In accepting (with whatever misgivings) the request of the College authorities to speak some preliminary words in appreciation of the Poet, I do not propose to deal in any detail with the history of his life and work, on which the biography has thrown such interesting and welcome light. The most that can here be attempted is to select a few aspects and illustrations of Tennyson's life-long devotion to his art, such as may serve to bring out something of those gifts and qualities which, wherever English poetry is read, are felt to give to his work its special charm and value. Though I must pass the early years almost in silence, I cannot refrain from quoting the delightful tale, first made known (I believe) by Miss Thackeray,[85] how at the age of five the Poet was seen with outspread arms in a high wind, sailing gaily along and shouting his first line of poetry I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind --he did indeed all his life hear that voice and all other Nature-voices; and also the other tale of ten years later, how on the news of Byron's death (in 1824) the boy went out, desolate, and carved the sad tidings on the sandstone, and (to use his own words) "thought everything over and finished for every one, and that nothing else mattered." Such despairing grief has seemed to some readers extravagant, to be excused on the plea of youth--he was only fifteen: but it must not be forgotten that Byron's death was the final blow of a triple fatality such as finds no parallel in the history of literature. Three men of striking genius and rich poetic gifts--Byron, Shelley, and Keats--were all prematurely lost to the world within four years (1821-4). The fervid sorrow of the impulsive and gifted boy of fifteen, so far from being extravagant, must have been shared by countless readers of all ages who cared for poetry, not in England only. It is true that as the years went on the youthful sympathy of Tennyson with what has been called the Revolutionary poetry was materially modified--perhaps especially in the case of Shelley. Yet there is a striking letter of the date 1834--when Shelley had been dead twelve years, and Tennyson was twenty-five--which should not be forgotten. Henry Taylor had attacked the Byron-Shelley school of poetry; and Tennyson, while not disputing much of his general judgment, adds this penetrating comment: "It may be that he (Taylor) does not sufficiently take into consideration the peculiar strength evolved by such writers as Byron and Shelley, who, however mistaken they may be, did yet give the world _another heart and new pulses_, and so we are kept going." Matthew Arnold was a fine critic and a poet of high distinction, but I have always felt, if we compare his somewhat severe attitude towards the earlier school with that of Tennyson, that it was the latter who showed the truer insight, the wider sympathy, and the juster appreciation.