grandeur was sullied, his muse was venal, and his life was vicious; still
in his keeping the office acquired a certain dignity; after his death it
declined into the depths of depredation, and each succeeding dullard
dimmed its failing lustre. The first ray of hope for its revival sprang
into life with the appointment of Southey, to whom succeeded Wordsworth,
a poet of worth and genius, whose name certainly assisted in
resuscitating the ancient dignity of the appointment. Alfred Tennyson
derives less honor from the title than he confers upon it; to him we owe
a debt of gratitude that he has redeemed the laurels with his poetry,
noble, pure, and undefiled as ever poet sung."--_Walter Hamilton_.

"Tennyson is many sided; he has a great variety of subjects. He has
treated of the classical and the romantic life of the world; he has been
keenly alive to the beauties of nature; and he has tried to sympathize
with the social problems that confront mankind. In this respect he is a
representative poet of the age, for this very diversity of natural gifts
has made him popular with all classes. Perhaps he has not been perfectly
cosmopolitan, and sometimes the theme in his poetry has received a slight
treatment compared to what might have been given it by deeper thinking
and more philosophical poets, but he has caught the spirit of the age and
has expressed its thought, if not always forcibly, at least more
beautifully than any other poet,"--_Charles Read Nutter_.

"In technical elegance, as an artist in verse, Tennyson is the greatest
of modern poets. Other masters, old and new, have surpassed him in
special instances; but he is the only one who rarely nods, and who always
finishes his verse to the extreme. Here is the absolute sway of metre,
compelling every rhyme and measure needful to the thought; here are
sinuous alliterations, unique and varying breaks and pauses, winged
flights and falls, the glory of sound and color everywhere present, or,