poraries Tennyson became,
if we except for the time Wordsworth, the acknowledged head of English
song. At this period the poet resided in London or its neighborhood, his
family home in Lincolnshire having been broken up in 1837, six years
after the death of his father. Here, in spite of the secluded life he
led, he became a notable figure in literary circles, and greatly
increased the range of his friends, correspondents, and admirers. Among
the latter were the Carlyles, Thomas and his clever wife Jane being
especially drawn to the poet, and to them we owe interesting sketches
of the personal appearance of Tennyson at this time. Mrs. Carlyle, in
one of her delightful letters gossiping about Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton,
and Tennyson, esteems the latter "the greatest genius of the three,"
adding that "besides, he is a very handsome man, and a noble-hearted
one, with something of the gypsy in his appearance, which for me is
perfectly charming." This is the historian, her husband's, piece of
portraiture: "A fine, large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-colored,
shaggy-headed man, dusty, smoky, free-and-easy; who swims, outwardly and
inwardly, with great composure in an articulate element as of tranquil
chaos and tobacco smoke; great now and then when he does emerge; a most
restful, brotherly, solid-hearted man." Another portrait we have from
the Chelsea philosopher and scorner of shams which describes the poet
very humanly as "one of the finest-looking men in the world, with a
great shock of rough, dusky, 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 late
decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will grow to."
Besides the Carlyles and other notable contemporaries, Tennyson numbered
at this time among his intimates John Sterling, whose life was written
by the author of "Sartor Resartus," James Spedding, Bacon's editor, who
wrote a fine critique of the 1842 volume of poems for the Edinburgh
Review, Aubrey De Vere, Edmund Lushington, A.P. Stanley (afterwards
Dean of Westminster), and Edward Fitzgerald, the future translator of
the "Rubaiyat," or Quatrains of the Persian Poet, Omar Khayyam. These