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TENNYSON, 1809-1892

Biographical Outline.-Alfred Tennyson, born at Somersby, North Lincolnshire, August 6, 1809; father rector of Somersby; Tennyson is the fourth of twelve children, and two of his seven brothers also become poets of some distinction; his father was the son of an English gentleman, who had disinherited him in favor of a younger brother; Tennyson is taught at home till his seventh year, when he is sent to Lowth to live with his grandmother and to attend the grammar school of that town; he passes four years unpleasantly at this school, under a strict and passionate master; in 1820 he returns to Somersby, and remains there under his father's tuition till he enters college; he becomes an omnivorous reader, especially of poetry, in his father's good library, and is inspired by the charm of his rural surroundings at Somersby, which were celebrated later in his "Ode to Memory;" in his thirteenth year, in a letter to his mother, he writes a critical review of Milton's "Samson Agonistes," illustrating his points by references to Homer, Dante, and other poets; he began to write verse at the age of eight, first praising the flowers in Thomsonian blank verse and then, having fallen under the spell of Pope's "Homer," writing "hundreds and hundreds of lines in the regular Popeian metre ; " before his thirteenth year he wrote an "epic" of six thousand lines, and his father predicted, "if Alfred should die, one of our greatest poets will have gone;" in 1827 Tennyson collaborates with his brother Charles in publishing, through a bookseller of Lowth, a volume entitled " Poems by Two Brothers," for which they receive £20, one-half being taken in books; Tennyson's part in this volume consists mainly of imitations of

Byron, Moore, and other favorites, and is inferior to his earlier poems, which he rejected from the published volume as being "too much out of the common for the public taste;" these rejected poems, of which specimens were afterward collected by his son, show an astonishing command of metre and music.

In February, 1828, with his brother Charles, Tennyson matriculates at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he soon becomes intimate with such stimulating companions as J. R. Spedding, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), J. M. Kemble, Merivale, R. C. Trench, Charles Buller, and Arthur Hallam, the youngest son of the historian and the dearest friend of Tennyson; in "In Memoriam," of which Hallam is the subject, the poet calls him "as near perfect as mortal man can be;" Tennyson does excellent work as a student at Cambridge, devoting himself especially to the classics as well as to history and the natural sciences; he also takes a keen interest in the political questions of the day, and works constantly at metrical composition; in June, 1829, at the instigation of his father, he competes for and wins the chancellor's medal, with verses entitled "Timbuctoo;" this was really an old poem of Tennyson's, written in blank verse on "The Battle of Armageddon" and adapted to the new theme; Alfred Ainger calls it "as Tennysonian as anything the author ever produced;" Tennyson's competitors in this contest were Milnes and Hallam; in 1830 he publishes a volume of one hundred and fifty pages, entitled "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical," and containing, besides other poems afterward discarded, "Claribel," "An Ode to Memory," "Mariana in the Moated Grange," "The Dying Swan," etc.; although not at first appreciated by the public, Tennyson's work in this volume is praised by Leigh Hunt and by John Bowring, who commends it in the Westminster Review; in the summer of 1830, with his friend Hallam, Tennyson makes an expedition to the Pyrenees, where he receives much poetic stimulation from the

beautiful scenery and where he writes parts of "Enone" in the valley of Carterets in February, 1831.

After two and one-half years at Cambridge he is compelled by the ill health of his father to leave the university; in 1830 he expresses disapproval of the educational methods prevailing at Cambridge, in a sonnet, complaining that "they taught him nothing, feeding not the heart; " his father dies within a month after Tennyson leaves Cambridge, and Arthur Hallam becomes a very frequent and intimate visitor of the poet and his mother at the Somersby rectory; in 1831 Hallam becomes engaged to Tennyson's sister Mary; their ideal courtship is immortalized later by the poet in "In Memoriam ; as the new rector of Somersby did not care to occupy the manse, the Tennysons remained there till 1837; during these years Tennyson frequently visits Hallam's family in Wimpole Street, London, and there ardently discusses literary and social questions, while his manuscript poems are handed about freely among his intimate friends for criticism before publication; in the summer of 1832 Tennyson and Hallam make a tour of the Rhine district, and in December of that year the poet publishes "Poems by Alfred Tennyson," a volume including The Lady of Shalott," "The Miller's Daughter," "The Palace of Art," "The Lotos Eaters," and "A Dream of Fair Women; three hundred volumes of the new poems are promptly sold, but they are condemned in a silly and brutal criticism in the Quarterly Review, with the result that Tennyson publishes no more verse for ten years.

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On September 15, 1833, Arthur Hallam dies suddenly at Vienna, while travelling with his father; his body is brought to England, and is interred at Clevedon, Somerset, in a church overlooking the Bristol Channel; Tennyson and his family are overwhelmed by the loss, and he writes at this time fragments of In Memoriam," though this poem was not completed and published till ten years afterward; about this time he writes also "Two Voices," and "Thoughts on Suicide;"

he afterward declared that the loss of Hallam blotted out all joy from his life and made him long for death; during the next few years he remains at Somersby, "reading widely all literatures, polishing old poems, making new ones, corresponding with Spedding, Kemble, Milnes, and others, and acting as father and adviser to the family at home;" at the marriage of his brother Charles, in 1836, Tennyson takes into the church as a bridesmaid the elder sister of his brother's bride, Miss Emily, daughter of Henry Sellwood, a solicitor at Horncastle, and eventually they become engaged; with his mother and the rest of the family he removes, in 1837, from Somersby to High Beech in Epping Forest, where they remain till 1840; they go thence to Tunbridge Wells for a year and, in 1841, settle at Boxley near Maidstone; meantime Tennyson continues to write poetry and completes, as early as 1835, the "Morte d' Arthur," "The Day Dream," and "The Gardener's Daughter; " in 1837 he contributes to "a volume of the keepsake' order" his poem "The Tribute;" during this year he also meets Gladstone, who becomes thenceforward his warm admirer and friend; meantime Miss Sellwood's family attempt to break off her engagement with Tennyson by forbidding all association and correspondence between them; in 1842 he publishes his "Poems" in two volumes, and this establishes his rank as then the greatest living poet; besides the chief poems from the volumes of 1830 and 1833 and the others just mentioned, these volumes contained "Locksley Hall," "Godiva," "The Two Voices," "Ulysses," "A Vision of Sin," "Break, Break, Break," and other lyrics; meantime what little capital the poet's family have is hopelessly lost by an unfortunate investment in a scheme for mechanical wood-carving, and they pass through "a season of real hardship," during which Tennyson suffers so seriously from hypochondria that his friends despair of his life; his critical condition causes friends to appeal in his behalf to the prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, and in September, 1845, a

pension of £200 a year is granted to the poet from the civil list; the specific appeal is said to have been made by Monckton Milnes, who won Peel by reading to him "Ulysses," although the prime minister had known nothing of Tennyson before.

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By 1846 the Poems" reach a fourth edition; during this year Tennyson is boldly assailed by Bulwer Lytton in his "New Timon," and is called "Schoolmiss Alfred," while his claims to the pension are challenged; Tennyson replies vigorously in lines entitled "The New Timon and the Poets," which appear in Punch over the pseudonym "Alcibiades," having been sent to that journal by John Forster without Tennyson's knowledge; a week later Tennyson publicly expresses his regret and recantation of the whole matter in lines entitled "An Afterthought," still published in his collected poems under the head of "Literary Squabbles;" in 1847 he publishes The Princess," without the six incidental lyrics, which were added in the third edition, in 1850; "The Princess" reaches five editions in six years, but does not add greatly to Tennyson's popularity; in June, 1850, he publishes anonymously In Memoriam," on which he had worked at intervals during the previous seventeen years; its authorship is at once recognized; the public welcomes it with enthusiasm, but the critics are less warm in their praise; the poem is bitterly attacked by party theologians and by some reviewers; in April, 1850, on the death of Wordsworth, the laureateship was offered to Rogers, who declined it on the ground of age; then, chiefly because of Prince Albert's admiration of "In Memoriam," the honor is offered to Tennyson and is accepted; the sales of "In Memoriam" insure to Tennyson an income that warrants matrimony, and he is married to Miss Sellwood June 13, 1850, at Shiplake-on-the-Thames, where the lovers first met after a separation of ten years; in after days Tennyson used to say, "The peace of God came into my life when I wedded her."

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