" As a rule, the said books are
worthless. The number of versifiers makes it hard, indeed, for the
poet to win recognition. One little new book of rhyme is so like
another, and almost all are of so little interest!
The rare book that differs from the rest has a bizarrerie with its
originality, and in the poems of 1830 there was, assuredly, more than
enough of the bizarre. There were no hyphens in the double epithets,
and words like "tendriltwine" seemed provokingly affected. A kind of
lusciousness, like that of Keats when under the influence of Leigh
Hunt, may here and there be observed. Such faults as these catch the
indifferent eye when a new book is first opened, and the volume of
1830 was probably condemned by almost every reader of the previous
generation who deigned to afford it a glance. Out of fifty-six
pieces only twenty-three were reprinted in the two volumes of 1842,
which won for Tennyson the general recognition of the world of
letters. Five or six of the pieces then left out were added as
Juvenilia in the collected works of 1871, 1872. The whole mass
deserves the attention of students of the poet's development.
This early volume may be said to contain, in the germ, all the great
original qualities of Tennyson, except the humour of his rural
studies and the elaboration of his Idylls. For example, in Mariana
we first note what may be called his perfection and accomplishment.
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