which went often to the Middle Ages for material, but (generally speaking) was rather dull regarding the medieval form. Neither La Belle Dame sans Mercy nor The Lady of Shalott nor Golden Wings is a close imitation of medieval art; but they all have that strange homeless quality which is found in some of the finest (not the most ambitious) medieval poems.
The verse of a poet shows his poetical ancestry better than anything else. Everywhere in the older poets one comes on the elements of Tennyson's verse. He knew all the different modes, from the least regular to the most exact. Coleridge's complaint (as recorded in his Table Talk, April 24, 1833) that Mr Tennyson 'has begun to write verses without very well understanding what metre is' is partly explained by the many poems in irregular verse in the early volumes. But these volumes show also—and show in perfection—Tennyson's command of the familiar forms and his skill in using them. In the verse of Mariana there is no technical in-
