“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I am sorry to say that I shall not be in London the 21st, so that I cannot be present at your meeting. Many thanks for asking me. My father has been suffering from a bad attack of gout, and does not feel inclined to write more about Vivisection. You have, as you know, his warmest good wishes in all your great struggle. When are we to see you again? Can you not pay us a visit at Haslemere this summer?
“With our kindest regards,
“Yours very sincerely,
“Hallam Tennyson.”
Extract from letter from John M. Kemble to Fanny Kemble. No date. In packet of 1830–1833:—
“I am very glad that you like Tennyson’s Poems; if you had any poetry in you, you could not help it; for the general system of criticism, and the notion that a poet is to be appreciated by everybody, if he be a poet, are mighty fallacies. It was only the High Priest who was privileged to enter the Holy of Holies; and so it is with that other Holy of Holies, no less sacred and replete with divinity, a great poet’s mind: therein no vulgar foot may tread. To meet this objection, it is often said that all men appreciate, &c., &c., Shakespeare and Milton, &c. To this I answer by a direct denial. Not one man in a hundred thousand cares three straws for Milton; and though from being a dramatic Poet Shakespeare must be better understood, I believe I may say that not one in a hundred thousand feels all that is to be felt in him. There is no man who has done so much as Tennyson to express poetical feeling by sound; Titian has done as much with colours. Indeed, I believe no poet to have lived since Milton, so perfect in his form, except Göthe. In this matter, Shelley and Keats and Byron, even Wordsworth, have been found wanting. Coleridge expresses the greatest admiration for Charles Tennyson’s sonnets; we have sent him Alfred’s poems, which, I am sure, will delight him.”
Extract from letter from John Mitchell Kemble to Fanny Kemble:—
“It is with feelings of inexpressible pain that I announce to you the death of poor Arthur Hallam, who expired suddenly from an attack of apoplexy at Vienna, on the 15th of last month. Though this was always feared by us as likely to occur, the shock has been a bitter one to bear: and most of all so to the Tennysons, whose sister Emily he was to have married. I have not yet had the courage to write to Alfred. This is a loss which will most assuredly be felt by this age, for if ever man was born for great things he was. Never was a more powerful intellect joined to a purer and holier heart; and the whole illuminated with the richest imagination, the most sparkling yet the kindest wit. One cannot lament for him that he is gone to a far better life, but we weep over his coffin and wonder that we cannot be consoled. The Roman epitaph on two young children: Sibi met ipsis dolorem abstulerunt, suis reliquere (from themselves they took away pain, to their friends they left it!) is always present to my mind, and somehow the miserable feeling of loneliness comes over one even though one knows that the dead are happier than the living. His poor father was with him only. They had been travelling together in Hungary and were on their return to England; but there had been nothing whatever to announce the fatal termination of their journey; indeed, bating fatigue, Arthur had been unusually well. Our other friends, though all mourning for him as if he had been our brother, are well.”
In my chapter on Italy I have written some pages concerning Mr. and Mrs. Browning, and printed two or three kind letters from him to me. It is a great privilege, I now feel, to have known, even in such slight measure these two great poets. But what an unspeakable blessing and honour it has been for England all through the Victorian Age to have for her representatives and teachers in the high realm of poetry, two such men as Tennyson and Browning; men of immaculate honour, blameless and beautiful lives, and lofty and pure inspiration! Not one word which either has ever published need be blotted out by any recording angel, and, widely different as they were, their high doctrine was the same. The one tells us that “good” will be “the final goal of ill”; the other that—