The Cannings and Jeffreys of the
capital, the Court Journals and Literary Gazettes were not well
pleased, and voted the poet a bore. But that which rose in him so
high as to the lips, rose in many others as high as to the heart.
What he said, they were prepared to hear and confirm. The influence
was in the air, and was wafted up and down into lone and into
populous places, resisting the popular taste, modifying opinions
which it did not change, and soon came to be felt in poetry, in
criticism, in plans of life, and at last in legislation. In this
country, it very early found a strong hold, and its effect may be
traced on all the poetry both of England and America.
But notwithstanding all Wordsworth's grand merits, it was a
great pleasure to know that Alfred Tennyson's two volumes were coming
out in the same ship; it was a great pleasure to receive them. The
elegance, the wit, and subtlety of this writer, his rich fancy, his
power of language, his metrical skill, his independence on any living
masters, his peculiar topics, his taste for the costly and gorgeous,
discriminate the musky poet of gardens and conservatories of parks
and palaces.
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