in number, and even the range of his types is disappointingly
narrow."--_Pelham Edgar_.

"No reader of Tennyson can miss the note of patriotism which he
perpetually sounds. He has a deep and genuine love of country, a pride
in the achievements of the past, a confidence in the greatness of the
future. And this sense of patriotism almost reaches insularity of view.
He looks out upon the larger world with a gentle commiseration, and
surveys its un-English habits and constitution with sympathetic contempt.
The patriotism of Tennyson is sober rather than glowing; it is meditative
rather than enthusiastic. Occasionally indeed, his words catch fire, and
the verse leaps onward with a sound of triumph, as in such a poem as _The
Charge of the Light Brigade_ or in such a glorious ballad as _The
Revenge_. Neither of these poems is likely to perish until the glory of
the nation perishes, and her deeds of a splendid chivalrous past sink
into oblivion, which only shameful cowardice can bring upon her. But as
a rule Tennyson's patriotism is not a contagious and inspiring
patriotism. It is meditative, philosophic, self-complacent. It rejoices
in the infallibility of the English judgment, the eternal security of
English institutions, the perfection of English forms of
government."--_W. J. Dawson_.

"Tennyson always speaks from the side of virtue; and not of that new and
strange virtue which some of our later poets have exalted, and which,
when it is stripped of its fine garments, turns out to be nothing else
than the unrestrained indulgence of every natural impulse; but rather of
that old fashioned virtue whose laws are 'self-reverence, self-knowledge,
self-control,' and which finds its highest embodiment in the morality of
the _New Testament_. There is a spiritual courage in his work, a force
of fate which conquers doubt and darkness, a light of inward hope which