Indeed, how could conventionality obtain a footing in a society in which Mrs. Cameron and Tennyson were the central figures? I recall Mrs. Cameron pressing my father's hand to her heart, and addressing him as "Squire Ward." I recall her, during her celebrated private theatricals at Dimbola, when a distinguished audience tittered at some stage misadventure which occurred during a tragic scene, mounting a chair and insisting loudly and with angry gesticulation, "You must not laugh; you must cry." I recall her bringing Tennyson to my father's house while she was photographing representatives for the characters in the "Idylls of the King," and calling out directly she saw Cardinal Vaughan (to whom she was a perfect stranger), "Alfred, I have found Sir Lancelot." Tennyson's reply was, "I want a face well worn with evil passion." My own intercourse with the Poet was chiefly after my father's death in 1882. Tennyson was then an old man who had passed his threescore years and ten. His deeply serious mind brooded constantly on the prospect for the future, and the meaning of human life, which was, for him, nearly over. There is much of autobiography in some of the poems of those years which he discussed with me. I have elsewhere[65] described his impressive analysis of the "De Profundis." I will here set down the substance of his comments on two other poems dealing with his deep problems of human life, the "Ancient Sage" and "Vastness." "The Ancient Sage" is in form dramatic, and the personality of the two interlocutors is a very important element in it viewed as a work of art. An aged seer of high, ascetic life, a thousand years before the birth of Christ, holds intercourse with a younger man: that loved and honour'd him, and yet Was no disciple, richly garb'd, but worn From wasteful living... The younger man has set down his reflections on the philosophy of life in a set of verses which the Ancient Sage reads, making his comments as the reading proceeds. There seems to be a deep connection between the personal characteristics of the two men--their habits and modes of living--and their respective views. The younger man is wearied with satiety, impatient for immediate pleasure: Yet wine and laughter, friends! and set The lamps alight, and call For golden music, and forget The darkness of the pall.