The author of _Queen Mary_ seems disposed to show us that that work was
not an accident, but rather, as it may be said, an incident of his
literary career. The incident has just been repeated, though _Harold_
has come into the world more quietly than its predecessor.
It is singular how soon the public gets used to unfamiliar notions. By
the time the reader has finished _Harold_ he has almost contracted the
habit of thinking of Mr. Tennyson as a writer chiefly known to fame by
"dramas" without plots and dialogues without point. This impression it
behooves him, of course, to shake off if he wishes to judge the book
properly. He must compare the author of "Maud" and the earlier _Idyls_
with the great poets, and not with the small. _Harold_ would be a
respectable production for a writer who had spent his career in
producing the same sort of thing, but it is a somewhat graceless anomaly
in the record of a poet whose verse has, in a large degree, become part
of the civilisation of his day.
_Queen Mary_ was not, on the whole, pronounced a success, and _Harold_,
roughly speaking, is to _Queen Mary_ what that work is to the author's
earlier masterpieces. _Harold_ is not in the least bad: it contains
nothing ridiculous, unreasonable, or disagreeable; it is only decidedly
weak, decidedly colourless, and tame. The author's inspiration is like a
fire which is quietly and contentedly burning low. The analogy is
perfectly complete. The hearth is clean swept and the chimney-side is
garnished with its habitual furniture; but the room is getting colder
and colder, and the occasional little flickers emitted by the mild
embers are not sufficient to combat the testimony of the poetical
thermometer. There is nothing necessarily harsh in this judgment. Few
fires are always at a blaze, and the imagination, which is the most
delicate machine in the world, cannot be expected to serve longer than a
good gold repeater. We must take what it gives us, in every case, and be
thankful. Mr. Tennyson is perfectly welcome to amuse himself with
listening to the fainter tick of his honoured time-piece; it is going
still, unquestionably; it has not stopped. Only we may without rudeness
abstain from regulating our engagements by the indications of the
instrument.
_Harold_ seems at first to have little, in form, that is characteristic
of the author--little of the thoroughly familiar Tennysonian quality.
Nevertheless, there is every now and then a line which arrests the ear
by the rhythm and cadence which have always formed the chief mystery in
the art of imitating the Laureate.