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LIFE OF TENNYSON

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

1809. Born, August 6, at Somersby in Lincolnshire. 1811. Arthur Hallam born.

1816-20. Tennyson at Louth Grammar School.

1827. Published, with his brother Charles, Poems by Two Brothers.

1828.

Entered Trinity College, Cambridge.

Met Arthur Hallam.

1829. Won the Chancellor's Prize in poetry.

1830. Poems, Chiefly Lyrical.

Journey to the Pyrenees, with Arthur Hallam. 1831. Left Cambridge. Tennyson's father died. 1832.

Poems.

1833. Death of Arthur Hallam, September 13. 1842. Poems.

1845.

Received a pension, £200, from the Crown.

1847. The Princess.

1850. Made Poet Laureate. In Memoriam.

Married Emily Sellwood. Went to live at Twickenham.

1852. Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.

Hallam Tennyson born.

1853. Settled at Farringford, Isle of Wight.

1854. Charge of the Light Brigade.

Lionel Tennyson born.

1855. Maud, and other Poems. D.C.L., Oxford.

1859. [Four] Idylls of the King.

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1865. Death of Tennyson's mother.

1867. Bought estate at Aldworth, Sussex. 1869. The Holy Grail, and other Poems.

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1880.

The Falcon, at St. James's Theatre.

Ballads and other Poems.

1881. The Cup, at the Lyceum Theatre.

1882.

The Promise of May, at the Globe Theatre.

1884. Made a Peer as Baron of Aldworth and Farring

ford.

Becket.

1885. Tiresias, and other Poems.

1886.

1889.

1892.

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.

Death of Lionel Tennyson.

Demeter, and other Poems.

The Foresters, at Daly's Theatre, New York.
Death of Tennyson, October 6, at Aldworth.

Burial in Westminster Abbey, October 12.

The Death of Enone, Akbar's Dream, and other
Poems, published October 28.

VERSIFICATION

To obtain the present richness and variety of verse in The Princess, Tennyson took great pains in the construction. Of the many rhythmical and metrical expedients he adopted, the following examples (based upon Professor James Hadley's study of the poem, in his Essays, Philological and Critical) are among the most characteristic. We find:

I. "The so-called elision-more truly, the blending of a final vowel with the vowel initial of a following word into a single syllable, or at least what passes for such in the rhythm."

"I would the old God of war himself were dead."

"A bird's-eye view of all the ungracious past."

"O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow and light

Upon her lattice."

II. The same blending often occurs where the second word begins with a weak consonant.

"Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine."

"Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo

Will topple to the trumpet down."

III. So, too, in a single word, two syllables often count as one in the rhythm.

"Some crying there was an army in the land."

"And highest among the statues, statue-like.”

IV. In the, of the, etc., are often treated as filling only one rhythmical place.

"Better have died, and spilt our bones in the flood."

"With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in."

V. Often a short syllable (especially if, as in the second example below, it be final, and followed by an initial vowel) is not given a place by itself in the metre. The following italicized words are treated as dissyllables:

"The general foe. More soluble is this knot."

"Some palace in our own land, where you shall reign." VI. There are many passages of irregular rhythm, in which the sound is admirably suited to the sense.

"And in the blast and bray of the long horn
And serpent-throated bugle, undulated
The banner."

"Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard

In the dead hush the papers that she held
Rustle."

NOTES

In these notes many of the more obvious allusions to historical, classical, and Biblical persons, events, or places, are not explained.

ABBREVIATIONS

BOYNTON, Henry W. Boynton's edition of The Princess (New York, Boston and Chicago, 1896).

DAWSON, Mr. S. E. Dawson's Study of The Princess (second edition, Montreal, 1884).

ROLFE, Dr. William J. Rolfe's edition of The Princess (third edition, Boston, New York and Chicago, 1890).

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2. Lawns. Open, grassy fields. Cf. Milton (On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, lines 85 and 87):

"The shepherds on the lawn

Sat simply chatting in a rustic row."

5. Institute. The People's Institute for the education of the laboring classes.

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15. Ammonites. The large fossil shells of a kind of cuttle-fish. First bones of Time. Fossils of various sorts. 17. Celts. Primitive implements of stone or bronze. Calumets. A kind of tobacco-pipe used by the American Indians.

20. Laborious orient ivory. Chinese balls, carved, one inside another, out of the solid block. The line is famous for the art with which the sound is adapted to the sense. 21. Crease, or kris. A heavy dagger with a wavy blade. 90. Satiated. "We need to remember, in reading British verse, that the secondary accent which we give to so many words of four or five syllables is almost unknown in England."

(Boynton.)

113. The Proctor's dogs. The Proctors are subordinate

officers of discipline. They are attended by servants, a kind of University police, called "bull-dogs" by the students.

161. Lost their weeks. Because of absence from the college, they were unable to count the term as one of the nine terms of actual residence which candidates for the bachelor's degree at Cambridge must pass.

199. Solecisms. Here the word means "things out of the ordinary; extravagances."

I.

5-21. These lines, like all the others dealing with the "weird seizures," were added in the fourth edition.

19. Court-Galen. Galen, a famous physician, lived in the second century, A. D.

27. Pedant's. Pedagogue's.

33. Proxy-wedded, etc. In some cases of marriage by proxy, the representative of the bridegroom stripped his leg to the knee, as part of the ceremony. In the present instance, as the Princess points out (V. 388-390), the parties to the contract were too young to give consent, and the marriage was therefore invalid. "At eight years old,” she could have gone through a ceremony only of very formal betrothal.

65. Cook'd his spleen. Smothered his anger. Cf. the figurative use of coquere in Plautus, Livy, Cicero, and other Latin writers.

109.

ings.

Tilth and grange. Tilled ground and farm-build

110. Blowing bosks of wilderness. Thickets that ve run wild, and are blossoming with flowers.

111. Mother-city. Metropolis.

116.

Without a star. King Gama does not wear the de

orations of any order.

170. The liberties. The outlying grounds of the Princess's University.

239. Uranian Venus. The "heavenly" or spiritu Aphrodite of Plato's Symposium,

244. On this line the poet, in a letter to Mr. S son, has made an interesting comment:

Daw

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