Since 1860 Tennyson has added little of permanent value to
his work. His dramatic experiments, like _Queen Mary_, are not, on the
whole, successful, though it would be unjust to deny dramatic power to
the poet who has written, upon one hand, _Guinevere_ and the _Passing of
Arthur_, and upon the other the homely dialectic monologue of the
_Northern Farmer_.
When we tire of Tennyson's smooth perfection, of an art that is over
exquisite, and a beauty that is well-nigh too beautiful, and crave a
rougher touch, and a meaning that will not yield itself too readily, we
turn to the thorny pages of his great contemporary, Robert Browning
(1812-1889). Dr. Holmes says that Tennyson is white meat and Browning is
dark meat. A masculine taste, it is inferred, is shown in a preference
for the gamier flavor. Browning makes us think; his poems are puzzles,
and furnish business for "Browning Societies." There are no Tennyson
societies, because Tennyson is his own interpreter. Intellect in a poet
may display itself quite as properly in the construction of his poem as
in its content; we value a building for its architecture, and not
entirely for the amount of timber in it. Browning's thought never wears
so thin as Tennyson's sometimes does in his latest verse, where the
trick of his style goes on of itself with nothing behind it.
Pages:
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319