century, under wholly new conditions of thought and culture, they manifest themselves in Mr Tennyson's poetry in a wholly new way. But they are still there. The essential bent of his poetry is towards such expressions as
Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars;
O'er the sun's bright eye
Drew the vast eyelid of an inky cloud;
When the cairned mountain was a shadow, sunned
The world to peace again;
The fresh young captains flashed their glittering teeth,
The huge bush-bearded barons heaved and blew;
He bared the knotted column of his throat,
The massive square of his heroic breast,
And arms on which the standing muscle sloped
As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone,
Running too vehemently to break upon it.
And this way of speaking is the least plain, the most un-Homeric, which can possibly be conceived. Homer presents his thought to you just as it wells from the source of his mind: Mr Tennyson carefully distils his thought before he will part with it. Hence comes, in the expression of the thought, a heightened and elaborate air. In Homer's poetry it is all natural thoughts in natural words; in Mr Tennyson's poetry it is all distilled thoughts in distilled words. Exactly this heightening and elaboration may be observed in Mr Spedding's
While the steeds mouthed their corn aloof
