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Occasionally a curious sight-seer, or a poet-worshiper, had been known to stray across the grounds or to climb a tree in order to view the green retired spot; but as a rule Tennyson could still wander unwatched and unseen through the garden, over the downs, and stand alone on the shore of the great sea.
. . . I go out a great deal; but have enjoyed nothing so much as a dinner last week with Tennyson, who, with his wife and one son, is staying in town for a few weeks, and she is just what she was and always will be very sweet and dear: he seems to me better than ever.
The artist is of the same family, he is of the Sons of Joy, chose his trade to please himself, gains his livelihood by pleasing others, and has parted with something of the sterner dignity of man. Journals but a little while ago declaimed against the Tennyson peerage; and this Son of Joy was blamed for condescension when he followed the example of Lord Lawrence and Lord Cairns and Lord Clyde.
To hear some people talk, one would suppose that progress is simply a matter of chronology. That one man or generation comes in time after another is taken as sufficient evidence that the latter has of course superseded the earlier. Do we mean that because Tennyson came after Shelly he is therefore the greater poet?
An epic there could not be, for the Iliad and Odyssey have each a unity of theme, a narrative compressed into a few days in the former, in the latter into forty days of time. The tragedy of Arthur's reign could not so be condensed; and Tennyson chose the only feasible plan.
We take it from between the rocks and think of those lines of Tennyson, which John Fiske declared to be among the deepest thoughts ever uttered by poet: Flower in the crannied wall I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all in my hand Little flower, but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.
They were fond of poetry, and no doubt some of the earliest poems of young Mr. Tennyson were among their favourites, as well as 'Lycidas' and the songs of the cavaliers. Parthy was a better artist and a cleverer musician than Florence, though she could sing and sketch; but both were good needlewomen, and could make samplers as well as do fine work and embroidery.
Had Tennyson written nothing else but these, with the verse included in the volumes issued by him in 1832 and 1842, how high would he have been placed in the choir of song, and how supreme should we have deemed his art!
Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, O Lord, art more than they, TENNYSON, In Memoriam.
Moulton reading the Journal des Debats out loud in his peculiar French. I thought of the "Brook," by Tennyson: "Men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever." The family had not eaten cats and dogs during the siege as, according to the newspapers, other people had done. Mr.
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