if obsolete, beliefs. Perhaps a general amnesty ought to be passed,
as far as poets are concerned, and their politics and creeds should
be left to silence, where "beyond these voices there is peace."

One remark, I hope, can excite no prejudice. The greatest of the
Gordons was a soldier, and lived in religion. But the point at which
Tennyson's memory is blended with that of Gordon is the point of
sympathy with the neglected poor. It is to his wise advice, and to
affection for Gordon, that we owe the Gordon training school for poor
boys,--a good school, and good boys come out of that academy.

The question as to Tennyson's precise rank in the glorious roll of
the Poets of England can never be determined by us, if in any case or
at any time such determinations can be made. We do not, or should
not, ask whether Virgil or Lucretius, whether AEschylus or Sophocles,
is the greater poet. The consent of mankind seems to place Homer and
Shakespeare and Dante high above all. For the rest no prize-list can
be settled. If influence among aliens is the test, Byron probably
takes, among our poets, the next rank after Shakespeare. But
probably there is no possible test. In certain respects Shelley, in
many respects Milton, in some Coleridge, in some Burns, in the
opinion of a number of persons Browning, are greater poets than
Tennyson. But for exquisite variety and varied exquisiteness
Tennyson is not readily to be surpassed. At one moment he pleases
the uncritical mass of readers, in another mood he wins the verdict
of the raffine. It is a success which scarce any English poet but
Shakespeare has excelled. His faults have rarely, if ever, been
those of flat-footed, "thick-ankled" dulness; of rhetoric, of common-
place; rather have his defects been the excess of his qualities. A
kind of John Bullishness may also be noted, especially in derogatory