Her diary, upon which her son has drawn for certain biographical portions of his book shows how keen and how persistent was her interest in the poetry of her husband; it also shows how thorough was her insight into its principles. As a rule, diaries, professing as they do to give portraitures of eminent men, are mostly very much worse than worthless. The points seized upon by the diarist are almost never physiognomic, and even if the diarist does give some glimpse of the character he professes to limn, the picture can only be partially true, inasmuch as it can never be toned down by other aspects of the character unseen by the diarist and unknown to him. Very different, however, is the record kept by Lady Tennyson. As an instance of her power of selecting really luminous points for preservation in her diary, let me instance this. Many a student of the ‘Idylls of the King’ has been struck by a certain difference in the style between ‘The Coming of Arthur’ and ‘The Passing of Arthur’ and the other idylls. Indeed, more than once this difference has been cited as showing Tennyson’s inability to fuse the different portions of a long poem. This fact had not escaped the eye of the loving wife and critic, and two days before her death she said to her son, “He said ‘The Coming of Arthur’ and ‘The Passing of Arthur’ are purposely simpler in style than the other idylls as dealing with the awfulness of birth and death,” and wished this remark of the poet’s to be put on record in the book. It is needless to comment on the value of these few words and the light they shed upon Tennyson’s method. Those who saw Lady Tennyson in middle life and in advanced age, and were struck by that spiritual beauty of hers which no painter could ever render, will not find it difficult to imagine what she was at seventeen, when Tennyson suddenly came upon her in the “Fairy Wood,” and exclaimed, “Are you an Oread or a Dryad wandering here?” And yet her beauty was only a small part of a charm that was indescribable. An important event for English literature was that meeting in the “Fairy Wood.” For, from the moment of his engagement, “the current of his mind was no longer and constantly in the channel of mournful memories and melancholy forebodings,” says his son. And speaking of the year, 1838, the son tells us that, on the whole, he was happy in his life. “When I wrote ‘The Two Voices,’” he used to say, “I was so utterly miserable, a burden to myself and my family, that I said, ‘Is life worth anything?’ and now that I am old, I fear that I shall only live a year or two, for I have work still to do.” The hostile manner in which ‘Maud’ was received vexed him, and would, before his marriage, have deeply disturbed him. A right view of this fine poem seems to have been taken by George Brimley, an admirable critic, who in the ‘Cambridge Essays,’ had already pointed out with great acumen many of the more subtle beauties of Tennyson.