ABSTRACT
It is a commonplace in the history of nineteenth-century poetry that the accident of death makes a break about 1830: John Keats, P. B. Shelley and George Gordon Byron are dead, and S. T. Coleridge and William Wordsworth no longer effective. Alfred Tennyson, who attempted in many ways to divert attention back towards poetry of a most profound character, gained one of his more popular successes in Enoch Arden, where he accepted the dim and sentimental demands of a vast audience for easy narrative. When criticism detaches commentary on the nineteenth century from prejudice it may appear that Tennyson is its most enduring poet. Few poets drew so freely both from classical sources and romantic fable, though as sometimes before in English poetry one feels that there might have been some added strength had the classical tradition been stronger. Robert Browning, even more than Tennyson, suggests that a long order of tradition is breaking down.
