ber I walked out alone, and carved, 'Byron is dead!' into the sandstone."

Both Charles and Alfred Tennyson were sent to Louth grammar school, a wealthy old foundation, where, a year or two after they left, Edward John Eyre, subsequently Governor of Jamaica, entered as a pupil. The Laureate still remembers walking with his school-fellows, adorned with blue ribbons, to celebrate the coronation of George IV., and the old wives said the boys made the prettiest part of the show. There are absolutely no school traditions extant about Alfred Tennyson. There is not even the customary desk carved with his name, to perpetuate in virtuous, and even heroic proportions the audacity of the youthful genius for disfigurement. The reading of both brothers was of a higher and more varied kind than constitutes the usual recreation of the British schoolboy. They dipped into a well-furnished library with appreciative zeal. During these days their poetical inclinations were assiduously cultivated. The routine of their regular studies was relieved by frequent incursions into the domain of the muses. Their little fugitive pieces at length began

C

to assume the dimensions of a collection, and the yearning for publicity followed as a matter of course. An ambition like theirs could not be satisfied with the passing of their manuscript from the hands of one admiring relative to another. The desire to see the productions of their minds in print is a not ignoble feeling which the greatest geniuses share with the most commonplace scribblers. Nowadays, perhaps, it would be thought presumptuous for lads of seventeen to soar with untried wings into the perilous altitudes of publication. Probably, too, their audacity in that respect would meet with but little encouragement from the publishers, especially if their work contained the faintest indication of promise. Verses, unless they are of exceptional merit, are not a very salable commodity, and it is a little surprising, even when the quality of the young poets' attempts is taken into account, that they should have found any one enterprising enough to buy the copyright, even for the sufficiently modest sum of ten pounds. But this actually happened. in 1827. Messrs. Jackson, booksellers and printers, of Louth, gave the amount named for the little

collection of "Poems by Two Brothers," one hundred and two in number, which was published in London (no doubt by an arrangement not uncommon with country printers) by Messrs. Simpkin & Marshall. It is not unlikely that the Jacksons were influenced by the opinions of others more than by any high critical sagacity of their own. The Tennysons' maternal grandfather was the vicar of Louth (though dead long before they went there), and they must have been well known in the society of the little town. Their reputation and promise would, no doubt, be the theme of common gossip, and the Messrs. Jackson may have had reasonable expectation of being recouped for their outlay by a fair sale of copies among the poets' own circle of friends.

This little volume, of two hundred and twentyeight pages, bore for its motto on the title-page the quotation from Martial, "Hæc nos novimus esse nihil,”—a self-depreciatory acknowledgment not entirely consistent with the boldness of the enterprise. We learn from the preface that these pieces were written, not conjointly, but individually, which may account for their difference of style and

matter." The differences were not confined to style and matter. Not only were the subjects as various as possible, but experiments, often of a crude kind, were made in many metres. The pages were burdened with foot-notes, and nearly every poem had a quotation from some wellknown author-the sources thus laid under tribute including Addison, Beattie, Byron, Cowper, Gray, Hume, Moore, and Scott among modern authors, and Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, Terence, Lucretius, Sallust, and Tacitus among classical writers. Byron is quoted six times, and his death made the subject of a poem. It is difficult to pronounce with certainty which of the productions in this now excessively scarce and priceless little volume are to be attributed to Lord Tennyson. A painstaking bibliographer, after a minute analysis of each poem and a comparison with later and acknowledged writings, concludes that "Antony to Cleopatra," "The Old Sword," "The Vale of Bones," "Persia," "Egypt," "Midnight," "Time: an Ode," "On a Dead Enemy," "Lines on hearing a Description of the Scenery of Southern America," "On the Moonlight shining

upon a Friend's Grave," "Switzerland," and "The Oak of the North," may, with tolerable sureness, be assigned to the Laureate.*

The critics did not make haste to discover the promise of these early pieces. For the most part, if the book came under their notice at all, it was treated with cold and contemptuous neglect. Only one contemporary criticism has been traced, namely that which appeared in the Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review (May 19, 1827), in which it is said, "This little volume exhibits a pleasing union of kindred tastes, and contains several little pieces of considerable merit."

To criticise these juvenilia in any serious spirit were a purposeless task, even if we could decide with absolute certainty which of them were the work of Alfred. Passages here and there betoken a far higher quality than is generally to be met with in the versification of schoolboys. There is something, for instance, of martial music in the lines

"When to battle proudly going,

Your plumage to the wild winds blowing,
Your tartans far behind ye flowing,

* R. H. Shepherd, “Tennysoniana.”