Category: Biographies

Alfred Tennyson

IN writing this brief sketch of the Life of Tennyson, and this attempt to appreciate his work, I have rested almost entirely on the Biography by Lord Tennyson (with his kind permission) and on the text of the Poems. As to the Life, doubtless current anecdotes, not given in the...

Chapters

9. Chapter 9

yet sheltering the human fiend Garlon, is supplied by Malory, whose predecessors probably blended more than one myth of the old Cymry into the romance, washed over with Christia...

8. Chapter 8

For this reason Geraint removes Enid from Camelot to his own land—the poet thus early leading up to the sin and the doom of Lancelot. But this motive does not occur in the Welsh...

6. Chapter 6

In November Tennyson took a house at Farringford, “as it was beautiful and far from the haunts of men.” There he settled to a country existence in the society of his wife, his t...

7. Chapter 7

Naturally this letter gave Tennyson more pleasure than all the converted critics with their favourable reviews. The Duke of Argyll announced the conversion of Macaulay. The Mast...

12. Chapter 12

Before writing _Harold_ (1876) the poet “studied many recent plays,” and re-read Æschylus and Sophocles. For history he went to the Bayeux tapestry, the _Roman de Rou_, Lord Lyt...

3. Chapter 3

wrote Lockhart, and the verses echoed ceaselessly in the widowed heart of Carlyle. These men, it is part of the duty of critics later born to remember, were not children or cowa...

14. Chapter 14

If I were to describe his outward appearance, I should say that he was certainly unlike any one else whom I ever saw. A glance at some of Watts’ portraits of him will give, bett...

5. Chapter 5

Now the philosophy of _In Memoriam_ may be, indeed is, regarded by robust, first-rate, and far from sensitive minds, as a “damnèd vacillating state.” The poet is not so imbued w...

4. Chapter 4

On reading _The Princess_ afresh one is impressed, despite old familiarity, with the extraordinary influence of its beauty. Here are, indeed, the best words best placed, and tha...

1. Chapter 1

IN writing this brief sketch of the Life of Tennyson, and this attempt to appreciate his work, I have rested almost entirely on the Biography by Lord Tennyson (with his kind per...

10. Chapter 10

“‘“And spake I not too truly, O my knights? Was I too dark a prophet when I said To those who went upon the Holy Quest, That most of them would follow wandering fires, Lost in t...

11. Chapter 11

In the autumn of 1865 the Tennysons went on a Continental tour, and visited Waterloo, Weimar, and Dresden; in September they entertained Emma I., Queen of the Sandwich Islands....

13. Chapter 13

The poet’s versatility was displayed in the appearance with these records of “weird seizures”, of the Irish dialect piece _To-morrow_, the popular _Spinster’s Sweet-Arts_, and t...

2. Chapter 2

The rare book that differs from the rest has a _bizarrerie_ with its originality, and in the poems of 1830 there was, assuredly, more than enough of the bizarre. There were no h...

15. Chapter 15

The question as to Tennyson’s precise rank in the glorious roll of the Poets of England can never be determined by us, if in any case or at any time such determinations can be m...