Tennyson's success was emphasized by the remarkable series of reviews that greeted his earliest volumes of poems. 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. We know that there were other and stronger reasons for Tennyson's silence and we also know that the effect of Lockhart's article was decidedly salutary. When the next collection of _Poems_ (1842) did appear, the shorter pieces ridiculed by Lockhart were omitted, and the derided passages in the longer poems were altered.
We may, without conscientious scruples, take Mr. Andrew Lang's advice, and enjoy a laugh over Lockhart's performance. Its mock appreciations are, perhaps, far-fetched at times; but there are enough effective passages to give zest to the article. It has been said in all seriousness that Lockhart failed to appreciate the beauty of most of Tennyson's lines, and that he confined his remarks to the most assailable passages. Surely, when a critic undertakes to write a mock-appreciation, he will not quote the best verses, to the detriment of his plan. The poet must see to it that his volume does not contain enough absurdities to form a sufficient basis for such an article. There is a striking contrast to the humor of Lockhart in the little-known review of the same volume by the _Literary Gazette_, 1833, pp. (772-774). The latter seized upon some crudities that had escaped the _Quarterly's_ notice, and, with characteristic brutality, decided that the poet was insane and needed a low diet and a cell.