how different from the intoxicating, sensuous melody of his earlier cadence! I have loved him much this time, and taken him to heart as a brother. One of his themes has long been my favourite—the last expedition of Ulysses—and his, like mine, is the Ulysses of the Odyssey, with his deep romance of wisdom, and not the worldling of the Iliad. How finely marked his slight description of himself and of Telemachus! In 'Dora,' 'Locksley Hall,' 'The Two Voices,' 'Morte d'Arthur,' I find my own life, much of it, written truly out."[1]
No great reputation, however, has been without its assailants little spirits who do their best or worst to undermine the fame they can never hope themselves to reach, and Alfred Tennyson was not more fortunate than the rest.
The attack was commenced by the authors of the "Bon Gaultier Ballads," [2] in a series of offensive
- ↑ "Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli" (London, 1852), ii. 258,259.
- ↑ "The Book of Ballads," edited by Bon Gaultier (the joint work of Theodore Martin and the late William Edmondstoune Aytoun), (London, 1845), pp. 5, 13, 32,148. Our poet is also alluded to as "young Tennyson," in "The Laureate's Tourney," p. 25. In the parody of "Locksley Hall," his
