File:Review of reviews and world's work (1890) (14760879721).jpg

Identifier: reviewofreviewsw06newy (find matches)
Title: Review of reviews and world's work
Year: 1890 (1890s)
Authors:
Subjects:
Publisher: New York Review of Reviews Corp
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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ectness of Burns and theimaginative impetus of Byron; he had not thebeautiful and elemental simplicity of Wordsworth athis best, and he did not strike home to the very heartof faith like Browning. When we come to his art,however, there is no longer any question ; here he issupreme. His art is vital and organic; it is the livingform of his thought. The completeness of his masteryof all the elements of poetic structure and of all theresources of language becomes evident only after theclosest study. It is not surprising that he sometimessmoked eleven pipes over one line ! Rhythm, metre,rhyme, accent, melody, harmony—with what uner-ring skill these elements of musical speech are com-bined by this patient and tireless hand. Nothing isinsignificant to an artistic instinct at once so profoundand so thoroughly trained. Vowels and consonantsare as carefully marshaled and set in sequence as ifthey were parts of the thought, and in an art so realand vital as Tennysons they are of the very sub-
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LORD TENNYSON AND HIS NURSE. A WALK ON FRESHWATER DOWNS, ISLE OF WIGHT 556 THE REK/EIV OF REVIEWS. stance of the creative work. Such art is the finalrefutation of the superficial idea that art is crafts-manship and nothing more, and from such an artthere flows a contagious influence of the most perva-sive sort. Tennyson has continued the tradition ofKeats, but he has immensely deepened and broadenedit; he has, in fact, made it his own tradition. Onemust go a long way back in English literary history tofind another poet whose art has appealed so irresist-ibly to his contemporaries and impressed itself sowidely on verse writing. This analysis of the sources of Tennysons influ-ence is, in effect, a statement of the character andextent of that influence in this country, for Americansare more generally sensitive to popular influencesof a literary kind than their kinsmen beyond seas.If they do not number so many persons trained toappreciate the very highest qualities of literarv art,they in

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