APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
THE COMMENTS OF TENNYSON ON ONE OF HIS LATER ETHICAL POEMS[116]
By Wilfrid Ward
He had often said he would go through the “De Profundis” with me line by line, and he did so late in January or early in February 1889, when I was staying at Farringford. He was still very ill, having had rheumatic fever in the previous year; and neither he nor his friends expected that he would recover after his many relapses. He could scarcely move his limbs, and his fingers were tied with bandages. We moved him from bed to sofa, but he could not sit up. His mind, however, was quite clear. He read through the “De Profundis,” and gave the substance of the explanation I have written down. He began languidly, but soon got deeply interested. When he reached the prayer at the end, he said: “A B” (naming a well-known Positivist thinker) “exclaimed, when I read it to him, ‘Do leave that prayer out; I like all the rest of it.’”