Daintree looked on with a jealous scorn. That a few stray verses in the “Annual Register” should put fire and water in eyes which the combined Hours of Exile and of Idleness sometimes left in such a very different state! It was a galling thought, and it showed itself in such black looks that Tom was constrained to cut his first heartfelt outburst very short indeed. So he hastily added that the poem appealed to him particularly—he need not explain why.
“I see,” said Daintree. “Not altogether on its merits, eh? I’m glad to hear it;” and his face lightened a little.
“I don’t know,” said Tom humbly; “it was on its merits, I think. Surely it must appeal to every miserable man. Oh, it’s all, all there—in such words! Come, sir, don’t you think it fine yourself?”
“Fine,” said Daintree, “is a word which the critic does not employ unadvisedly. Your fine poem is not spasmodic: it takes a metre and sticks to it—as I do, for example, and as Byron did. You don’t catch me—or Byron—writing poems with no two stanzas alike in form! No, Thomas, the verdict is not ‘fine’; but that the lines have a certain merit I don’t deny.”
“Who wrote them?” asked Tom after a pause.
“His name is Tennyson,” replied the poet. “You have never heard it before, I daresay, and I shouldn’t be surprised if you were never to hear it again. There were fair things in his last book, but, upon the whole, I am afraid the production you so admire may be taken as representing his high-water mark—which is a sufficient commentary upon the rest. I understand, however, that he is a very young man, so we must give him a chance. When he is my age he may do very much
