From an unsigned review of Ambarvalia and The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems by ‘A' [Matthew Arnold] in the Guardian

To say nothing of Mr. Tennyson's own creations, we owe him something for being, as we conceive, the indirect cause of such poetry as that of Mr. Clough and ‘A’. In himself he seems to us to unite in no small measure the metaphysical depth of S. T. Coleridge, with the objective sensuousness of an old ballad; the quiet thoughtfulness of our Poet Laureate, with the sweetness and smoothness of Mr. Moore; the outwardness of Homer with the inner life of our modern poets; but he is far more successful in embodying the merely intellectual element in the language of the passions; in investing the bare anatomy with living flesh and blood, and a graceful drapery, which shows the beauties which it half conceals; hence the peculiar charm of his love poetry, blending a semi-platonic purity with the glow of more human affection. This we take to be his special praise; and of this we are much reminded in ‘A’, and the first part of Ambarvalia. If the writer of the latter has more of that deep insight into things as they really are, of which some of his most thoughtful poems prove him to be possessed, the former has more of his pictorial power; both, like him, are eminent in the melody of rhythm, and in masterly selection, seemingly by instinct, of pregnant expressive epithets.