The Arthurian story he knew to be a myth and a myth was a lie; the story of the Fall, on the other hand, he accepted in common with his time for literal fact.

It is to be noted as characteristic of his confident and assured egotism that he accepted no less sincerely and literally the imaginative structure which he himself reared on it.
However that may be, the solid fact about him is that in this "adventurous song" with its pursuit of "Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme," he succeeded in his attempt, that alone among the moderns he contrived to write an epic which stands on the same eminence as the ancient writings of the kind, and that he found time in a life, which hardly extended to old age as we know it, to write, besides noble lyrics and a series of fiercely argumentative prose treatises, two other masterpieces in the grand style, a tragedy modelled on the Greeks and a second epic on the "compact" style of the book of Job.

No English poet can compare with him in majesty or completeness.
An adequate study of his achievement is impossible within the limits of the few pages that are all a book like this can spare to a single author.

Readers who desire it will find it in the work of his two best critics, Mark Pattison and Sir Walter Raleigh.[4] All that can be done here is to call attention to some of his most striking qualities.
Foremost, of course, is the temper of the man.

From the beginning he was sure of himself and sure of his mission; he had his purpose plain and clear.