We still look to the earlier
masters for supreme excellence in particular directions:
to Wordsworth for sublime
philosophy, to Coleridge for ethereal magic, to Byron for
passion, to Shelley for lyric intensity, to Keats for richness.
Tennyson
does not excel each of these in his own special field, but
he is often nearer to the particular man in his particular
mastery than anyone else can be said to be, and he has in
addition his own special field of supremacy. What this is
cannot be
easily defined; it consists, perhaps, in the beauty of the
atmosphere which Tennyson contrives to cast around his work,
molding it in the blue mystery of twilight, in the opaline
haze of sunset: this atmosphere, suffused over his poetry
with inestimable skill and with a tact rarely at fault, produces
an almost unfailing illusion or mirage of loveliness.
-- Edmond Gosse, "Tennyson," in the
11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica
