“I experienced this delightful affection towards three successive schoolfellows, till two of them had for some time gone out into the world and forgotten me; but it grew less with each, and in more than one instance became rivalled by a new set of emotions, especially in regard to the last, for I fell in love with his sister—at least, I thought so. But on the occurrence of her death, not long after, I was startled at finding myself assume an air of greater sorrow than I felt, and at being willing to be relieved by the sight of the first pretty face that turned towards me.... My friend, who died himself not long after his quitting the University, was of a German family in the service of the court, very refined and musical.” _Autobiography of Leigh Hunt_, _Smith and Elder_, 1870, p. 75. [Sidenote: _Lord Beaconsfield’s “Coningsby”_] On this subject of boy-friendships and their intensity Lord Beaconsfield has, in _Coningsby_, a quite romantic passage, which notwithstanding its sentimental setting may be worth quoting; because, after all, it signalises an often-forgotten or unconsidered aspect of school-life:— “At school, friendship is a passion. It entrances the being; it tears the soul. All loves of after-life can never bring its rapture, or its wretchedness; no bliss so absorbing, no pangs of jealousy or despair so crushing and so keen! What tenderness and what devotion; what illimitable confidence, infinite revelations of inmost thoughts; what ecstatic present and romantic future; what bitter estrangements and what melting reconciliations; what scenes of wild recrimination, agitating explanations, passionate correspondence; what insane sensitiveness, and what frantic sensibility; what earthquakes of the heart and whirlwinds of the soul are confined in that simple phrase, a schoolboy’s friendship!” [Sidenote: _Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”_] Alfred Tennyson, in his great poem _In Memoriam_, published about the middle of the 19th century, gives superb expression to his love for his lost friend, Arthur Hallam. Reserved, dignified, in sustained meditation and tender sentiment, yet half revealing here and there a more passionate feeling; expressing in simplest words the most difficult and elusive thoughts (_e.g._, Cantos 128 and 129), as well as the most intimate and sacred moods of the soul; it is indeed a great work of art. Naturally, being such, it was roundly abused by the critics on its first appearance. The _Times_ solemnly rebuked its language as unfitted for any but amatory tenderness, and because young Hallam was a barrister spent much wit upon the poet’s “Amaryllis of the Chancery bar.” Tennyson himself, speaking of _In Memoriam_, mentioned (see _Memoir_ by his son, p. 800) “the number of shameful letters of abuse he had received about it!” CANTO XIII.