dutiful study of her moods and methods. He placed himself as a reverent
learner at her feet before he presumed to go forth to the world as an
exponent of her teaching. It is this exactness of observation which
makes his touches of local colouring so vivid and so true. This gives
its winning charm to his landscape-painting, whether the scene is laid
in Kensington Gardens, or the Alps, or the valley of the Thames. This
fills _The Scholar-Gipsy_, and _Thyrsis_, and _Obermann_, and _The
Forsaken Merman_ with flawless gems of natural description, and
felicities of phrase which haunt the grateful memory.

In brief, it seems to me that he was not a great poet, for he lacked the
gifts which sway the multitude, and compel the attention of mankind. But
he was a true poet, rich in those qualities which make the loved and
trusted teacher of a chosen few--as he himself would have said, of "the
Remnant." Often in point of beauty and effectiveness, always in his
purity and elevation, he is worthy to be associated with the noblest
names of all. Alone among his contemporaries, we can venture to say of
him that he was not only of the school, but of the lineage, of
Wordsworth. His own judgment on his place among the modern poets was
thus given in a letter of 1869: "My poems represent, on the whole, the
main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century, and thus they
will probably have their day as people become conscious to themselves of
what that movement of mind is, and interested in the literary
productions which reflect it. It might be fairly urged that I have less
poetic sentiment than Tennyson, and less intellectual vigour and
abundance than Browning. Yet because I have more perhaps of a fusion of
the two than either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion
to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my
turn, as they have had theirs."