never read it in course; I am not
sure that I have even yet read every part of it. I did not come to the
"Princess," either, until I had saturated my fancy and my memory with
some of the shorter poems, with the "Dream of Fair Women," with the
"Lotus-Eaters," with the "Miller's Daughter," with the "Morte d'Arthur,"
with "Edwin Morris, or The Lake," with "Love and Duty," and a score of
other minor and briefer poems. I read the book night and day, in-doors
and out, to myself and to whomever I could make listen. I have no words
to tell the rapture it was to me; but I hope that in some more articulate
being, if it should ever be my unmerited fortune to meet that 'sommo
poeta' face to face, it shall somehow be uttered from me to him, and he
will understand how completely he became the life of the boy I was then.
I think it might please, or at least amuse, that lofty ghost, and that he
would not resent it, as he would probably have done on earth. I can well
understand why the homage of his worshippers should have afflicted him
here, and I could never have been one to burn incense in his earthly
presence; but perhaps it might be done hereafter without offence.
I eagerly caught up and treasured every personal word I could find about
him, and I dwelt in that sort of charmed intimacy with him through his
verse, in which I could not presume nor he repel, and which I had enjoyed
in turn with Cervantes and Shakespeare, without a snub from them.

I have never ceased to adore Tennyson, though the rapture of the new
convert could not last. That must pass like the flush of any other
passion. I think I have now a better sense of his comparative greatness,
but a better sense of his positive greatness I could not have than I had
at the beginning; and I believe this is the essential knowledge of a
poet. It is very well to say one is greater than Keats, or not so great
as Wordsworth; that one is or is not of the highest order of poets like
Shakespeare and Dante and Goethe; but that does not mean anything of
value, and I never find my account in it. I know it is not possible for
any less than the greatest writer to abide lastingly in one's life. Some
dazzling comer may enter and possess it for a day, but he soon wears his
welcome out, and presently finds the door, to be answered with a not-at-
home if he knocks again. But it was only this morning that I read one of
the new last poems of Tennyson with a return of the emotion which he
first woke