Thomas Wentworth Higginson has recently written in the "Atlantic Monthly" some very interesting reminiscences of famous men in England, which contain this description of Tennyson:

"He was tall and high shouldered, careless in dress, and while he had a high and domed forehead, yet his brilliant eyes and tangled hair and beard gave him rather the air of a partially reformed Corsican bandit, or else an imperfectly secularized Carmelite monk, than of a decorous and wellgroomed Englishman.”

After his marriage he removed to Farringford, Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, where he continued to live exclusively until 1869, and at intervals all his life. Here his love for country life and for seclusion were completely gratified. Here he made those fine observations of nature which are detected in many of his poems, and passed much of his time in the open air. He had no fondness for sport, and did not affect the country for the same reason that so many Englishmen do, but from a real poetic delight in its pomps and shows. The friends he loved were invited to visit him here, and he had great pleasure in entertaining them. His favorite time for exercising this hospitality was from Saturday until Monday, and many of his guests were thus invited. Then they wandered by the wild sea, or out upon the downs, where the gorse flamed like a conflagration, or in the lanes, which were crowded with anemones and primroses, or climbed up to the beacon-staff, or to the Needles, or sat on the lawn with the gentle invalid, Mrs. Tennyson, who could not walk without support, and was often wheeled about by her husband and

sons in a chair. She is described as a very lovely woman, gifted and appreciative, who held the devotion of her husband to the last days of his life. The house was completely hidden from the view of passers-by. The interior was very attractive, with a glow of crimson everywhere in the old time, and a "great oriel window in the drawing-room full of green and golden leaves, of the sound of birds, and of the distant sea." Here the poet frequently entertained his friends by reading his poems to them. The honor was very highly esteemed by them, but sometimes proved a little wearisome, when he became so much interested himself that he read the whole of "Maud" or "The Princess to them at a sitting. Mrs. Browning tells in one of her letters of his having read "Maud" entire to her and her husband, and evidently considered it a rather exhausting entertainment. "Maud" was one of his favorite poems, despite the fact that it received more unfavorable criticism than any of the others. His son describes the reading of "Maud" quite at length, and especially the last reading of it, when he was eighty-three years old. He was sitting in a high-backed chair fronting a southern window, which looks over the groves of Sussex. His head was outlined against the sunset clouds seen through the window. His beautifully modulated voice had retained its flexibility, and he threw great feeling into the lines. He called the poem a little Hamlet," and the hero was evidently much loved by his creator. The passion of the first canto was given in a sort of rushing recitative. No one who had heard it could ever forget the voice singing

or

or

"A passionate ballad gallant and gay,"

"Oh, let the solid ground not fail beneath my feet,"

"Go not, happy day, from the shining fields."

But the most memorable part was when he reached the eighteenth canto beginning,—

"I have led her home, my love, my only friend,

There is none like her, none.

And never yet so warmly ran my blood.

And sweetly, on and on

Calming itself to the long-wished-for end,
Full to the banks, close on the promised good."

"None like her, none.

II

Just now the dry-tongued laurels' pattering talk
Seem'd her light foot along the garden walk,
And shook my heart to think she comes once more;
But even then I heard her close the door,

The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone.

III

"There is none like her, none.

Nor will be when our summers have deceased.

O, art thou sighing for Lebanon

In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East,

Sighing for Lebanon,

Dark cedar, tho' thy limbs have here increased,

Upon a pastoral slope as fair,

And looking to the South, and fed

With honey'd rain and delicate air,
And haunted by the starry head

Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate,
And made my life a perfumed altar-flame;
And over whom thy darkness must have spread
With such delight as theirs of old, thy great
Forefathers of the thornless garden, there

Shadowing the snow-limb'd Eve from whom she came."

One is tempted to quote the whole canto; and we do not wonder that the old poet's voice broke over it, and that tears came to the eyes of the listeners. The pathos of deep joy can go no further. Tennyson's love poetry is always perfect, and puts to shame such writers as Rossetti and Swinburne, who prostitute their genius to write only of the baser element of passion. What verse have they written, with all the license they have given themselves, which can compare with many of this nobler poet, written not in youth, but some of them away on in middle age? What have they to match this verse, for instance? "She is coming, my own, my sweet;

Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;

Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red."

The "Ode to the Duke of Wellington" and "Guinevere were also poems which he was fond of reading to his friends. The Ode was written after he was appointed Laureate, upon the death of Wordsworth, in 1850, and was severely criticised. at the time of its appearance, as were many of his poems written in an official capacity. All will recall "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and the various odes written on the deaths or marriages in the royal family, in this connection. In 1859 appeared the "Idylls of the King," and there was little but applause for this crowning work of the poet's genius. He left some notes on these poems which are interesting. Of "Morte d'Arthur" he says:

"How much of history we have in the story of Arthur is doubtful. Let not my readers press too hardly on details, whether for history or allegory. Some think that King Arthur may be taken to typify Conscience. He is, anyhow, meant to be a man who spent himself in the cause of honor, duty, and self-sacrifice; who felt and aspired with his nobler knights, though with a stronger and clearer conscience than any of them, 'reverencing his conscience as his king.' There was no such perfect man since Adam, as an old writer said."

What would not the jaded readers of too many books to-day give for the thrilling interest with which their elders read the wonderful Idylls when they appeared? Four stories-"Enid," "Vivien," 'Elaine," and "Guinevere" comprised the first series. They were followed by "The Holy Grail," "Gareth and Lynette," "Pelleas and Ettarre," "The Last Tournament," and "The Passing of Arthur." It was twelve years before we had the completed work, and Guinevere had passed

"To where beyond these voices there is peace,"

but there was no flagging of interest, and every loyal lover of "Arthur's Coming" read with equal delight of his "Passing." How they still come

"As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry,
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice
Around a king returning from his wars."

And how we still see

"the speck that bare the king,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light."