Or teach the great to help the low,
Pray Heaven for a noble heart,
And let the foolish title go.
For the curious in such matters I give the following extract from the St. James's Gazette relating to Mr. Tennyson's lineage:—That Mr. Tennyson comes of an ancient house is generally known; not every one perhaps is aware of the number of princes, soldiers, and statesmen, famous in British or European history, from whom he can claim descent. Without pretending to give an exhaustive list of his royal and noble ancestors, it may be interesting at the present moment to point out a few of the more renowned among them. The Laureate's descent from John Savage, Earl Rivers (from which stock came Johnson's friend), implies descent from the Lady Anne, eldest sister of Edward IV., and so from sixteen English kings—namely, the first three Edwards, Henry III., John, the first two Henrys, William the Conqueror, Edmund Iron-side, Ethelred the Unready, Edgar the Peaceable, Edmund I., Edward the Elder, Alfred, Ethelwulf, and Egbert. But Edward III. was the son of Isabella, daughter of Philip the Fair, King of France, who descended from Hugh Capet, and nine intervening French Kings, among whom were Robert II., Philip Augustus, Louis VIII., and St. Louis. The last is not the only saint who figures in this splendid pedigree. The mother of Edward II. was Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand III., King of Castle and Leon, who was canonized by Clement X. Again, through the marriage of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, with Isabel, daughter of Peter the Cruel, Mr. Tennyson descends from Sancho the Great and Alphonso the Wise. Other crowned ancestors of the poet are the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and several Kings of Scotland, notably Malcolm III. and the "gracious Duncan," his father. In truth, the Shakespearean gallery is crowded with portraits of his progenitors—e.g., besides those already mentioned, John of Gaunt, Edmund Mortimer Earl of March, Richard Earl of Cambridge, Richard Plantagenet "the Yeoman," Edmund Beaufort Duke of Somerset, Lord Hastings (of the reigns of Edward IV. and Richard III.), and Lord Stanley. Mr. Tennyson is not only descended from the first Earl of Derby and that third earl with whose death, according to Camden, "the glory of hospitality seemed to fall asleep," but from the "stout Stanley" who fronted the right of the Scots at Flodden, and whose name in Scott's poem was the last on the lips of the dying Marmion. "Lord Marmion," says Scott, "is entirely a fictitious personage:" "but" he adds "that the family of Marmion, Lords of Fontenay in Normandy, was highly distinguished; Robert de Marmion, a follower of Duke William, having obtained a grant of the castle and town of Tamworth. This Robert's descendant, Avice, married John, Lord Grey of Rotherfield, one of the original Knights of the Garter, whose great-granddaughter became (in 1401) the wife of John, Lord D'Eyncourt, another ancestor of Mr. Tennyson's; whose uncle, the Right Honourable Charles Tennyson, many years Liberal member for Lambeth, assumed the name of D'Eyncourt by royal licence."
Probably the learned compiler of this abstruse genealogy has no time to study the poets, or he might have read of one who claimed an even more ancient descent:—
NOBLES and HERALDS, by your leave,
Here lies, what once was, MATTHEW PRIOR,
The son of ADAM and of EVE,
Can STUART or NASSAU claim higher?