It is a singular fact, not I think generally recognised while they were both living, that there are many elements of resemblance in the features of Tennyson and Charles Dickens. I saw Dickens only once at a reading which he gave in St. James’s Hall, and I was then deeply impressed by the power exhibited in the upper part of the head. But it was not until I was looking one day at a beautiful pencil-drawing which Millais had made of Dickens after death that I perceived the striking resemblance between them--a resemblance that was recognised by Tennyson himself, for while this very drawing, now the property of Mrs. Perugini, was still in Millais’s studio, Tennyson, after he had gazed at it for some time, suddenly exclaimed, “This is the most extraordinary drawing. It is exactly like myself.” During those early Isle of Wight days Mrs. Cameron would sometimes take us in the evening to Farringford, where Tennyson, if he were in the mood, would read some of his own poems. It was not reading in the ordinary sense, but may more truly be likened to a deep organ chant, and yet it was effective and impressive to an extraordinary degree. I remember in particular, as he recited one of the songs from the _Princess_, the splendid cadence of his deep echoing voice as it rose and swelled and sank and fell in almost musical response to the changing mood of the verse: [Illustration: HEAD OF CHARLES DICKENS (_Taken after death._) From the pencil-drawing by Sir J. E. MILLAIS, Bart., P.R.A., in the possession of Mrs. Perugini. _To face page 194._ ] O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. It is impossible to recapture by mere description the added beauty which he contrived to confer upon these lines as they came from his own lips, or even to suggest the strength and tenderness of feeling he could command as the tones of his great voice gradually sank and died at the close. Many years later I heard him read again in his Surrey home, whither I had taken Mrs. Bernard Beere on the eve of the production of his play called _The Promise of May_. He read it through to us himself, and here he adopted a more direct and dramatic style, giving admirable point to the humour of the rustic scenes. As we stood up to take our leave he put his hand on Mrs. Beere’s shoulder and said, “You are tall. I am tall too. Carlyle once said to me I ought to have been a grenadier.”