146. _Vauxhall_. The Gardens were a favorite resort for Londoners early in the eighteenth century and remained popular for a long time. See Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_ (chap. VI). The implication in the present passage is that the Cockney poet gets his ideas of nature from the immediate vicinity of London. 147. _East of Temple-bar_. That is, living in the City of London. 150. _Young Sangrado_. An allusion to Doctor Sangrado, in Le Sage's _Gil Blas_ (1715). ALFRED LORD TENNYSON Tennyson's first poetical efforts, which appeared in _Poems by Two Brothers_ (1827) attracted little critical attention. His prize-poem, _Timbuctoo_ (1829) received the interesting notice here reprinted from the _Athenæum_ (p. 456) of July 22, 1829. _Timbuctoo_ was printed in the _Cambridge Chronicle_ (July 10, 1829); in the _Prolusiones Academicæ_ (1829); and several times in _Cambridge Prize-Poems_. The use of heroic metre in prize-poems was traditional; hence the award was an enviable tribute to the blank-verse of _Timbuctoo_. Tennyson's success was emphasized by the remarkable series of reviews that greeted his earliest volumes of poems. The _Poems, chiefly Lyrical_ (1830) were welcomed by Sir John Bowring in the _Westminster Review_, by Leigh Hunt in the _Tatler_, by Arthur Hallam in the _Englishman's Magazine_, and by John Wilson in _Blackwood's Magazine_. The _Poems_ (1833) were reviewed by W.J. Fox in the _Monthly Repository_, and by John Stuart Mill in the _Westminster Review_. This array of names was indeed a tribute to the poet; but the unfavorable review, was, as usual, most significant. The article written by Lockhart for the _Quarterly Rev._, XLIX (81-97), has been characterized as "silly and brutal," but it was neither. Tennyson's fame is secure; we can at least be just to his early reviewer. It is true that the poet winced under the lash and that ten years elapsed before his next volume of collected poems appeared; but Canon Ainger is surely in error when he holds the _Quarterly Review_ mainly responsible for this long silence. The rich measure of praise elsewhere bestowed upon the volume would leave us no alternative but the conclusion that Tennyson was childish enough to maintain his silence for a decade because Lockhart took liberties with his poems instead of joining the chorus of adulation. We know that there were other and stronger reasons for Tennyson's silence and we also know that the effect of Lockhart's article was decidedly salutary. When the next collection of _Poems_ (1842) did appear, the shorter pieces ridiculed by Lockhart were omitted, and the derided passages in the longer poems were altered.