All these small plays are dreadful examples of what a great poet may do when he works in a vehicle--if I may borrow a term from painting--for which he has no natural capacity, but for which he thinks he has.

He is then like those sailors, and meets justly the same fate, who think that because they can steer a boat admirably, they can also drive a coach and four.

The love scene in _Becket_ between Rosamund and Henry illustrates my meaning.

It was a subject in itself that Tennyson ought to have done well, and would probably have done well in another form of poetry; but, done in a form for which he had no genius, he did it badly.

It is the worst thing in the play.