for their theme, suggest with prophetic voice the lessons which depend upon the present for the benefit of the unborn future. With rare instances has he touched upon the crying needs of the day—upon the problems which our growing civilization all over the world is ever presenting. Calm, pensive, retrospective, he is most at his ease when drawing for the fountains of his inspiration from the mellow fancies of the old classical mythology or Arthurian legends.

It may be objected that such poems as "Locksley Hall" and "Lady Clara Vere de Vere" are contradictions to this theory; but it must be remembered that these, after all, are but random wanderings from the main path which the Laureate first marked out for himself, and has, in the main, persistently trodden since.

In his earlier poems, we find him revelling in the old Homeric traditions, around which he has thrown the magic of a charm peculiarly his own. In these poems we hear, in that exquisite fragment, "Morte d'Arthur," the first tentative notes of the song which was later on to burst into the wondrous and sustained melody of his masterpiece, the "Idylls of the King." And on this poem, above all others, we think Tennyson's reputation must rest with later generations. Almost Homeric in its breadth and simplicity, it combines the homely pathos, the picturesque variety, and the teeming allegory of our elder minstrels, with the polished grace which springs from a complete command of the highest resources of modern

art.

The exquisite blank verse-of which, perhaps, no greater master than Tennyson can be named-flows on with an utter disguise of all elaboration and effort. Art has concealed the traces of art. There is no perceptible straining after effect, no struggling to elaborate startling points. The narrative is told with exquisite grace and beauty; and some of the charming lyrics which form the interludes have a delicious cadence which haunts the memory like a melody of Mendelssohn's.

In the "Idylls of the King," we see Tennyson's characteristic merits at their highest. In it he has taken a field for himself, in which all imitators-and they have been many, no less a poet than Lord Lytton among the number - have signally failed; and here at least, in his capacity of throwing a radiance of new life and beauty about the mouldering legends of antiquity, the Lau

reate has proved himself unrivalled by living bards.

To compare him with, or to gauge him by, the standard of any of his famous predecessors, as has been sometimes done, would be idle. Like all great artists, he has learnt and adapted from the finest models before him. Beyond this, he is a poet per se, and this is his greatest praise.

Mr. Tennyson was born in 1810, at the parsonage of Somerby, a quiet hamlet in the neighbourhood of Spilsby, in Lincolnshire. Somerby and Enderby form a rectory once held by the poet's father, the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, D.D., the eldest brother of Mr. Tennyson D'Eyncourt, who was for some years member of Parliament for one of the metropolitan boroughs. As a boy, the future Poet Laureate was sent to the grammar school of Louth, and afterwards proceeded to Trinity College, CambridgeThackeray being at the University at the same time. In 1829 he gained the Chancellor's medal for the best English poem, the subject for the year being "Timbuctoo."

After leaving Cambridge, he spent much of his time in travelling about from place to place, from London to Hastings, Hastings to Cheltenham, to Eastbourne, to Twickenham-everywhere, in fact, where he might find food for that love of the beautiful in nature so characteristic of his poems. His first productions, as we have already said, attracted little public notice; but when people became awake to the nervous passion of "Locksley Hall," the indignant satire of "Lady Clara Vere de Vere," the tender beauty of "The May Queen," and the sensuous elegance of such poems as "A Dream of Fair Women," "The Sleeping Beauty," and "The Palace of Art," his claim as a poet of a high order was universally admitted.

How emphatically he has strengthened and enlarged his reputation by those later and more ambitious works with which we are all familiar needs no remark.

On the death of Wordsworth, Mr. Tennyson was, it is generally understood at the express desire of the Queen, in 1851, appointed Poet Laureate; and he received at the same time, from Sir Robert Peel, the grant of a pension of £200 per annum.

From this time, he began to produce those works with which his fame is more eminently associated. For twenty years he has been Laureate; and during that period we have

theatre at all, and reluctantly vote the drama an impossibility altogether.

Such a final catastrophe is, however, hardly likely to occur. Let the dramatic profession, then, be open to all alike. Let there be no longer any hard and fast line drawn between audiences and actors. Let it be freely acknowledged that, in these days of constant competition, and when no honest means of acquiring wealth and well-defined position can be ignored, the profession of the actor ought to be regarded with all the respect that is due to energy and talent. Let us hear no more of those cruel aspersions upon character which are so unjustly scattered by ignorant and thoughtless people upon the members of a profession who have quite enough burdens to bear-for the actor's life is by no means passed in luxury and And let us learn to repudiate with indignation the notion that a gentleman who goes upon the stage necessarily loses caste. That there are moral dangers in breathing the air behind the curtain, no one will deny. But what profession is free from its temptations? And we may, at least, fairly say that the morality of the actor's life is not below that of the audience who come to witness his performance. Let it be conceded, then, that the higher grade of the actor's profession confers a corresponding position among the social ranks. Let it be practically shown that a man of taste and cultivation, so far from doing himself any injury by adopting the stage as his profession, deserves our warmest gratitude, for he unquestionably confers a benefit upon the public; let existing notions and customs be modified in accordance with modern liberal thought; and you will soon get a more generally cultivated class of actors—you will encourage literary genius to turn its attention to the theatre, and you will purify the stage. But to this the objection will immediately be started: You can never hope to permanently raise the drama till you have got rid of the present systems of the managers that is to say, cultivation and taste are as requisite in the manager as in the author and the actor. This is most true; and it is, perhaps, the hardest practical difficulty of all. What we want is a theatre where art is the first consideration. How is it, one asks in astonishment, in these days, when art is so much talked about, when public money is lavished upon the advancement of architecture and painting; when schools of art are

zealously instituted, and halls of arts and sciences built; when the adornment of our large towns is verging upon magnificence, if occasionally barbaric in its splendour; when the principles of beauty are-theoretically, at all events-called into play in the erection of our public buildings; when the poetry and symbolism of religion are revived; when luxury has reached a point which alarms the moralist and economist, and refinement is itself refined-how is it that dramatic art alone is left to take care of itself? Why should it be thought so wholly unworthy of the fostering care of Government?

A

The suggestion has been often made, but it has been generally dropped as impracticable. Any scheme for assistance from public moneys has been abandoned as soon as thought of, as utterly hopeless. But I own I do not myself consider the objections to subsidizing a national theatre to be as insurmountable as is commonly supposed. Doubtless it would require a brave man even to hint at such a thing in the House of Commons; still I do not despair of a sufficiently courageous member being found; and as to eventual success, why there is nothing like the persevering efforts of a steady minority to pull the most hopeless of measures through at last. The subsidy asked for need not reach any alarming amount. theatre might be made independent of its weekly receipts by a comparatively trifling grant from Government; and, if properly handled, it might prove to be a school of art which would benefit the entire kingdom. Such a grant would not be merely money spent upon a metropolitan theatre-for I believe that its effects would soon be felt far and wide. A theatre so supported would go far to form an example for the rest of the country. I do not think that other theatres would suffer in a pecuniary way, or that managers would have any reason to raise a cry of fair competition against unjust favouritism; for, of course, I do not dream of suggesting that a subsidized theatre should admit the public at lower prices than are usually charged. The great object of a guaranteed theatre would be the permanent engagement of a large and thoroughly efficient company, the frequent production of new pieces, and a constant variation in the bills. This last point should be particularly insisted on. I question very much whether a true actor is benefited by playing a part for a couple of hundred nights in London