LORD TENNYSON.

CHAPTER I.

THE materials for a biography of Lord Tennyson, apart from the purely literary incidents of his life, are not considerable. Few among the noteworthy personages of our time have more assiduously shrunk from the public gaze, or have shunned with a more sensitive persistency the "fierce light" which, in this prying age, beats upon the domestic concerns of eminent men. His life has been essentially one of retirement, yielding little to the literary leeches" who swarm in these days that deal in ana." Seldom, during a long life, to be met with in that vortex of wasted ambitions which one calls "fashionable society,”—taking but small part in public affairs,—avoiding with something of shyness whatever of conventional cere

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mony and popular hero-worship he could possibly escape, he has, in a very literal sense of the words, "dwelt apart" from the hubbub and turmoil of the great world, and in his country homes, in the company of his chosen friends, secluded as much as circumstances have allowed from the reach of the curious, has led a life of studious contemplation, shaping into imperishable verse the strivings of the poet's soul. Although more recently the mellowing influences of three score and ten years have relaxed somewhat the austerity of his isolation and social reserve, it may be truly said that he has cherished for the most part an emphatic prejudice against, sometimes deepening into a great hatred of, the babbledom that dogs the heels of fame. At all events he has never given the faintest encouragement to those enterprising littérateurs who delude themselves with the comforting belief that they are benefiting mankind by lifting the curtain which veils the privacy of a great man's home life. That he has a wholesome dread of the fate which, even after a poet has shuffled off this mortal coil, may await him at the hands of indiscreet and irresponsible biographers, is shown by the verses which,

in 1849, he wrote in the Examiner, "after reading the Life and Letters of a Deceased Poet: "

"For now the poet cannot die,

Nor leave his music as of old,

But round him ere he scarce be cold
Begins the scandal and the cry:

"Proclaim the faults he would not show :

Break lock and seal betray the trust :

Keep nothing sacred: 'tis but just
The many-headed beast should know.'

"Ah shameless! for he did but sing

A song that pleased us from its worth ;
No public life was his on earth,

No blazoned statesman he, nor king.

He

gave the people of his best :

His worst he kept, his best he gave.

My Shakespeare's curse on clown and knave
Who will not let his ashes rest!"

The passionate indignation of these lines has lost. none of its fire, nor the invocation any of its warning. They remind the biographer, if he were in any need of such a reminder, that the range of his inquiries has limitations, and that the scope of his narrative must be bounded by

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a sense of what is due to the rights of privacy. Of Lord Tennyson's life, apart from the records of his literary work and the glimpses occasionally afforded by the divulging candour of his personal friends, not a great deal is known, and only the vulgar would seek, without the direct encouragement of family sanctions, to know more.

Alfred Tennyson was born on August 6, 1809, at Somersby, a village in Lincolnshire, about halfway between Spilsby and Horncastle. He was one of twelve children, of whom seven were sons. His elder brothers, Frederick and Charles, became favourably known, when they reached manhood, as writers of poetry that would unquestionablyespecially that of Charles-have made a larger mark in the world but for the overshadowing dominance of his own subsequent powers. Frederick has published a volume of poems, called "Days and Hours," some of which have the true poetic ring about them; but there is a greater wealth of imagery and a subtler depth of thought in his unpublished "Greek Legends." His letters are well worthy to give him a place amongst famous letter-writers, thereby showing how false in his

case, as in that of Alfred, is the popular belief that a good poet is never a good prose writer. The other brothers in a less conspicuous degree wooed the muses, but their fugitive pieces, with scarcely an exception, have been borne on the bosom of that rushing river which carries so much literary drift, promising as well as worthless, down to the great sea of oblivion.

Alfred Tennyson's father was the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., rector of Somersby and vicar of Grimsby, who married Elizabeth Fytche, daughter of the vicar of the neighbouring town of Louth. Dr. Tennyson was the son of a wealthy retired lawyer, George Tennyson of Bayon's Manor, Lincolnshire, but the bulk of the property went tothe second son Charles, uncle of Alfred, who subsequently took the name of D'Eyncourt by royal licence, and was for some time member of parliament for Lambeth. The Tennysons were, in fact, of ancient and honourable descent, tracing their pedigree to the Plantagenets through the old Norman family of D'Eyncourt. In view of the poet's recent acceptance of a peerage, and the criticisms which, in certain quarters, it has provoked,