f
there is to be any further collection of his casual productions. I
shall quote two passages which seem obvious enough now, but which
required true insight, as well as courageous generosity, to write them
in 1835--

"Of all the capacities of a poet, that which seems to have
arisen earliest in Mr. Tennyson, and in which he most
excels, is that of scene-painting in the higher sense of the
term; not the mere power of producing that rather vapid
species of composition usually termed descriptive
poetry,--for there is not in these volumes one passage of
pure description,--but the power of creating scenery in
keeping with some state of human feeling, so fitted to it as
to be the embodied symbol of it, and to summon up the state
of feeling itself with a force not to be surpassed by any
thing but reality."

* * * * *

"The poems which we have quoted from Mr. Tennyson prove
incontestably that he possesses in an eminent degree the
natural endowment of a poet,--the poetic temperament. And it
appears clearly, not only from a comparison of the two
volumes, but of different poems in the same volume, that
with him the other element of poetic excellence,
intellectual culture, is advancing both steadily and
rapidly; that he is not destined, like so many others, to be
remembered for what he might have done rather than for what
he did; that he will not remain a poet of mere temperament,
but is ripening into a true artist.... We predict, that, as
Mr. Tennyson advances in general spiritual culture, these
higher aims will become more and more predominant in his
writings; that he will strive more and more diligently, and,
even without striving, will be more and more impelled by the
natural tendencies of an expanding character, towards what
has been described as the highest object of poetry,--'to
incorporate the everlasting reason of man in forms visible
to his sense, and suitable to it.'"

This last sentence might easily be construed into a prediction of "In
Memoriam" and "The Idyls of the King."

If it is asked why Mr. Mill, with all his width of knowledge and
sympathy, has achieved so little of a reputation as a miscellaneous
writer, part of the reason no doubt is, that he sternly repressed his
desultory tendencies, and devoted his powers to special