urns's melody is laughter: it babbles, it sighs for a
moment, but will sing. But Tennyson's is not laughter. He is no
joyous poet. Burns has tears which wet his lashes, scarcely his
cheeks. Tennyson's cheeks are wet. He is the music of winds in
pine-trees in a lonely land, or as a sea breaking upon a shore of rock
and wreck; but how passing sweet the music is, stealing your ruggedness
away, so that to be harsh in thought or diction in his presence seems a
crime!

Lyric differs from epic poetry in sustainedness. One form of poetry
runs into another imperceptibly, as darkness into daylight or daylight
into darkness, so that the dividing line can not be certified. Lyric
poetry may be dramatic in spirit, as Browning's "The Ring and the
Book;" or dramatic poetry may be lyric in spirit, as Milton's "Comus."
Tennyson has written drama and epic too; for such, I think, clearly he
proposed the "Idyls of the King" to be. This we must say: Despite the
genial leniency of Robert Browning's criticism of the dramatic success
of "Harold," and "Becket," and "The Cup," we may safely refuse
concurrence in judgment. Trying made the failure of the play
impossible when he was character in them. There is no necessity of
denying that the so-called trilogy has apt delineation of character,
and that Green, the historian, was justified in saying that "Becket"
had given him such a conception of the character of that courtier and
ecclesiastic as all his historical research had not given; nor need we
deny that these dramas are rich in noble passages. These things go
without the saying, considering the author was Alfred Tennyson. In
attempting a criticism of the dramatic value, however, the real
question is this: Would not "Harold" and "Queen Mary" have been greater
poems if thrown out of the dramatic into the narrative form, like
"Guinevere" or "Enoch Arden?" "Maud" is really the most dramatic of
Tennyson's poems, and in consequence the least understood. Most men at
some time espouse what they can not successfully achieve. Was not this
Tennyson's case? Are not the portrayal of character and the rhythm and
the melody of the drama qualities inherent in Tennyson, and are they in
any distinct sense dramatic? If we declare Tennyson neither epic nor
dramatic, but always lyric, adverse criticism melts away like snow in
summer. As lyrist, all is congruous and enthralling. "The Idyls of
the King," as a series of lyric romances, is beyond bl