be proven.' Noble as this is, one feels that it is less excellent than the mythological poems, where the thought is inextricable from the bodily form, as in Tithonus:—
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
Release me, and restore me to the ground;
Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave:
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;
I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.
It is contended by some of the critics, and among them by some of the greatest admirers of Tennyson's poetry, that he indulges his genius too much in curiosities of detail, in decorations that break the structure. Besides the turns of his verse, there are devices of fancy, it is said, which are too minute and exquisite for great poetry. The illustrations are too much for the main fabric. Certainly Tennyson makes a liberal use of the Homeric simile; and the Homeric
