Tennyson frequently exhibits a rare sense of the beautiful, “a spirit awake to fine issues,” and, in his own language,
does love Beauty only
In all varieties of mould and mind,
And Knowledge for its beauty, or if Good,
Good only for its beauty.
Yet this sense is sometimes dead in him, and he exhibits as little taste as is possessed by ante-diluvian McHenry. A critic for whose judgment we have great respect, and who seems determined to believe Mr. Tennyson “the first original English poet since Keats, perhaps the only one of the present race of verse writers who carries with him the certain marks of being remembered hereafter with the classic authors of his language,” points to St. Simeon Stilites as the finest of his productions. It is not his worst, but if he had not written better we should desire none of his companionship. In the opening lines a devotee prays, in the very language of old cloister legends—
Altho’ I be the basest of mankind,
From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,
Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet
For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy,