Excerpt from Tennyson

Nevertheless, the world's judgement of the great things of Art stands singularly stable and secure. That variable, inconsistent, ill informed, elusive, captious and unreasoning thing which we call the public taste, if it is given time to follow its own blind ways, somehow Sifts the subtle qualities of the poets and on the whole arrives at sound conclusions. The process is very mysterious, and far too wayward and complex to be satisfactorily explained. We only know that it is carried on by many minds, and carried on the more success fully, the more each mind is sincere to its own findings. As the wind, passing through the forest, makes each particular leaf vocal in its own way, and brings forth a multitudinous music that is one, so the greater poets set free the power of the beauty of the world to play upon the souls_ of men innumerable and awaken, soon or late, the same universal murmur of glad, assent.

The unanimity of their satisfaction in a great poet is not due, I think, or not due to any great degree, to the influence of the official literary critics upon a docile public mind. The critics themselves are by no means unanimous. The history of criticism makes the strangest reading. Even in the case of Tennyson, the vicissitudes of whose fame have been far less striking than is usual with great poets, the literature of criticism awakens reflection. Travelling through this wide wasteland I was almost led to believe that there is one region where caprice is more unconfined and the rule of chaos more nu restrained than in that other region, in which Philosophy is the innocent and long-suffering victim. I can almost pardon what has been said of Hegel, now that I know what has been said of Tennyson.

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