One of the chief reasons the great Victorian poets are not read with the attention they deserve is that the modern reader is often baffled by the idiom of their more successful poems. We do not know just how to take them, and we find it difficult to do justice to the richness of their language. The case of Tennyson has been particularly unfortunate. In order to discover those poems capable of exciting the contemporary sensibility, one must first discount the adverse critical reaction. Though it may have been historically necessary, it managed to eclipse the Laureate for at least a generation. But having made this effort, one must still penetrate the formidable and misleading mask of household poet which the later Tennyson adopted.