commonplace.


"That good man, the clergyman, has told me words of peace,"


strikes a note rather resembling the Tennysonian parody of Wordsworth
-


"A Mr Wilkinson, a clergyman."


The Lotos-Eaters, of course, is at the opposite pole of the poet's
genius. A few plain verses of the Odyssey, almost bald in their
reticence, are the point de repere of the most magical vision
expressed in the most musical verse. Here is the languid charm of
Spenser, enriched with many classical memories, and pictures of
natural beauty gorgeously yet delicately painted. After the excision
of some verses, rather fantastical, in 1842, the poem became a
flawless masterpiece,--one of the eternal possessions of song.

On the other hand, the opening of The Dream of Fair Women was marred
in 1833 by the grotesque introductory verses about "a man that sails
in a balloon." Young as Tennyson was, these freakish passages are a
psychological marvel in the work of one who did not lack the saving
sense of humour. The poet, wafted on the wing and "pinion that the
Theban eagle bear," cannot conceivably be likened to an aeronaut
waving flags out of a balloon--except in a spirit of self-mockery
which was not Tennyson's. His remarkable self-discipline in excising