the room. But at the next meeting he produced the poem beginning

Vex not thou the poet's mind

With thy shallow wit.

Those who remembered the preceding incident gave the lines a personal application.

In the copy of Poems, by Alfred Tennyson, 1833, which is in the Dyce Collection at South Kensington Museum, an autograph manuscript is inserted containing the following

sonnet :

Therefore your Halls, your ancient Colleges,

Your portals statued with old kings and queens,
Your gardens, myriad-volumed libraries,

Wax-lighted chapels, and rich-carven screens,
Your doctors, and your proctors, and your deans,
Shall not avail you, when the Day-beam sports
New risen o'er awakened Albion-No!

Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow
Melodious thunders thro' your vacant courts
At morn and eve-because your manner sorts
Not with this age wherefrom ye stand apart-
Because the lips of little children preach
Against you, you that do profess to teach,

And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart.

There is a note appended to this which serves as comment and explanation:-"I have a great affection for my old university, and can only regret that this spirit of undergraduate irritability against the Cambridge of that day ever found its way into print." This note forbids further reference to the subject.

There were to be many reminiscences of these college | days-life-long influences of friendship and of sorrow. The ; poet had become as close a student of men and manners as he had formerly been of nature. In volumes which the future was to bring forth, his love and his scorn were to be shown for those he knew, though it is gratifying to observe that his love was for the many and his scorn for the few. There are the touching lines of consolation to James

Spedding, and the stirring sonnet to J. M. Kemble, "a latter Luther;" the lines to "Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes," and the masterly delineation of that Character who

Canvass'd human mysteries,

And trod on silk, as if the winds
Blew his own praises in his eyes,
And stood aloof from other minds,
In impotence of fancied power.

Who was he? What was the name of him who

With lips depress'd as he were meek,

Himself unto himself he sold ;

Upon himself himself did feed:
Quiet, dispassionate, and cold,

And other than his form of creed,

With chisell'd features clear and sleek?

The identity of this person has remained a mystery, the nearest approach to a discovery being made when a manuscript note appended by the late Master of Trinity College to a copy of the poem was found to contain the information that "the original was a certain eloquent speaker at the Cambridge Union, of whose subsequent career little or nothing is known." This is vague and disappointing, and, like the fool's story, signifies nothing. A short time ago a beautiful copy of the original edition of Tennyson's Poems (1830) passed through my hands, and turning to this poem I saw with astonishment the record in faded ink, and in the Tennysonian caligraphy, that the "Character" was none other than "Thomas Sunderland, M.A. of Trinity College."

Those college-days were full of rare delight and profit. Who would not have loved to hear Tennyson reading a new poem, Kemble the "soldier-priest" advancing his "cross-worded proof," Brookfield, the "man of humorous melancholy mark," the "kindlier, trustier Jaques," uttering his words of cheer, and Arthur Hallam drawing all to his converse with

Seraphic intellect and force

To seize and throw the doubts of man;

Impassioned logic, which outran

The hearer in its fiery course?

How inspiring it must have been to hear that "band of youthful friends" holding debate on mind and art, labour and state:

When one would aim an arrow fair,

But send it slackly from the string;
And one would pierce an outer ring,
And one an inner, here and there ;

And last the master-bowman, he
Would cleave the mark.

"So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more!" Brookfield, who remained a cherished friend of the poet's, was a clergyman of the Church of England, a distinguished preacher, Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the Queen, and one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. He was especially favoured in his literary friendships. It was at his death, in memory of these days, that the Laureate wrote the sonnet beginning

Brooks, for they call'd you so that knew you best,
Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes,
How oft we two have heard St Mary's chimes!
How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest,
Would echo helpless laughter to your jest!

In later years his friends included many names famous in the ranks of literature-Carlyle, Kinglake, Lord Houghton. Miss Thackeray (Mrs Richie) wrote to Lord Lyttleton that Mr Brookfield was the "Frank Whitestock" of her father's sketch, The Curate's Walk.

No marvel is it that the doings of those Cambridge days passed into a cherished memory, that the "dawngolden times" lost none of their radiance or beauty as they were pushed further back into the past. Alfred

Tennyson, who, like Thackeray, left without taking his degree, on one ever-memorable occasion returned to Cambridge.

I past beside the reverend walls

In which of old I wore the gown ;
I roved at random thro' the town,
And saw the tumult of the halls;

And heard once more in college fanes
The storm their high-built organs make,
And thunder-music, rolling, shake
The prophets blazon'd on the panes ;

And caught once more the distant shout,
The measured pulse of racing oars
Among the willows; paced the shores
And many a bridge, and all about

The same gray flats again, and felt

The same, but not the same; and last
Up that long walk of limes I past
To see the rooms in which he dwelt.

Another name was on the door :

CHAPTER III.

A LYRICAL PRELUDE.

"What be those crown'd forms high over the sacred fountain?
Bards, that the mighty Muses have raised to the heights of the mountain,
And over the flight of the Ages! O Goddesses, help me up thither!
Lightning may shrivel the laurel of Cæsar, but mine would not wither.
Steep is the mountain, but you, you will help me to overcome it,
And stand with my head in the zenith, and roll my voice from the summit,
Sounding for ever and ever thro' Earth and her listening nations,
And mixt with the great Sphere-music of stars and of constellations."

-Parnassus.

ONE of those apocryphal stories, usually related of men of mark, is to the effect that Alfred Tennyson as a little boy was asked what he would like to be when he grew up. "A poet!" said the child. However much we may be inclined to doubt the fact, there is no escape from the conclusion that Tennyson as a young man had no serious aims of earning a livelihood. Even in his day, when poetry was more in demand, and when it was something of a marketable commodity, no one with a practical mind could have thought it possible to obtain a satisfactory revenue from this source. Dr Tennyson was not a rich man, and with his large family could not have saved money, so that it seemed a pressing necessity for the elder sons to choose a business or profession. Charles entered the Church, but Alfred, after leaving College, had apparently no definite plans. He had written in 1827-8 The Lover's Tale, which had been privately printed in 1833 and suppressed, the author "contenting himself with giving a few copies away." Thomas Powell, the author of a book on English writers, thinks the poem "decidedly unworthy" of Tennyson's reputation at that time-a lamentably rash judgment. Of