warriors. If we agree with a not unpopular opinion, the poet ought
to be a kind of "Titanic" force, wrecking himself on his own passions
and on the nature of things, as did Byron, Burns, Marlowe, and
Musset. But Tennyson's career followed lines really more normal, the
lines of the life of Wordsworth, wisdom and self-control directing
the course of a long, sane, sound, and fortunate existence. The
great physical strength which is commonly the basis of great mental
vigour was not ruined in Tennyson by poverty and passion, as in the
case of Burns, nor in forced literary labour, as in those of Scott
and Dickens. For long he was poor, like Wordsworth and Southey, but
never destitute. He made his early effort: he had his time of great
sorrow, and trial, and apparent failure. With practical wisdom he
conquered circumstances; he became eminent; he outlived reaction
against his genius; he died in the fulness of a happy age and of
renown. This full-orbed life, with not a few years of sorrow and
stress, is what Nature seems to intend for the career of a divine
minstrel. If Tennyson missed the "one crowded hour of glorious
life," he had not to be content in "an age without a name."

It was not Tennyson's lot to illustrate any modern theory of the
origin of genius. Born in 1809 of a Lincolnshire family, long
connected with the soil but inconspicuous in history, Tennyson had
nothing Celtic in his blood, as far as pedigrees prove. This is
unfortunate for one school of theorists. His mother (genius is
presumed to be derived from mothers) had a genius merely for moral
excellence and for religion. She is described in the poem of Isabel,
and was "a remarkable and saintly woman." In the male line, the
family was not (as the families of genius ought to be) brief of life
and unhealthy. "The Tennysons never die," said the sister who was
betrothed to Arthur Hallam. The father, a clergyman, was, says his