Whoever will compare the poems of 1832 with the same poems as they
appeared in 1842 will see that the difference is not so much a
difference in degree, but almost a difference in kind. In the collection
of 1832 there were three gems, 'The Sisters', the lines 'To J. S.' and
'The May Queen'. Almost all the others which are of any value were, in
the edition of 1842, carefully revised, and in some cases practically
rewritten. If Tennyson's career had closed in 1833 he would hardly have
won a prominent place among the minor poets of the present century. The
nine years which intervened between the publication of his second volume
and the volumes of 1842 were the making of him, and transformed a mere
dilettante into a master. Much has been said about the brutality of
Lockhart's review in the 'Quarterly'. In some respects it was stupid, in
some respects it was unjust, but of one thing there can be no doubt--it
had a most salutary effect. It held up the mirror to weaknesses and
deficiencies which, if Tennyson did not care to acknowledge to others,
he must certainly have acknowledged to himself. It roused him and put
him on his mettle. It was a wholesome antidote to the enervating
flattery of coteries and "apostles" who were certainly talking a great
deal of nonsense about him, as Arthur Hallam's essay in the 'Englishman'
shows. During the next nine years he published nothing, with the
exception of two unimportant contributions to certain minor
periodicals.[1] But he was educating himself, saturating himself with
all that is best in the poetry of Ancient Greece and Rome, of modern
Italy, of Germany and of his own country, studying theology,
metaphysics, natural history, geology, astronomy and travels, observing
nature with the eye of a poet, a painter and a naturalist. Nor was he a
recluse. He threw himself heartily into the life of his time, following
with the keenest interest all the great political and social movements,
the progress and effects of the Reform Bill, the troubles in Ireland,