His moral line is local and
conventional, but it is vital and genuine. He reflects the uppercrust
of his time, its pale cast of thought--even its _ennui_. Then the
simile of my friend John Burroughs is entirely true, "his glove is a
glove of silk, but the hand is a hand of iron." He shows how one can
be a royal laureate, quite elegant and "aristocratic," and a little
queer and affected, and at the same time perfectly manly and natural.
As to his non-democracy, it fits him well, and I like him the better
for it. I guess we all like to have (I am sure I do) some one who
presents those sides of a thought, or possibility, different from our
own--different and yet with a sort of home-likeness--a tartness and
contradiction offsetting the theory as we view it, and construed from
tastes and proclivities not at all his own.
To me, Tennyson shows more than any poet I know (perhaps has been a
warning to me) how much there is in finest verbalism. There is such
a latent charm in mere words, cunning collocutions, and in the
voice ringing them, which he has caught and brought out, beyond all
others--as in the line,
And hollow, hollow, hollow, all delight,
in "The Passing of Arthur," and evidenced in "The Lady of Shalott,"
"The Deserted House," and many other pieces. Among the best (I often
linger over them again and again) are "Lucretius," "The Lotos Eaters,"
and "The Northern Farmer." His mannerism is great, but it is a noble
and welcome mannerism. His very best work, to me, is contain'd in the
books of "The Idylls of the King," and all that has grown out of them.
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