ALFRED TENNYSON (from the chalk drawing by M. Arnault) 24 FARRINGFORD (Tennyson’s residence at Freshwater) 25 TENNYSON (about 1871) 26 MERLIN AND VIVIEN 27 FACSIMILE OF TENNYSON’S MANUSCRIPT, “CROSSING THE BAR” 28 GLADE AT FARRINGFORD (from a water-colour drawing by Mrs. Allingham) 29 FRESHWATER 30 FRESHWATER BAY 30 GUINEVERE 31 ALFRED TENNYSON 32 TENNYSON’S LANE, HASLEMERE 33 ALDWORTH (Tennyson’s home near Haslemere) 33 TENNYSON’S MEMORIAL, BEACON HILL, FRESHWATER 34 ALFRED TENNYSON (from a portrait by G. F. Watts, R.A.) 35 TENNYSON [Illustration: _From a photo by Messrs. Carlton & Sons, Horncastle_ THE BROOK AT SOMERSBY] It was merely the accident of his hour, the call of his age, which made Tennyson a philosophic poet. He was naturally not only a pure lover of beauty, but a pure lover of beauty in a much more peculiar and distinguished sense even than a man like Keats, or a man like Robert Bridges. He gave us scenes of Nature that cannot easily be surpassed, but he chose them like a landscape painter rather than like a religious poet. Above all, he exhibited his abstract love of the beautiful in one most personal and characteristic fact. He was never so successful or so triumphant as when he was describing not Nature, but art. He could describe a statue as Shelley could describe a cloud. He was at his very best in describing buildings, in their blending of aspiration and exactitude. He found to perfection the harmony between the rhythmic recurrences of poetry and the rhythmic recurrences of architecture. His description, for example, of the Palace of Art is a thing entirely victorious and unique. The whole edifice, as [Illustration: AN EARLY PORTRAIT OF TENNYSON Rischgitz Collection] described, rises as lightly as a lyric, it is full of the surge of the hunger for beauty; and yet a man might almost build upon the description as upon the plans of an architect or the instructions of a speculative builder. Such a lover of beauty was Tennyson, a lover of beauty most especially where it is most to be found, in the works of man. He loved beauty in its completeness, as we find it in art, not in its more glorious incompleteness as we [Illustration: _From a photo by Messrs. Carlton & Sons, Horncastle_ SOMERSBY RECTORY, LINCOLNSHIRE Where Alfred Tennyson was born, on Sunday, August 6th, 1809]