that a regiment in
the English army which had a genius for fighting was drawn from its
Highlands. He condescends to write a poem at Edinburgh, but then
Edinburgh was of English origin and name. Even with that help he cannot
be patient of the place. The poem is a recollection of an Italian
journey, and he forgets in memories of the South--though surely
Edinburgh might have awakened some romantic associations--

the clouded Forth,
The gloom which saddens Heaven and Earth,
The bitter East, the misty summer
And gray metropolis of the North.

Edinburgh is English in origin, but Tennyson did not feel England beyond
the Border. There the Celt intruded, and he looked askance upon the
Celt. The Celtic spirit smiled, and took its vengeance on him in its own
way. It imposed on him, as his chief subject, a Celtic tale and a Celtic
hero; and though he did his best to de-celticise the story, the
vengeance lasts, for the more he did this the more he injured his work.
However, being always a noble artist, he made a good fight for his
insularity, and the expression of it harmonised with the pride of
England in herself, alike with that which is just and noble in it, and
with that which is neither the one nor the other.

Then, too, his scenery (with some exceptions, and those invented) was of
his own land, and chiefly of the places where he lived. It was quite
excellent, but it was limited. But, within the limit of England, it was
steeped in the love of England; and so sweet and full is this love, and
so lovely are its results in song, that every Englishman has, for this
reason if for no other, a deep and just affection for Tennyson.
Nevertheless, in that point also his poetry was insular. A fault in the
poet, not in the poetry. Perhaps, from this passionate concentration,
the poetry was all the lovelier.

Again, when Tennyson took a great gest of war as his subject, he took it
exclusively from the history of his own land. No one would know from his
writings that high deeds of sacrifice in battle had been done by other
nations. He knew of them, but he did not care to write about them. Nor
can we trace in his work any care for national struggles or national
life beyond this island--except in a few sonnets and short pieces
concerning Poland and Montenegro--an isolation of interests which cannot
be imputed to any other great poet of the first part of the nineteenth
century, excepting Keats, who had no Brit