has deservedly had so great an
influence over the minds of the young, we shall, we are afraid, have
offended some who are accustomed to consider that poem as Werterian
and unhealthy. But, in reality, the spirit of the poem is simply
anti-Werterian. It is man rising out of sickness into health--not
conquered by Werterism, but conquering his selfish sorrow, and the
moral and intellectual paralysis which it produces, by faith and
hope--faith in the progress of science and civilisation, hope in the
final triumph of good. Doubtless, that is not the highest
deliverance--not a permanent deliverance at all. Faith in God and
hope in Christ alone can deliver a man once and for all from
Werterism, or any other moral disease; that truth was reserved for
"In Memoriam:" but as far as "Locksley Hall" goes, it is a step
forward--a whole moral aeon beyond Byron and Shelley; and a step,
too, in the right direction, just because it is a step forward--
because the path of deliverance is, as "Locksley Hall" sets forth,
not backwards towards a fancied paradise of childhood--not backward
to grope after an unconsciousness which is now impossible, an
implicit faith which would be unworthy of the man, but forward on the
road on which God has been leading him, carrying upward with him the
aspirations of childhood, and the bitter experience of youth, to help
the organised and trustful labour of manhood. There are, in fact,
only two deliverances from Werterism possible in the nineteenth
century; one is into Popery, and the other is--

Forward, forward, let us range;
Let the peoples spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change;
Through the shadow of the world we sweep into the younger day:
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

But such a combination of powers as Mr. Tennyson's naturally develop
themselves into a high idyllic faculty; for it is the very essence of
the idyl to set forth the poetry which lies in the simpler
manifestations of Man and Nature; yet not explicitly, by a reflective
moralising on them, as almost all our idyllists--Cowper, Gray,
Crabbe, and Wordsworth--have been in the habit of doing, but
implicitly, by investing them all with a rich and delightful tone of
colouring, perfect grace of manner, perfect melody of rhythm, which,
like a gorgeous summer atmosphere, shall glorify without altering the
most trivial and homely sights. And it is this very power, as
exhibited in the "Lord of Burleigh,"