He said that
_Ulysses_ belonged to a high class of poetry, destined to be the
highest, and to be more cultivated in the next generation. Now
_Ulysses_ is both a dramatic lyric and a dramatic monologue, and
Tennyson never wrote anything better than this poem. As it became
increasingly evident that the nineteenth century was not going to
have a great literary dramatic movement on the stage, while at the
same time the interest in human nature had never been keener, the
poets began to turn their attention to the interpretation of
humanity by the representation of historical or imaginary
individuals speaking: and their speech was to reveal the secrets of
the human soul, in its tragedy and comedy, in its sublimity and
baseness, in its nobility and folly. Later in life Tennyson
cultivated sedulously the dramatic monologue; and Browning, the most
original force in literature that the century produced, after
abandoning his early attempts at success on the stage, devoted
practically the entire strength of his genius to this form of poetry.
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