He once very kindly offered to lend me his house in the Isle of Wight. “But mind,” he said, “you will be watched from morning till evening.” This was in fact his great grievance, that he could not go out without being stared at. Once taking a walk with me and my wife on the downs behind his house, he suddenly started, left us, and ran home, simply because he had descried two strangers coming towards us. I was told that he once complained to the Queen, and said that he could no longer stay in the Isle of Wight, on account of the tourists who came to stare at him. The Queen, with a kindly irony, remarked that she did not suffer much from that grievance, but Tennyson, not seeing what she meant, replied: “No, madam, and if I could clap a sentinel wherever I liked, I should not be troubled either.” It must be confessed that people were very inconsiderate. Rows of tourists sat like sparrows on the paling of his garden, waiting for his appearance. The guides were actually paid by sightseers, particularly by those from America, for showing them the great poet. Nay, they went so far as to dress up a sailor to look like Tennyson, and the result was that, after their trick had been found out, the tourists would walk up to Tennyson and ask him: “Now, are you the real Tennyson?” This, no doubt, was very annoying, and later on Lord Tennyson was driven to pay a large sum for some useless downs near his house, simply in order to escape from the attentions of admiring travellers. Why should not people be satisfied with the best that a poet is and can give them, namely his poetry? Why should they wish to stare at him? Few poets are greater than their poetry, and Tennyson was not one of them. Like all really great men, Tennyson disliked the worship that was paid him by many who came to stare at him and to pour out the usual phrases of admiration before him. Tennyson frequently took flight from his intending Boswells, and he was the very last man to appreciate the “_Il parle_” by which in Paris all conversation was hushed whenever Victor Hugo was present at a dinner and spoke to his neighbour, possibly only to ask him for the _menu_. People have learnt after his death what a possession they had in Tennyson. He may not rank among the greatest poets of England, but there was something high and noble in him which reacted on the nation at large, even though that influence was not perhaps consciously realised. Anyhow, after his death, it was widely felt that there was nobody worthy to fill his place; and why was it not left empty, as in the Greek army, where, we are told, a place of honour was reserved for a great hero who was supposed to be present during the heat of the battle, and to inspire those who stood near his place to great deeds of valour?