The cyclopedias also present numerous examples of coincidences as well as variations--some of the incorrect details being repeated almost verbatim, as though successive compilers had copied over and over the mistakes of their superficial predecessors. This ought not to go on forever. The sketches of Tennyson in Lippincott's _Biographical Dictionary_ (1885) and in the _Americanized Britannica_ (1890) may be taken as samples. In the following sentence from Lippincott's the writer manages to make five or six misstatements: "In 1851 he succeeded Wordsworth as poet-laureate, and about the same time he married, and retired to Faringford, in the Isle of Wight, where he resided until 1869, when he removed to Petersfield, Hampshire." In the biographical supplement of the _Americanized Britannica_, this becomes two or three sentences, viz.: "He was made poet-laureate in 1851. It was about this time, too, that Tennyson married, returning to Faringford, in the Isle of Wight, where he lived until 1869.... It was in this year the poet moved from the Isle of Wight and took up his residence in Petersfield, Hampshire." There are similar passages in Appleton's and Johnson's cyclopedias. It is perfectly plain that there was not much independent investigation in these unscholarly performances. MISTAKES. Mistake No. 1: Tennyson received the Laureateship in 1850, the year of Wordsworth's death. Mistake No. 2: he was married June 13, 1850. Mistake No. 3: Farringford is misspelled. Mistake No. 4: Tennyson lived at Twickenham three years after his marriage. Mistake No. 5: in 1853, he first took possession of Farringford, which is still his winter residence. Mistake No. 6: in 1867, the poet built a house near Haslemere in Surrey--not at Petersfield, Hampshire--where he spends the summer months. According to Prof. Church, the Laureate bought the Aldworth estate in 1872. The latter date is manifestly wrong.[42] The story of Tennyson's Petersfield establishment may be classed as a myth, though supported by several monuments of research called cyclopedias.[43] Nothing is said of a Hampshire home in Jennings' _Life of Tennyson_, in Church's _Laureate's Country_, or in Van Dyke's admirable book on the _Poetry of Tennyson_; no reference to it is found in the essays on Tennyson by Mr. Edmund Gosse and Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie. Nor is Lord Tennyson's name found in the list of land owners of Hampshire, in Walford's _County Families of the United Kingdom_. One is puzzled to understand how such a report started. TENNYSON'S ELEVATION TO THE PEERAGE.