th
the woman whom nature had intended for him. It was in his love-life,
far more than in his poetry, that he attained completeness. When he
died by drowning, in 1822, and his body was burned in the presence of
Lord Byron, he was truly mourned by the one whom he had only lately
made his wife. As a poet he never reached the same perfection; for his
genius was fitful and uncertain, rare in its flights, and mingled
always with that which disappoints.

As the lover and husband of Mary Godwin, there was nothing left to
wish. In his verse, however, the truest word concerning him will always
be that exquisite sentence of Matthew Arnold:

"A beautiful and ineffectual angel beating his luminous wings against
the void in vain."

THE STORY OF THE CARLYLES

To most persons, Tennyson was a remote and romantic figure. His homes
in the Isle of Wight and at Aldworth had a dignified seclusion about
them which was very appropriate to so great a poet, and invested him
with a certain awe through which the multitude rarely penetrated. As a
matter of fact, however, he was an excellent companion, a ready talker,
and gifted with so much wit that it is a pity that more of his sayings
have not been preserved to us.

One of the best known is that which was drawn from him after he and a
number of friends had been spending an hour in company with Mr. and
Mrs. Carlyle. The two Carlyles were unfortunately at their worst, and
gave a superb specimen of domestic "nagging." Each caught up whatever
the other said, and either turned it into ridicule, or tried to make
the author of it an object of contempt.

This was, of course, exceedingly uncomfortable for such strangers as
were present, and it certainly gave no pleasure to their friends. On
leaving the house, some one said to Tennyson:

"Isn't it a pity that such a couple ever married?"

"No, no," said Tennyson, with a sort of smile under his rough beard.
"It's much better that two people should be made unhappy than four."

The world has pretty nearly come around to the verdict of the poet
laureate. It is not probable that Thomas Carlyle would have made any
woman happy as his wife, or that Jane Baillie Welsh would have made any
man happy as her husband.

This sort of speculation would never have occurred had not Mr. Froude,
in the early eighties, given his story about the Carlyles to the world.
Carlyle went to his grave, an old man, highly honored, and with no
trail of gossip behind h