My wife mentioned that she and her sister had been reading the "Idylls" of late. "Do you mean _my_ Īdylls," he said; "I am glad you don't call them Ĭdylls." We soon got talking of his recently published "Crossing the Bar." When asked what was the precise grammatical reference in the third line of the verse: But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, _When that which drew from out the boundless deep_ Turns again home, he answered rather emphatically, "I meant _both_ human life[61] _and_ the water." He went on, "They say I write so slowly. Well, that poem came to me in five minutes. Anyhow, under ten minutes." Afterwards, when I had some quiet talk with Lady Tennyson, she confirmed what he had implied as to the rapidity with which he usually composed. At this point I shall do well to insert extracts from my dear wife's journal, describing a few incidents in what proved our last visit to Farringford. It was at the end of January 1892, when the Poet, born on August 6,[62] 1809, was well on in his eighty-third year. She writes as follows: VISIT TO FARRINGFORD, JANUARY 1892 By Mrs. MONTAGU BUTLER On January 26 Montagu and I left our two small boys at Eton Villa, Shanklin, to spend the night at Lambert's Hotel, Freshwater. After leaving our traps at the hotel we walked up to Farringford in time for two o'clock lunch. I sat next the Poet at table, and had some talk with him. He spoke of the metres of Horace, and said that he always thought his Sapphics uninteresting and monotonous. "What a relief it is," he said, "when he _does_ allow himself some irregularity, for instance: Laurea donandus Apollinari." On the other hand, he admired his Alcaics immensely. The discovery for which he always hoped the most was of some further writings of Sappho herself. He considered the metre beautiful under her treatment. Then we spoke of Schliemann, of whom I had just been reading in Schuchardt's book, and he said he had no faith in him. "How could a great city have been built on a little ridge like that (meaning Hissarlik)? Where would have been the room for Priam's fifty sons and fifty daughters?" He also thought the supposed identifications of topography absurd, and preferred to believe that Homer's descriptions were entirely imaginary. When I said that I thought that a disappointing view, he called me "a wretched localizer." "They try to localize me too," he said. "There is one man wants to make out that I describe nothing I have not seen." Also, with some irritation, of other accounts of himself: "Full of lies, and ---- made me tell a big one at the end."