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king. In striving to make Arthur as splendid as his office, he has striven in vain, for he has simply produced a nonentity, a mere phantom king. The actions of Hector and Achilles cannot be reproduced in English thought without appearing ridiculous and fantastical.
Mr Tennyson is greatly inferior to Dryden, Pope, and Wordsworth. He has not the subtle-mindedness or masculine breadth of Dryden; the vigour, point, and propriety of Pope; or the pure and elevated idealism of Wordsworth. Simplicity is the main feature of the Poet Laureate's style. But simplicity cannot give elevation to passion, refinement to thought, or just expression to lofty conceptions. Moreover, simplicity has an awkward tendency always to degenerate into vulgarity and commonplace. It has taken this turn in the hands of Mr Tennyson, who has no vigour to give point to his language. The following passage, selected at random from Gareth and Lynette, will afford our readers an opportunity of becoming acquainted with vigorous writing:—
Huge on a huge red horse, and all in mail
Burnish'd to blinding, shone the Noonday Sun
Beyond a raging shallow. As if the flower,
That blows a globe of after arrowlets,
Ten thousand-fold had grown, flash'd the fierce shield,
All sun; and Gareth's eyes had flying blots
Before them when he turn'd from watching him,
He from beyond the roaring shallow roar'd,
'What doest thou, brother, in my marches here?'
And she athwart the shallow shrill'd again,
'Here is a kitchen knave from Arthur's hall
Hath overthrown thy brother, and hath his arms.'
'Ugh!' cried the Sun, and vizoring up a red
And cipher face of rounded foolishness,
Push'd horse across the foamings of the ford,
Whom Gareth met midstream; no room was there
For lance or tourney-skill; four strokes they struck
