to discussion; if it is once apprehended there is no more to be said, or no more than the words of Sir Bors in the Holy Grail:—
Ask me not, for I may not speak of it,
I saw it.
One need not be afraid to defend the 'thought' of Tennyson on the lower ground either. But there is not much to be gained for his poetry in this way. Much of his reasoning is opinion, as good as that of other thinkers, but not founded as most of Wordsworth's is on certain and irrefragable knowledge. It is generally far above the range of ordinary didactic poetry, but much of it has suffered through lapse of time and the change of fashions, and has become antiquated like the Essay on Man. What is least injured in this way, what best retains its value as philosophy, is the poem of the Ancient Sage, which is based on experience like that of Wordsworth's; and the wisdom of the Ancient Sage is summed up in the sentence that 'nothing worthy proving can
