xwell, no mean historian either in the general
sense or in the special department of Art. It is open to any
one to contend that each and all of these as well deserve
notice as not a few dealt with above; yet if they were
admitted others still could hardly be excluded.

CHAPTER VI

THE SECOND POETICAL PERIOD

The second period of English poetry in the nineteenth century displays a
variety and abundance of poetical accomplishment which must rank it very
little below either its immediate predecessor, or even the great
so-called Elizabethan era. But it is distinguished from both these
periods, and, indeed, from almost all others by the extraordinary
predominance of a single poet in excellence, in influence, and in
duration. There is probably no other instance anywhere of a poet who for
more than sixty years wrote better poetry than any one of his
contemporaries who were not very old men when he began, and for exactly
fifty of those years was recognised by the best judges as the chief poet
of his country if not of his time.

Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809 at Somersby, in Lincolnshire, where his
father, a member of a good county family, was rector. He was the third
son, and his two elder brothers, Frederick and Charles, both possessed
considerable poetical gifts, though it cannot be said that the _Poems by
Two Brothers_ (it seems that it should really have been "three"), which
appeared in 1826, display much of this or anything whatever of Alfred's
subsequent charm. From the Grammar School of Louth the poet went to
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was contemporary, and in most cases
intimate, with an unusually distinguished set of undergraduates, many of
whom afterwards figured in the famous Sterling Club (see chapter iv). He
also did what not many great future poets have done, he obtained the
Chancellor's prize for English verse with a poem on "Timbuctoo," where
again his special note is almost, though perhaps not quite, absent: it
appears faintly and fitfully in another juvenile poem not formally
published till long afterwards, "The Lover's Tale."

It was in 1830 that he made his first substantive appearance with a book
of _Poems_. This volume was afterwards subjected to a severe handling by
the poet in the way of revision and omission--processes which through
life he continued with such perseverance and rigour, that the final
critical edition of him, when it appears, will be one of the