latest forms of the later, the exquisiteness of
the poet's touch in music and in painting, in fancy and in form, did
sometimes pass into something like finicalness, into what is called in
another language _mignardise_. But this was only the necessary, and,
after he was out of his apprenticeship, the minimised effect of his
great poetical quality--that very quality of exquisiteness in form, in
fancy, in painting, and in music which has just been stated. We have, it
must be admitted, had greater poets than Tennyson. Shakespeare,
Spenser, Milton, Shelley, undoubtedly deserve this preference to him;
Wordsworth and Keats may deserve it. But we have had none so uniformly,
and over such a large mass of work, exquisite. In the lighter fantastic
veins he may sometimes be a little unsure in touch and taste; in satire
and argument a little heavy, a little empty, a little rhetorical; in
domestic and ethical subjects a little tame. But his handlings of these
things form a very small part of his work. And in the rest none of all
these faults appears, and their absence is due to the fact that nothing
interferes with the exquisite perfection of the form. Some faults have
been found with Tennyson's rhymes, though this is generally
hypercriticism; and in his later years he was a little too apt to
accumulate tribrachs in his blank verse, a result of a mistaken sense of
the true fact that he was better at slow rhythms than at quick, and of
an attempt to cheat nature. But in all other respects his versification
is by far the most perfect of any English poet, and results in a harmony
positively incomparable. So also his colour and outline in conveying the
visual image are based on a study of natural fact and a practice in
transferring it to words which are equally beyond comparison. Take any
one of a myriad of lines of Tennyson, and the mere arrangement of vowels
and consonants will be a delight to the ear; let any one of a thousand
of his descriptions body itself before the eye, and the picture will be
like the things seen in a dream, but firmer and clearer.

Although, as has been said, the popularity of Lord Tennyson itself was
not a plant of very rapid growth, and though but a short time before his
position was undisputed it was admitted only by a minority, imposing in
quality but far from strong in mere numbers, his chief rival during the
latter part of their joint lives was vastly slower in gaining the public
ear. It is not quite pleasan