ve, although he was described by one
of the old Northern Farmers he has immortalized, as a boy who would
"sit for hours on a gate gawmin about him!" But this indolence was a
trait that he had in common with many men destined to greatness, and
it clung to him all his life. It was no sign of an indolent mind, but
rather evidence of, perhaps, an over-active one. His earliest volume
of poems--made up of his own with contributions from his brothers,
Charles and Frederick, and published when he was eighteen--though
written all along the track of the preceding years, bears evidence of
much youthful wrestling with the problems of life, mingled with much
that witnesses to the boy's pure joy in living. He began to write
poetry at a very early age, and he found in his family an audience by
no means at one in their appreciation of his talent. After hearing
some of his verses, his grandfather gave him a half-guinea, and
prophesied that it would prove the first and the last of his earnings
by that trade. Whether or not the old gentleman lived to hear of his
getting a whole guinea a line for some of his work, as we think we
remember to have heard was the case with "Sea Dreams," we do not know;
but, with his probable taste in poetry, supposing him to have cared
for the poetry of his time, he would doubtless have looked upon
Alfred's success as another sign of the degeneracy of the age. As has
been hinted, Mr. Tennyson was very careful of his money, and his boys
were not allowed much spending money. Alfred and his brother Charles
had the natural youthful desire to see their poetry in print, but they
could not with all their savings raise the money to meet the expense
of publication. An old nurse of the family, the wife of the coachman,
is authority for the statement that it was her husband who first
showed the boys a way out of the difficulty. "Why don't you make a
book of some of these poems you are all the time writing, and sell it
to a publisher?" Acting on this hint the boys offered their small
collection to a publisher, who doubtless thinking that two families so
well-placed in the county as the Tennysons and the Fytches would
insure the success of their young offshoots' venture, assumed the
expense of printing, and gave the budding poets ten pounds to boot.
The "Poems by two Brothers" appeared in 1827. The news of its
publication was greeted by one of the uncles with the remark: "I hear
that my nephew has made a book. I wish it had