken in the sense that Tennyson's
poetical career might, with advantage or with anything but the greatest
possible loss, have been closed in 1842, then certainly it would be
something more than a crotchet. Nothing perhaps appeared subsequently
(with unimportant exceptions such as the plays, and as the dialect
pieces of which the "Northern Farmer" was the first and best) the
possibility of which could not have been divined from the earlier work.
The tree had blossomed; it had almost, to keep up the metaphor, set; but
by far the greater part of the fruit was yet to ripen, and very much of
it was to be of quality not inferior, of quantity far greater, than
anything that had yet been given.

_The Princess_ and _In Memoriam_, the two first-fruits of this later
crop, were certainly not the least important. Indeed they may be said to
have shown for the first time that the poet was capable of producing, in
lighter and severer styles respectively, work not limited to short
flights and exemplifying what (perhaps mistakenly) is called "thought,"
as well as style and feeling, colour and music. _The Princess_ is
undoubtedly Tennyson's greatest effort, if not exactly in comedy, in a
vein verging towards the comic--a side on which he was not so well
equipped for offence or for defence as on the other. But it is a
masterpiece. Exquisite as its author's verse always is, it was never
more exquisite than here, whether in blank verse or in the (superadded)
lyrics, while none of his deliberately arranged plays contains
characters half so good as those of the Princess herself, of Lady
Blanche and Lady Psyche, of Cyril, of the two Kings, and even of one or
two others. And that unequalled dream-faculty of his, which has been
more than once glanced at, enabled him to carry off whatever was
fantastical in the conception with almost unparalleled felicity. It may
or may not be agreed that the question of the equality of the sexes is
one of the distinguishing questions of this century; and some of those
who would give it that position may or may not maintain, if they think
it worth while, that it is treated here too lightly, while their
opponents may wish that it had been treated more lightly still. But this
very difference will point the unbiassed critic to the same conclusion,
that Tennyson has hit the golden mean; while that, whatever he has hit
or missed in subject, the verse of his essay is golden, no one who is
competent will doubt. Such ly