The inevitable result of the piecemeal and laborious methods employed is that the belated poem lacks cohesion, and although there are gems of thought and expression embedded in the mass of verbiage, it must needs be confessed that “In Memoriam” is a sprawling and unwieldy tribute. The “rich shrine” erected has indeed a great deal of uninspired journeyman work, and is, in fact, not a little ruinous. It is safe to conclude that portions only of it will survive, while “Maud,” that line poem of passion, will endure so long as English verse is read. To the present writer—if a personal note may be permitted—the tone and outlook of this long-sustained effort are alike depressing. This is not robust poetry, and for the already morbid-minded it is easily conceivable that it might even be disastrous. Tennyson in those early years had what we cannot but think the great misfortune not to possess a local knowledge. He made a personal acquaintance with what was then the little village of Clevedon only when “In Memoriam” was completed, and was thus unfortunately unable to verify some of his most important descriptive details. He visited Clevedon only belatedly, and knew so little of the circumstances, although he publicly mourned his friend so keenly and at such length, that he was not quite sure where they had laid him. We observe him trying twice to place the grave, and failing: ’Tis well; ’tis something; we may stand Where he in English earth is laid, And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land. Or else, he proceeds to say, if not in the churchyard, then in the chancel: Where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God. Leaving aside that shockingly infelicitous alliterative expression, “the grapes of God,” intended to convey the meaning of “communion wine,” we know that neither in the churchyard nor in the chancel was the body of Arthur Hallam laid, but in the south transept. But he continues: And in the chancel like a ghost, Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn, making another bad shot. This, however, was remedied in later editions, in which “dark church” was substituted for “chancel.” But, since Clevedon church is not exceptionally dark, why not the word “transept,” which would be absolutely correct and certainly more poetic and less clumsy than “dark church”? The white marble tablet to the memory of Arthur Hallam is fixed, with those to his father and others of the family, on the west wall of the little transept. Speaking of it, the poet says: When on my bed the moonlight falls, I know that in thy place of rest By that broad water of the west, There comes a glory on the walls: