when the hills and streams were not yet “dispeopled of their dreams.” Tennyson, on the other hand, was already finding material for poetry in the world as seen through microscope and telescope, and as developed through “æonian” processes of evolution. In a notebook, mixed with Greek, is a poem on the Moon—not the moon of Selene, “the orbed Maiden,” but of astronomical science. _In Memoriam_ recalls the conversations on labour and politics, discussions of the age of the Reform Bill, of rick-burning (expected to “make taters cheaper”), and of Catholic emancipation; also the emancipation of such negroes as had not yet tasted the blessings of freedom. In politics Tennyson was what he remained, a patriot, a friend of freedom, a foe of disorder. His politics, he said, were those “of Shakespeare, Bacon, and every sane man.” He was one of the Society of Apostles, and characteristically contributed an essay on Ghosts. Only the preface survives: it is not written in a scientific style; but bids us “not assume that any vision _is_ baseless.” Perhaps the author went on to discuss “veridical hallucinations,” but his ideas about these things must be considered later. It was by his father’s wish that Tennyson competed for the English prize poem. The theme, Timbuctoo, was not inspiring. Thackeray wrote a good parody of the ordinary prize poem in Pope’s metre:— “I see her sons the hill of glory mount, And sell their sugars on their own account; Prone to her feet the prostrate nations come, Sue for her rice and barter for her rum.” Tennyson’s work was not much more serious: he merely patched up an old piece, in blank verse, on the battle of Armageddon. The poem is not destitute of Tennysonian cadence, and ends, not inappropriately, with “All was night.” Indeed, all _was_ night. An ingenious myth accounts for Tennyson’s success: At Oxford, says Charles Wordsworth, the author was more likely to have been rusticated than rewarded. But already (1829) Arthur Hallam told Mr Gladstone that Tennyson “promised fair to be the greatest poet of our generation, perhaps of our century.”