d. Away back in 1844 Carlyle in one of his
letters to Emerson gives the following description of the then young and
rising poet. It is an authentic glimpse of the real man, as he then
appeared to one of the shrewdest and most critical of the men of that
day.

"Tennyson is now in town, and means to come and see me. Of this
latter result I shall be very glad: Alfred is one of the few
British or Foreign Figures (a not increasing number I think) who
are and remain beautiful to me,--a true human soul, or some
approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can say, Brother!
However, I doubt he will not come; he often skips me, in these
brief visits to Town; skips everybody indeed, being a man solitary
and sad, as certain men are, dwelling in an element of
gloom,--carrying a bit of Chaos about him, in short, which he is
manufacturing into Cosmos!

"Alfred is the son of a Lincolnshire Gentleman Farmer, I think;
indeed, you see in his verses that he is a native of 'moated
granges,' and green fat pastures, not of mountains and their
torrents and storms. He had his breeding at Cambridge, as if for
the Law or Church; being master of a small annuity, on his Father's
decease, he preferred clubbing, with his mother and some sisters,
to live unpromoted and write Poems. In this way he lives still, now
here, now there; the family always within reach of London, never in
it; he himself making rare and brief visits, lodging in some old
comrade's rooms. I think he must be under forty, not much under it.
One of the finest looking men in the world. A great shock of rough
dusty-dark hair; bright, laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline
face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion,
almost Indian looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;
smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,--fit for
loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between;
speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet in these
decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will grow
to. He is often unwell; very chaotic--his way is through Chaos and
the Bottomless and Pathless; not handy for making out many miles
upon."

To this graphic description little need be added of the Tennyson of that
time. He was in the midst of his greatest literary successes, and ju