T. S. Eliot writes in his Introduction to Tennyson’s Poems,

Tennyson is a great poet, for reasons that are perfectly clear. He had three qualities which are seldom found together except in the greatest poets: abundance, variety, and complete competence. We therefore cannot appreciate his works unless we read a good deal of it. We may not admire his aims; but whatever he sets out to do, he succeeds in doing, with a mastery that gives us the sense of confidence that is one of the major pleasures of poetry. … He had the finest ear of any English poet since Milton.