[47] One of Tennyson’s friends asked a cabman at Freshwater, “Whose house is that?” Cabman: “It belongs to one Tennyson.” Friend: “He is a great man, you know?” Cabman: “He a great man! he only keeps one man-servant, and he don’t sleep in the house!”
[48] Now grown into one hundred and fifty acres.
[49] He used to protest against the misuse of words of mighty content as mere expletives, contrasting “God made Himself an awful rose of dawn,” and the colloquial “young-ladyism,” as he called it, of “awfully jolly.” (See the Memoir.)
[50] And, though I knew him to the end of his days, that interval never seemed to lengthen. [Among Mr. Dakyns’s rough notes I find the Greek phrase ἀεὶ παῖς, with an emphatic reference to “The Wanderer.” I know he thought the spirit of him “who loves the world from end to end and wanders on from home to home” was really Tennyson’s own.—F. M. S.]
[51] See Memoir, ii. 400.
[52] [I think that this riddle was originally made by Franklin Lushington.—Ed.]
[53] See Memoir, ii. 288.
[54] ii. 284 foll., 293, “Some Criticism on Poets and Poetry”; ib. 420 foll., “Last Talks”: that wonderful chapter.
[55] See “Poets and Critics,” one of his last poems.
[56] Solaciolum, “poor dear, some solace”; turgiduli ... ocelli (see below), “her poor dear swollen eyes.”