The poetical works...

Introduction

LIFE OF TENNYSON.

Alfred Tennyson was born Aug. 6, 1809, in Somersby, a wooded hamlet of Lincolnshire, England. "The native village of Tennyson," says Howitt, who visited the place not long after the Tennysons left it, " is not situated in the fens, but in a pretty pastoral district of softly sloping hills and large ashtrees. It is not based on bogs, but on a clean sandstone. There is a little glen in the neighborhood, called by the old monkish name of Holywell."

Here he was brought up amid the lovely idyllic scenes which he made famous in the " Ode to Memory " and other poems. The picturesque " Glen," with its tangled underwood and purling brook, was a favorite haunt of the poet in childhood. On one of the stones in this ravine he inscribed the words, Byron is Dead, ere he was fifteen.

Alfred was the fourth son of the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., rector of Somersby (1807-1831), also rector of Benniworth and Bag Enderby, and vicar of Grimsby (1815). Dr. Tennyson was the eldest son of George Tennyson ( 1 750-1835), who belonged to the Lincolnshire gentry as the owner of Bayons Manor and Usselby Hall. He was graduated at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1801, and received the degree of M.A. in 1805. The poet's father (1 778-1 831) was a man of superior abilities and varied attainments, who tried his hand with fair success at architecture, painting, music, and poetry.

Mrs. Tennyson (1 781-1865) was a pious woman of many admirable qualities, and characterized by an especially sensitive nature. From his sweet, gentle mother the poet inherited his refined, shrinking nature. She was the daughter of Stephen Fytche (1 734-1 799), vicar of Louth (1764) and rector of Withcall (1780), a small village between Horncastle and Louth.

Dr. Tennyson married (Aug. 6, 1806) Elizabeth Fytche; and their first child, George, died in infancy. He moved to Somersby in 1808, and the rectory in this quiet village was their home for many years. According to the parish registers, the Tennyson family consisted of eleven children: Frederick (1807), Charles (1808-1879), Alfred (1809-1892), Mary (1810-1884), Emilia (1811- 1889), Edward (1813-1890), Arthur (1814), Septimus (1815-1866), Matilda (1816), Cecilia (1817), Horatio (1819). They formed a joyous, lively household, amusements being agreeably mingled with their daily tasks. They were all handsome and gifted, with marked personal traits and imaginative temperaments. They were very fond of reading and story-telling. At least four of the boys — Frederick, Charles, Alfred, and Edward — were addicted to versewriting.

The scholarly rector carefully attended to the education and training of his I ildren. He turned his talents and accomplishments to good account in stimu-

ng their mental growth. Alfred was a pupil of Louth Grammar School four

INTR OD UC TION.

years ( 1816-1820). During this time he presumably learned something, alth no flattering reports of his progress have come down to us. Then private ers were employed by Dr. Tennyson to instruct his boys ; but he took upon himself for the most part the burden of fitting them for college. One incident connected with the poet's intellectual life at home is worth repeating. It has been said that his father required him to memorize the odes of Horace, and to recite them morning by morning until the four books were gone through. Perhaps this practice aided him in cultivating a delicate sense for metrical music, in which he certainly surpassed Horace.

Only- a moderate amount of study being imposed by his father, Alfred was out-of-doors much of the time, rambling through the pastures and wolds about Somersby and Bag Enderby. The two brothers, Charles and Alfred, were greatly attached to each other, and frequently were together in their walks. They were both large and strong for their age. Charles was a popular boy in Somersby on account of his frank, genial disposition. This cannot be said of the reticent Alfred, who was solitary, not caring to mingle with other lads in their sports. He was shy and reserved, moody and absent-minded, exhibiting when a boy the same habits and peculiarities which characterized him as a man.

From his twelfth to his sixteenth year Alfred was apparently idle a great part of the time, yet he was unconsciously preparing for his life-work as a poet. He was gathering material and storing up impressions that' were afterward utilized. It was with him a formative period. The hours he spent strolling in lanes and woods were not wasted. The quiet, meditative boy* 'lived in a realm of the imagination, and his thoughts and fancies took shape in crude poems.

This period of day-dreaming was followed by one of intellectual activity. His literary career began in his youth, his boyish rhymes and those of his elder brother Charles being collected into the thin volume, " Poems by Two Brothers," published in 1827. The pieces by Alfred were written when he was only sixteen or seventeen. They show that these were busy years. The Tennyson youths not only scribbled a great deal of verse, they ranged far and wide in the fields of ancient and modern literature. Their father had a fine library, and they appreciated its treasures. In the footnotes and mottoes of their poems were many curious bits of information, and quotations from the classics. In some of them are echoes from Byron, who exercised a magical spell over Alfred in his teens.

The Tennyson children were fortunate in having- cultured parents. They were favored in another respect. Dr. Tennyson was comfortably well off for a country clergyman. His means, which he shrewdly husbanded, enabled the family to spend the summers at Mablethorpe and Skagness, on the eastern coast of England. Thus Alfred's passion for the sea was developed early in life. It is said that in his boyhood he occasionally tramped the whole distance (a dozen miles or more) from Somersby to the coast.

For some years it was the rector's custom to occupy a dwelling in Louth part of the school year. In this way the seclusion and monotony of Somersby life were broken. The young Tennysons saw considerable of Lincolnshire. They occasionally visited the old manor-house of Bayons, and were often welcomed in the home of their aunt, Miss Fytche, in Westgate Place. Charles and Alfred were at times the guests of their great -uncle, the Rev. Samuel Turner, of Caistor, who, dying about 1834, left his property and Grasby living to Charles. The two young poets took the money given them for their first book by Messrs. Jackson, J and spent it "in a tour through Lincolnshire, inspecting the different churches,, for which the county is so justly famous."

INTRODUCTION.

were the surroundings and experiences of Tennyson's childhood and ley influenced his whole life,' and inevitably entered into his poetry of >. He illustrates the truth that a poet is largely what his environment

toberj 1828, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, leaving in 1831 degree. In his boyhood Alfred manifested unmistakable indications ; and during his university career he was generally looked upon as a superior mortal, of whom great things were expected by his teachers and fellowcollegians. Dr. Whewell, his tutor, treated him with unusual respect. It was thought to be no slight honor for a young man of twenty to win the chancellor's gold medal for the prize poem " Timbuctoo," and the volume of his poems published in 1830 gave him a sort of celebrity beyond his set of college acquaintances.

While at Cambridge, Tennyson formed friendships which lasted till death ended them one by one. It was indeed a company of choice spirits with whom he had the good fortune to be associated. Among them were Milnes, Kemble, Trench, Alford, Brookfield, Spedding, and others. Besides these, he numbered among the friends of his early manhood, Fitzgerald, Kinglake, Thackeray, Maurice, Gladstone, Carlyle, Rogers, Forster, the Lushingtons, and other famous scholars and men of letters. In their companionship he found the stimulus necessary for the development of his poetical faculty. They all regarded him with feelings of warmest admiration. The young singer had at least a few appreciative readers during the ten or twelve years of obscurity when the public cared little for his writings. By their words of commendation he was encouraged to pursue the bard's divine calling, to which he was led by an overmastering instinct.

Much as Tennyson owed to these men, he owed most to one whose name is forever associated with his own, Arthur Henry Hallam, a son of the historian. Soon after coming to Cambridge he met Hallam, a young man of extraordinary promise, who became the dearest of his friends — more to him than a brother. They were inseparable in their walks and studies. They shared each other's ambitions and enthusiasms. In the summer of 1830 the two comrades travelled through the French Pyrenees. Their intimate fellowship was strengthened by Arthur's love for the poet's younger sister, Emilia. It was apparently his strongest earthly attachment; and the beautiful record of their " fair companionship " is found in the lyrics of "In Memoriam," written to perpetuate the memory of the lost Hallam, whose life went suddenly out in Vienna, Sept. 15, 1833.

This remarkable elegy remains, and is likely to remain through all time, a nobler monument than could be wrought out of bronze or marble. Equally enduring is the melodious wail, "Break, break, break," one of the sweetest dirges in all literature, written shortly after Hallam's death.

The noted actress, Fanny Kemble, knew Tennyson in the prime of manhood, and in her journal (June 16, 1832) tells what manner of man he was: —

" Alfred Tennyson dined with us. I am always a little disappointed with the exterior of our poet when I look at him, in spite of his eyes, which are very fine ; but his head and face, striking and dignified as they are, are almost too ponderous and massive for beauty in so young a man ; and every now and then there is a slightly sarcastic expression about his mouth that almost frightens me, in spite of his shy manner and habitual silence." 1

1NTR OD UCTION.

After leaving college, Tennyson resided chiefly with his widowed mother at Somersby, then at High Beech (1837-1840), Tunbridge Wells and Boxley (1840-1844), and Cheltenham (1844-1850). He was often in London and elsewhere visiting friends. Fitzgerald speaks of his staying with Tennyson at the Cumberland home of James Spedding in 1835. Here Alfred would spend hour after hour reading aloud " Morte d' Arthur," and other unpublished poems, which his scholarly friend criticised. In 1838 he was a welcome member of the Anonymous Club in London, and had rooms in that city at various times during the next ten years.

It was his habit to make' long journeys through the country on foot, studying the landscapes of England and Wales, and pondering many a lay unsung. He also made occasional trips to Ireland and the Continent. " From 1842," says Howitt, " he became pre-eminent among English poets ; " and he was thenceforth often to be found in the society of prominent literary people. The Carlyles were much attached to him. In a letter written in 1843, Mrs. Carlyle calls him "a very handsome man, and a noble-hearted one, with something of the gypsy in his appearance, which for me is perfectly charming." In 1845 he was granted a pension of ^200, and in 1850 he was appointed poet-laureate to succeed Wordsworth; in 1855 he received the honorary degree of D.C.L. from Oxford.

Tennyson married (June 13, 1850) at Shiplake, Oxfordshire, Emily Sarah Sellwood, whom he had known and loved for many years. Carlyle, not long afterward, came across the laureate " with his new wife," of whom he pleasantly writes: " Mrs. Tennyson lights up bright glittering blue eyes when 'you speak to her; has wit; has sense; and were it not that she seems so very delicate in health, I should augur really well of Tennyson's adventure." She was the eldest daughter of Henry Sellwood, of Peasmore in Berkshire, afterward a solicitor of Horncastle, Lincolnshire ; her mother was a sister of Sir John Franklin, and her youngest sister the wife of Charles Tennyson Turner.

A lady of high intelligence and gracious manner, she was in every way fitted to be the companion of her poet husband, who lovingly bore testimony to her loyalty and worth. Exalted as was his ideal of woman as a wife and mother, she seems to have met his exacting requirements almost perfectly. Though a woman of more than ordinary education and talent, she never sought public recognition. A considerable number of the poet's songs she set to music. Content with the round of duties in a domestic sphere, she lived for husband and children. Their wedded life was exceptionally harmonious and happy. Their union was blessed with two sons, — Hallam, born Aug. II, 1852, and Lionel, born March 16, 1854. Bayard Taylor thought the Tennyson household a "delightful family circle." "His wife," he wrote in 1857, "is one of the best women I ever met with; and his two little boys, Hallam and Lionel, are real cherubs of children."

Many years later Professor Palgrave paid Lady Tennyson a well-deserved tribute in the graceful Dedication of " Lyrical Poems by Lord Tennyson " (1885), characterizing her as "the counsellor to whom he has never looked in vain for aid and comfort, — the wife whose perfect love has blessed him through these many years with large and faithful sympathy." 1

Three years they lived in Chapel House, Twickenham. In 1853 the laureate bought the Farringford domain (now over four hundred acres), near Freshwater,

1 Lady Tennyson died at Aldworth, Aug. 10, 1896, aged eighty-three. During the last years of her life, notwithstanding ill-health, she materially aided her son Hallam in preparing the biography of his father.

INTR OD UC TION. vii in the Isle of Wight. In the lines, "To the Rev. F. D. Maurice," dated January, 1S54, the poet describes his pleasant life in this delightful retreat. In 1867 he purchased the Greenhill estate, in the northern part of Sussex. Here he built a Gothic mansion, which is an ideal residence for a poet. This house, named Aldworth, was finished and first occupied in 1869. Situated far up on Blackdown Heath, it overlooks a lovely valley, and commands a view of one of the finest landscapes in England. Aldworth was his summer home for more than twenty years. Here he found the peace and seclusion that he coveted, — at least part of the time, — spending his days removed from the bustle and rush and unrest of the outside world.

It should not be supposed from this that Tennyson's life at Farringford was passed in monastic isolation. However sequestered Aldworth was from the abodes of men, the poet's mansion near Freshwater was not a hermitage. Thither in the golden years of his long career, in the fifties and sixties and seventies, came men eminent in all the walks of life, — preachers, statesmen, artists, and authors. His brothers and sisters, especially Horatio and Matilda, were with him a great deal of the time. Occasional visits from his young nephews and nieces, and afterward the presence of grandchildren, gladdened the days of the aged singer. For many years Mrs. Julia Margaret Cameron (who achieved fame by her marvellously successful photographs) and her husband were near neighbors of Tennyson's, their cottage, Dimbola, being not far from Farringford. The Camerons and the Tennysons lived in closest intimacy, visiting each other's homes almost daily. Other dear friends on the Isle of Wight were the Prinsceps, Mr. W. G. Ward, Sir John Simeon, and Mrs. Hughes, mother of Tom Hughes.

Tennyson's life was never that of a recluse long at a time. He saw much of the world. His solitude was broken by occasional trips abroad, and by frequent tours through the counties of England and Wales. During his entire career, after leaving Cambridge in 183 1, it may be said that he inevitably gravitated to London to stay a few weeks or months, and refresh himself with boon companions. No attempt is made here to trace all the wanderings of this much-travelled man. The letters of Edward Fitzgerald afford some clews to Tennyson's whereabouts during his early manhood, when his movements were not so closely watched and recorded in the newspapers. "I have just come from Leamington," he writes (June 7, 1840) ; " while there I met Alfred by chance ; we made two or three pleasant excursions together; to Stratford-upon-Avon and Kenilworth, etc."

In October, 1841, he writes: "As to Alfred, I have heard nothing of him since May, except, that some one saw him going on a packet which he believed was going to Rotterdam."

In 1 85 1 the poet and his wife visited Italy, and vivid memories of their travels are recalled in "The Daisy," written in Edinburgh two years later; this poem was suggested by the finding of a daisy in a book, the flower having been plucked on the Splugen, and placed by Mrs. Tennyson between the leaves of a little volume as a memento of their Italian journey. Scotland and the neighboring isles seem to have exercised a strange power over the laureate ; for he was often attracted to the Highlands, Valentia, and Ireland. He travelled in Portugal in 1859 with his friend Palgrave. He revisited the Pyrenees in 1861, this time with Arthur Hugh Clough, and again in 1876. In 1865 he was at Weimar and Dresden; in 1869 through France and Switzerland with Frederick Locker. He went to Norway in 1872, where he had journeyed before, led thither by reading Baynrd Taylor's "Northern Travel." He was in Italy in 1879, and in Lurnbardy in 1882.

viii INTR OD UC TION.

In 1883 Tennyson voyaged with Mr. Gladstone to Copenhagen, meeting at King Christian's court the Prihcess of Wales and the sovereigns of Greece and Russia. He visited the Channel Islands in 1887, and "in the spring of 1891 he was cruising in the Mediterranean." Only a few months before his death he was in Jersey, Guernsey, and London ; and the venerable minstrel was preparing to return to Farringford for the winter when the final summons came in October, 1892. So the spirit of roving clung to him even to the end of his earthly pilgrimage.

In 1865 Tennyson declined a baronetcy offered by the queen as a reward for his loyal devotion to the crown, and again in 1868, when tendered by Disraeli. In the latter part of 1883 he accepted a peerage at Gladstone's earnest solicitation. He was created ja. peer of the realm Jan. 24, 1884, with the new title, Baron of Aldworth,, Sussex, and of Freshwater, Isle of Wight. He took his seat in the House of Lords March 1 1, 1884.

Baron Tennyson had a splendid lineage, three lines of noble and royal families being mingled in his descent. The poet himself writes: "Through my great-grandmother [Elizabeth Clayton], and through Jane Pitt, a still remoter grandmother, I am doubly descended from Plantagenets (Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and John of Lancaster), and this through branches of the Barons d'Eyncourt."

The pedigree of his grandfather, George Tennyson, is traced back to "the middle-class line of the Tennysons," and through Elizabeth Clayton ten generations back to Edmund, Duke of Somerset, and farther back to Edward III. The laureate's grandfather was a well-known lawyer and wealthy landowner of Lincolnshire, who " sat more than once in Parliament, representing Bletchingly;" his second son, Charles Tennyson-d'Eyncourt, who succeeded him as the possessor of the family estate of Bayons Manor, was a noted public man, having represented Lambeth and other boroughs in Parliament from 1818 to 1852. At the death of George Tennyson (July 4, 1835), the valuable Clayton property near Great Grimsby was left to the rector's family, and it is still (1896) in the hands of Frederick Tennyson, the poet's elder brother.

The poet's last years were saddened by the bereavement of many old friends and relatives. He suffered a severe blow in the death of his second son Lionel, while on the homeward voyage from India. He mourns his loss in the touching stanzas, " To the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava. " The Hon. Lionel Tennyson, for several years connected with the India office, was attacked by jungle fever while on a visit to India, and died on board the Chusan, near Aden, April 20, 1886, at the age of thirty-two.

Honors were showered plentifully on Lord Tennyson in his last years, but he was not spoilt by vanity. He was the recipient of many congratulations on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, Aug. 6, 1889. His was the fruitful old age that crowns a well-ordered career. His powers of body and mind were well preserved to the end, owing to his wonderful constitution and his quiet way of living. He read Shakespeare during his final illness, and continued to compose even on his death-bed, dictating "The Silent Voices" sung at his funeral. In the tranquil evening of a well-spent life he peacefully passed away Oct. 6, 1892, receiving burial (Oct. 12) in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey

IXTRODUCTION.

THE POETRY OF TENNYSON.

Tennyson is pre-eminently a lyric poet. His lyrical efforts embrace an extensive range of subjects and a wide variety of metres. Not having naturally the rhythmical facility of Byron or Shelley, he conquered the technical difficulties of the minstrel's art by painstaking study and labor. In this field he became a master. But, not realizing his limitations, or not content with the renown of being a great lyrist, he ambitiously essayed to enter fields where supremacy was for him impossible. In the epic and the drama he achieved only partial success. It is, therefore, as a lyric poet that Tennyson is chiefly known and will be remembered. Such incomparable lyrics as "Break, break, break," "The splendor falls," and "Crossing the Bar," prove him to be a singer by right divine — one whose fame is immortal.

In some of his blank-verse idylls he was scarcely less happy. Noteworthy among these are his studies and imitations of the antique, — "CEnone," "The Lotus-Eaters," " Ulysses," "Tithonus," "Lucretius," " Tiresias," " Demeter," and " The Death of OZnone," — which, it is safe to say, are not generally popular, however much they may be admired by persons of scholarly and critical tastes. "In Memoriam " and "Maud" are merely collections of lyrics. Tennyson's dramas are often lyrical in spirit if not in form; they are distinctly undramatic. Except a few magnificent passages of blank verse, the lyrics are the best things in them. The songs in "The Princess," and the little melotlies scattered through the "Idylls of the King," will be prized in future ages when the main portions of these works may have lost their interest for the average reader. These lyrics have been set to music, and sung in many a household where his longer poems are unread. The scenes and characters described in them have been depicted by painters. Thus the sister arts have conspired to popularize them, and impress them on the memory.

Tennyson's lyrical successes are numerous, the list including most of his shorter poems. An array of versatile, superior productions ! They make up a considerable body of poetry, much greater in bulk than the quantity of enduring verse produced by Herrick, Gray, Collins, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Scott, Keats, Campbell, Browning, Bryant, Poe, Lowell, or Whittier.

Tennyson's first book — "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical" (1830) — was made up largely of metrical diversions, yet it contained a few pieces that are imperishable. They show plainly that when a young man he was as much addicted to wordmusic and word-color as he was in later years. The author of " Mariana " and "The Dirge" was a poetic artist of more than ordinary equipment.

His second book of " Poems," published late in 1832, included some of his loveliest lyrics, — " The Lady of Shalott," "The Miller's Daughter," "The Palace of Art," "The Lotus-Eaters," "A Dream of Fair Women," etc., — having the richness of melody and the indescribable witchery of style which constitute Tennyson's charm.

In the two volumes of " Poems " appearing in 1842 were gathered the finest things in the two earlier books, but changed and polished until well-nigh perfect, together with a number of new works — " Morte d' Arthur," "The Talking Oak," " Ulysses," " Locksley Hall," " Lady Clara Vere de Vere," "The Two Voices," "St. Agnes," "Sir Galahad," "Godiva," "Break, break, break," etc. — that are justly regarded among the choicest treasures of British lyrical and

INTRODUCTION.

idyllic poetry. These poems, new and old, exhibited not only a complete mastery of rhetorical effects and a rare aesthetic susceptibility, but a rich vein of sense and spirituality. Here were exquisite diction, harmonious versification a command of the technical resources of the poetic art, and unrivalled ability in word-painting. The writer was a close observer of nature as well as a diligent student of books.

More than Virgil, he was a "landscape-lover," who with pictorial fidelity and vividness, though not with photographic accuracy, sketched the places he visited. Hamerton rightly called him the "prince of poet landscapists." But the domain of beauty was too narrow for him. Beyond any mere aesthetic influence that he exerted, Tennyson was a power for good, his refined verse being the graceful vehicle of ethical instruction and religious uplift. Like Wordsworth, he was a poet with a mission. His countrymen found his teaching helpful, stimulating, liberalizing.

Admirable as is "The Princess" (1847) in some respects, it falls somewhat below the level reached in his lyrics and idylls. The poem as a whole is disappointing, being richer in form than in substance. It has been concisely and accurately described as a " splendid failure." The plot is the work of a literary artist, rather than the heaven-born inspiration of genius. As an incursion into the realm of the romantic and the fantastic, the story is pleasing enough with its airy fancies and delightful reveries, but it is too unreal and wildly improbable to be impressive. It does not bear the test of rereading. One becomes at last cloyed with its gorgeous style, overloaded as it is with glittering conceits and ornate commonplaces. However, the closing paragraphs, which deal with the woman question so sensibly and felicitously, compensate for some shortcomings of the poem.

l - In producing the beautiful elegy known as "In Memoriam," Tennyson conferred immortality upon his lost friend and gained it for himself. This monumental work, which appeared anonymously in 1850, had been in process of growth during the seventeen years after the death of Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833. This tribute of love to the memory of the dearest of his companions occupies a unique place in literature. It is not only the most original of Tennyson's 'sustained writings — it is his best reflective poem and favorite work. Into it he poured the consecrated fragrance of his genius. It grew out of the author's manifold experiences, not only as a mourner, but as a thinker. He owed nothing material to Petrarch, as has been claimed, or to the sonnets of Shakespeare. The work is English and modern. It is emphatically Tennysonian. " In Memoriam " may be classed with the few really great poems of the nineteenth century. It is a masterpiece, worthy of a place among the classics of our English tongue. Perhaps no other poem of our age has been so influential. Perhaps no other literary production of the nineteenth century has elicited such high praise from eminent critics, and received during the writer's lifetime such loving, sympathetic study from cultivated readers.

" Maud," like " In Memoriam," is a poem with a history. It had its beginning in the stanzas, " O, that 'twere possible," contributed to The Tribute in 1837. This was the germ of " Maud." According to Mrs. Ritchie, we owe the expanded poem to the suggestion of Mr. John Simeon, one of the laureate's most intimate friends and neighbors in the Isle of Wight. " Sir John said that it seemed to him as if something were wanting to explain the story of this poem, and so by degrees it all grew." When published in 1855, ^ was greeted with a storm of criticism and derision, being everywhere misjudged and underrated. Its

INTRODUCTION.

purpose was misconceived on account of the Jingo sentiments and hysterical ravings put into the mouth of the hero (who was not Tennyson in disguise, but a fictitious character). This poem, always a favorite with the author, won its way at last to a generous appreciation of its abundant merits.

The threads woven into the fabric of "Maud" are a commercial swindle, suicide, love-making, murder, insanity, and an unrighteous war. Says a critic in the North British Review: " The poem is a lyric monologue, consisting of envious invective, gradually mastered by love, then anger, despair, madness, and patriotic enthusiasm."

Out of these melodramatic elements a great work could hardly be expected to come forth. Something is wanting in the leading figure, whose morbid soliloquizing betrays a weak character. Notwithstanding the terribly serious and tragic circumstances of his history, the hero does not always keep from making a laughing-stock of himself. While not an unqualified success, a work 'containing one of the sweetest love-lyrics in any language, " Come into the garden," certainly is not to be pronounced a failure. This exquisite song "at once struck the fancy of musicians, and seemed spontaneously to clothe itself in melody." There are oth»r strains in "Maud" which rank among the lyrical triumphs with which Alfred Tennyson enriched English literature.

Of all his extended efforts, "Enoch Arden " (1864) has been read most widely. Its popularity is partly accounted for by the peculiar incident of a longabsent husband returning home to find his wife married to another man. The story of Enoch Arden passes current where the name of Arthur Hallam is unheard. It has been twice dramatized. Judging from the large number of translations and illustrated editions of this poem, it is by far the best known of the laureate's writings in foreign lands, having been translated into Danish, German, Dutch, French, Bohemian, Italian, Hungarian, and Spanish. School editions, with notes, have been extensively circulated in France and Germany.