INTRODUCTION
Tennyson and Arthur Hallam, as young men at college, were great friends. The bond of affection between them was probably as strong as it was possible for friendship between two men to be. When Hallam died in 1833, at twenty-two years of age, Tennyson said of him: "He was as near perfection as a mortal man could be". From time to time during the next seventeen years, Tennyson wrote short poems on themes which occurred to him in connection with his thoughts of Hallam. These he finally collected and published in one volume, called In Memoriam.