He will not refuse the private
tribute of an old friend, will he? You don't know how pleased the
girls were at Kensington t'other day to hear you quote their father's
little verses, and he too I daresay was not disgusted. He sends you
and yours his very best regards in this most heartfelt and artless
(note of admiration)!
Always yours, my dear Alfred,
W. M. THACKERAY.
Naturally this letter gave Tennyson more pleasure than all the
converted critics with their favourable reviews. The Duke of Argyll
announced the conversion of Macaulay. The Master found Elaine "the
fairest, sweetest, purest love poem in the English language." As to
the whole, "The allegory in the distance GREATLY STRENGTHENS, ALSO
ELEVATES, THE MEANING OF THE POEM."
Ruskin, like some other critics, felt "the art and finish in these
poems a little more than I like to feel it." Yet Guinevere and
Elaine had been rapidly written and little corrected. I confess to
the opinion that what a man does most easily is, as a rule, what he
does best. We know that the "art and finish" of Shakespeare were
spontaneous, and so were those of Tennyson. Perfection in art is
sometimes more sudden than we think, but then "the long preparation
for it,--that unseen germination, THAT is what we ignore and forget."
But he wisely kept his pieces by him for a long time, restudying them
with a fresh eye. The "unreality" of the subject also failed to
please Ruskin, as it is a stumbling-block to others.
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