h, but we could not
think at first that he could feel and realize the exquisite tenderness of
_Elaine_. It is a wonderful thing to have so wide a tenderness, and only
a great poet can possess it and use it well."--_Stopford A. Brooke_.

"Tennyson is a great master of pathos; knows the very tones that go to
the heart; can arrest every one of these looks of upbraiding or appeal by
which human woe brings the tear into the human eye. The pathos is deep;
but it is the majesty not the prostration of grief."--_Peter Bayne_.

"Indeed the truth must be strongly borne in upon even the warmest
admirers of Tennyson that his recluse manner of life closed to him many
avenues of communication with the men and women of his day, and that,
whether as a result or cause of his exclusiveness, he had but little of
that restless, intellectual curiosity which constantly whets itself upon
new experiences, finds significance where others see confusion, and
beneath the apparently commonplace in human character reaches some
harmonizing truth. _Rizpah_ and _The Grandmother_ show what a rich
harvest he would have reaped had he cared more frequently to walk the
thoroughfares of life. His finely wrought character studies are very few
in number, and even the range of his types is disappointingly
narrow."--_Pelham Edgar_.

"No reader of Tennyson can miss the note of patriotism which he
perpetually sounds. He has a deep and genuine love of country, a pride
in the achievements of the past, a confidence in the greatness of the
future. And this sense of patriotism almost reaches insularity of view.
He looks out upon the larger world with a gentle commiseration, and
surveys its un-English habits and constitution with sympathetic contempt.
The patriotism of Tennyson is sober rather than glowing; it is meditative
rather than enthusiastic. Occasionally indeed, his words catch fire, and
the verse leaps onward with a sound of triumph, as in such a poem as _The
Charge of the Light Brigade_ or in such a glorious ballad as _The
Revenge_. Neither of these poems is likely to perish until the glory of
the nation perishes, and her deeds of a splendid chivalrous past sink
into oblivion, which only shameful cowardice can bring upon her. But as
a rule Tennyson's patriotism is not a contagious and inspiring
patriotism. It is meditative, philosophic, self-complacent. It rejoices
in the infallibility of the English judgment, the eternal security of
English instit