Assuredly it makes a beautiful succession
of sounds, and recalls the bird-sounds which it is intended to
describe. But does it live in the memory as one of the rare great
Tennysonian lines? It does not. It has charm, but the charm is merely
curious or pretty. A whole poem composed of lines with no better
recommendation than that line has would remain merely curious or
pretty. It would not permanently interest. It would be as insipid as a
pretty woman who had nothing behind her prettiness. It would not live.
One may remark in this connection how the merely verbal felicities of
Tennyson have lost our esteem. Who will now proclaim the _Idylls of
the King_ as a masterpiece? Of the thousands of lines written by
him which please the ear, only those survive of which the matter is
charged with emotion. No! As regards the man who professes to read an
author "for his style alone," I am inclined to think either that he
will soon get sick of that author, or that he is deceiving himself and
means the author's general temperament--not the author's verbal style,
but a peculiar quality which runs through all the matter written by
the author. Just as one may like a man for something which is always
coming out of him, which one cannot define, and which is of the very
essence of the man.
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