The _Poems, chiefly Lyrical_
(1830) were welcomed by Sir John Bowring in the _Westminster Review_, by
Leigh Hunt in the _Tatler_, by Arthur Hallam in the _Englishman's
Magazine_, and by John Wilson in _Blackwood's Magazine_. The _Poems_
(1833) were reviewed by W.J. Fox in the _Monthly Repository_, and by
John Stuart Mill in the _Westminster Review_. This array of names was
indeed a tribute to the poet; but the unfavorable review, was, as usual,
most significant. The article written by Lockhart for the _Quarterly
Rev._, XLIX (81-97), has been characterized as "silly and brutal," but
it was neither. Tennyson's fame is secure; we can at least be just to
his early reviewer. It is true that the poet winced under the lash and
that ten years elapsed before his next volume of collected poems
appeared; but Canon Ainger is surely in error when he holds the
_Quarterly Review_ mainly responsible for this long silence. The rich
measure of praise elsewhere bestowed upon the volume would leave us no
alternative but the conclusion that Tennyson was childish enough to
maintain his silence for a decade because Lockhart took liberties with
his poems instead of joining the chorus of adulation.
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