at in the character and variety of his accomplishment, in the
volume of it, and, above all, in the extraordinarily sustained quality
of his genius and the length of time during which it dominated and
pervaded the literature of his country. The influences of Pope and
Dryden were weak in force and merely external in effect, the influence
of Byron was short-lived, that of Wordsworth was partial and limited, in
comparison with the influence of Tennyson. Of this, as of a mere
historical fact, there can be no dispute among those who care to inform
themselves of the facts and to consider them coolly. Of his intrinsic
merit, as opposed to his influential importance, it is not of course
possible to speak so peremptorily. Among the great volume of more or
less unfavourable criticism which such a career was sure to call forth,
two notes perhaps were the most dominant, the most constant, and (even
fervent admirers may admit) the least unjust. He was accused of a
somewhat excessive prettiness, a sort of dandyism and coquetry in form,
and of a certain want of profundity in matter. The last charge is the
more unprofitable in discussion, for it turns mainly on vast and vague
questions of previous definition. "What is thought?" "What is
profundity?" a by no means jesting demurrer may object, and he will not
soon be cleared out of the way. And it will perhaps seem to some that
what is called Tennyson's lack of profundity consists only in a
disinclination on his part to indulge in what the Germans call the
_Schwaetzerei_, the endless, aimless talkee-talkee about "thoughtful"
things in which the nineteenth century has indulged beyond the record of
any since what used to be called the Dark Ages. On the real "great
questions" Tennyson was not loth to speak, and spoke gravely enough;
even to the ephemeralities, as we have said, he paid rather too much
than too little attention. But he did not go into the ins and outs of
them as some of his contemporaries did, and as other contemporaries
thought fitting. He usually neglected the negligible; and perhaps it
would not hurt him with posterity if he had neglected it a little more,
though it hurt him a little with contemporaries that he neglected it as
much as he did.

The charge of prettiness is to be less completely ruled out; though it
shows even greater mistake in those who do more than touch very lightly
on it. In the earliest forms of the earlier poems not seldom, and
occasionally in even the