"If a single word could resume him, it would be "academic;" but, although this perfectly describes his habitual attitude even as a poet, it leaves aside his chaste diction, his pictorial vividness, and his overwhelming pathos. The better, which is also the larger, part of his poetry is without doubt immortal. His position is distinctly independent, while this is perhaps less owing to innate originality than to the balance of competing influences. Wordsworth saves him from being a mere disciple of Goethe, and Goethe from being a mere follower of Wordsworth. As a critic he repeatedly evinced a happy instinct for doing the right thing at the right time. Apart from their high intellectual merits, the seasonableness of the preface to the poems of 1853, of the lectures on Homer, and those on the Celtic spirit, renders these monumental in English literature. His great defect as a critic is the absence of a lively aesthetic sense; the more exquisite beauties of literature do not greatly impress him unless as vehicle for the communication of ideas. He inherited his father's ethical cast of mind; conduct interests him more than genius."