associations, and from fragmentary nearness, in the Present, which has not yet "orbed into the perfect star," there is equal danger from remoteness in the Past—few imaginations being indeed adequate satisfactorily to realize very different conditions of life and thought. The name of little flutterers, whose inanimate remains are strewn along the avenue that leads to the Temple of Fame, is Legion; but pseudo-classical and pseudo-mediæval versifiers are surely not inadequately represented among them. Some indeed have failed in poetically representing what passed under their eyes, because the eyes of the soul were wanting—the Poet's Second sight. Moreover, the genius of some true poets has proved more at home in those rarer, yet still to them living, regions of the Past. I do not think the age of Chaucer was much more poetical than the age of Victor Hugo and Tennyson: but Chaucer contrived to see and represent his age poetically: and though, perhaps, Tennyson's greatest works have dealt with ideal, romantic, or classical themes, he has shown
