In general, Tennyson's art is
unclassical. It is rich, ornate, composite; not statuesque so much as
picturesque. He is a great painter, and the critics complain that in
passages calling for movement and action--a battle, a tournament, or the
like--his figures stand still as in a tableau; and they contrast such
passages unfavorably with scenes of the same kind in Scott, and with
Browning's spirited ballad, _How we brought the Good News from Ghent to
Aix_. In the _Palace of Art_ these elaborate pictorial effects were
combined with allegory; in the _Lotus Eaters_, with that expressive
treatment of landscape noted in _Mariana_; the lotus land, "in which it
seemed always afternoon," reflecting and promoting the enchanted
indolence of the heroes. Two of the pieces in this 1833 volume, the _May
Queen_ and the _Miller's Daughter_, were Tennyson's first poems of the
affections, and as ballads of simple rustic life they anticipated his
more perfect idyls in blank verse, such as _Dora_, the _Brook, Edwin
Morris_, and the _Gardener's Daughter._ The songs in the _Miller's
Daughter_ had a more spontaneous lyrical movement than any thing he had
yet published, and foretokened the lovely songs which interlude the
divisions of the _Princess_, the famous _Bugle Song_, the no-less famous
_Cradle Song_, and the rest.
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