His thought takes form in admirably selected periods, which exactly reproduce, without periphrasis or explanation, the thought or impulse that stirs him; and often an exquisite image or subtly chosen adjective comes to his aid, than which nothing fitter can be imagined. How lovely are the fast-fixed things of childish memory, that outlast the shocks of time and all the troubled days of middle life!

"Those priceless flowers, which in the rudest wind

Never grow sere, when rooted in the garden of the mind."

How noble and dignified are the deliverances of memory to one who recalls, not only in his own life, but in the life of the world, the scenes and events of the past, until like strains of weird melody come back to us the voices of the dead, the legend of the ages,

"And thou listenest the lordly music Flowing from the illimitable years!"

III. WORD-PAINTING.-The third indispensable quality is word-painting, or the power of producing to the mind's eye a whole picture, with a few touches. The goddesses in the vale of Ida

"And at their feet the crocus brake like fire."

No colour art could raise a more dazzling glimpse. Or here, in a river winding to its source amongst the distant hills, we have a study in words, which reminds us of a David Cox, or a Copley Fielding, as the poet stands

"To watch the long bright river, drawing slowly

His waters from the purple hills.”

Or here is a vignette of bells :

"As one who from a casement leans his head

When midnight bells cease ringing suddenly,
And the old year is dead!"

Or here is a study in white and sepia, or grey

and silver :

"A still salt pool, locked in with bars of sand,
Upon the shore, that hears all night

The plunging seas draw backward from the land
Their moon-lit waters white."

IV. No true poet is without a fourth, and allied quality, which Richard Hutton has called the physical atmosphere of words. It is the semi-musical use of words, exciting an emotion, almost independently of their sense or logical construction—a something which gives a feeling of the place through the sound; as when Sir Bedivere, loth to hurl the good sword Excalibur into the mere,

returns to the dying King Arthur, and makes

answer,

"I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,

And the wild water lapping on the crag,"

we are at once on the brink of the broad lake in

the moonlight. Or in that ambrosial

"O, art thou sighing for Lebanon,

passage,

Dark cedar, in the long breeze which streams
From thy delicious East?"

Sighing for Lebanon!" the very feeling of Eden comes upon us. Or who cannot feel the sea coast and the sea at night in olden time in

66 Only the rounded moon

Through the tall oriel on the rolling sea"?

Or some long avenue of odorous limes, like the Trinity Avenue at the Cambridge "backs" in spring, in

"The moan of doves in immemorial elms,

And murmuring of innumerable bees."

This power of swaying words to the rhythm of poetic sensibility is one of Tennyson's finest enchantments. Thus, sensibility active and passive, expression, word-painting, and the physical atmosphere of words, combined with artistic finish,

are the primal qualities indispensable to all poets; and Tennyson has them in the highest degree.

V. TENNYSON'S CHARACTERISTICS. - But others have had the word-power, the sensibility, the artistic finish. I pass to notice that exceptional combination which constitutes Tennyson's special strength. If I were asked what are Tennyson's chief characteristics, I should reply, Ist. His depth and sobriety of thought. 2nd. His wide sympathies.

3rd. His moral and religious instincts.

First characteristic-Depth and Sobriety of Thought. We have had brilliant poets unable to think, and powerful thinkers unable to express their thoughts and feelings poetically; we have had passionate thinkers fully endowed with expression, but wanting in judgment, proportion, and sobriety. Tennyson is distinguished by depth of thought and sobriety of judgment. How dignified is his address to Queen Victoria, on receiving from her the Laureate's crown! What a contrast to the sort of poor adulation, often lavished upon the reigning sovereign! how full of just perception, how delicately true!

"Her court was pure, her life serene;
God gave her peace, her land reposed.
A thousand claims to reverence closed,
In her as Mother, Wife, and Queen.

And statesmen at her council met,

Who knew the seasons when to take
Occasion by the hand, and make
The bounds of freedom wider yet,

By shaping some august decree,

Which kept her throne unshaken still,
Broad-based upon her people's will,
And compassed by th' inviolate sea."

Or when, at a very critical time in our country's history, he touches on freedom-instead of flaming out into anything like revolution, he uses language which, after the lapse of years, although written at a moment of great public excitement, can still be read with approval-he seizes the heart of political freedom, which is universally sound, and treats it apart from its accidental surroundings. The prophet or poet sees in everything the untransitory element, the residuum of human and universal interest, therefore he writes what is true for the ages," speaks to time and eternity."

"You ask me why, though ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,