The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1897-07-20
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION.
POSTAGE PREPAID.
TUESDAY, JULY 20, 1897.
TENNYsON's RANK AS A POET.

Rev. ]. E. Wray in a paper in The
Nashville (Tenn.) Christian A~dvocat
Of Sth inst, says: Il do not share In the
fad already becoming a bore OF ranking
with the great English poets.
His distinctive work, posterity will say,
has been as a populariser Of art" There
are critics and critics. If a mar says
~I dc not like Shakespeare, or Dante
or Aeschylus," he shows candor ana
freedom Of opinion. But he might
<kaubt his own taste or capacity for
FORMING a right judgment Of great
u,efry. To call it in midsummer 1897,
"a fad" to a%ppraise Tennyson highly
fo rank him with the great English
zssess," is rather amusing when we re-
call who are the men who nave given
hixs, very high rank, some among the
highest in the great English choir, ana
fx,yy very long he has been admired and
Chased among the few greatest poets
I'm British anthology. A mar might
AT least be something modest in his
estimates Of poets when he knew no"
many of the foremost contemporary
minds have placed the unfading laurel
rupun the brow of Tennyson, and given
him entrance among the immortals
into the inner circle in the great
Worlds Valhalla. Let us take a rapid
yfance. Tennyson was born in 1919.
In 1880, Wordsworth wrote of him as
mot a little promising" as a poet. In
1897, when the poet was tWenty-elght,
Iandor wrote Of one of his poems that
@.Is is more Homeric han any poem of
our time, and rivals some of the noblest
parts of the Odyssea." Cultivated peo-
pie need not to be informed as to who
Wordsworth and Landor were. The
former ranks first among the medlta-
tive poets of the modern world. Some
of his noblest productions are among
the worlds richest treasures, at once
noble and sublime. There are at least
two of his poems that by a consensus
OF opinion among the greatest critics
and authors rank with the best produc-
lions Of the British Muse. Landor in
his domain is supreme. He has pro-
dnced poems of great perfection and
written two works that have no rivals
of their kind-"Imaginary Conversa-
sions'' and 'Pericles and Aspasia."
What he said Of Tennyson is very i'm
pressive for it is a very great man who
speaks.
In 1S42,-Tennyson was SO &C
lyle. Dickens, Miss Milford, Margaret
Fuller, Emerson and Poe were all
: speaking or our poet with enthus-
fasm,' as Rev. DR.. vanDyke states in
his superb essays and studies in Ten
ryson. In 1874, Edgar A. Poe wrote in
The Democratic Review, New York,
for August-"I am not sure that Ten
nyson is not the greatest of poets"
That was before very much of Tenny-
sons greatest poetry had been writ
ten. "a fad to place Tennyson among
the great English poets in 1897! 1t was
the opinion of the purest of American
poets-the greatest master Of verse
that in 1874, he was possibly the great
est of all poets. In 1845, the great poet
Wordsworth wrote again-"Tennyson
is decidedly the first Of our living
poets" Thackeray, the great, held
that 'Tennyson was the wisest man
he knew" Peter Bayne, the eloquent
Scotch critic, about 1856, wrote Of Ten
nyson deliberately and most impressive
4iy. He held that Homer was never
more graphic" than Tennyson in one Of
his shorter poems. He said that he
would old 1.-The highest place among
the poets of his day, but henceforth,
beyond q question be
"a star among the stars of mortal
night"
He said "In Memoriam'' is great and
marvellous and so have written all
capable critics. It is possibly the most
thoughtful poem in the English Ian
guage. 1t is one Of the most carefully
wrought, most perfect as to form, and
is. as We believe, the foremost of all
'eIegiac poems surprising Milton, Shell
ley, Gray and other most successful
English poets in this particular kin
OF composition. Longfellow wrote Of
Tennyson, after reading one of his most
exquisitely written poems. that cit
could not ave been written by any
other than a great poet And that
was said before half of the masters
best had been given to the world.
Theodore Watts, in a sonnet pub
Iished in 1850, on Tennyson, and in the
dedication, declares that the volume
published by the poet in his list year, |.
sis the most richly varied one volume !
OF English verse that has appeared in
his own century," Wordsworth, Cole
ridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats and
Robert Browning had written and pub
Eshed in this century. In the March
uumber Of the Atlantic Monthly for /,
1880, the poet, novelist and critic, !
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, published a
uoem claiming for Tennyson "the third |
place in English poetry" But those |