Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/73

 Tennyson style are obviously borrowed from Byron, Moore, and other favourites of the hour; and only here and there does it exhibit any distinct element of promise. It seems to have attracted no notice either from the press or the public.

In February 1828 Tennyson (as also his brother Charles) matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he speedily became intimate with a remarkable group of young men, including J. R. Spedding, Monckton Milnes, R. C. Trench, Blakesley, J. Mitchell Kemble, Merivale, Brookfield, Charles Buller, and Arthur Hallam, youngest son of the historian this last destined to become his dearest friend, and profoundly to influence his character and genius during his whole life. 'He was as near perfection,' Tennyson used to say in after times, 'as mortal man could be.' The powers of Tennyson now developed apace; for, besides enjoying the continual stimulus of society such as that just mentioned, he pursued faithfully the special studies of the place, improving himself in the classics, as well as in history and natural science. He took a keen interest in political and social questions of the day, and also worked earnestly at poetic composition. To what purpose he had pursued this last study was soon to be proved by his winning the chancellor's medal for English verse on the subject of 'Timbuctoo' in June 1829. His father had urged him to compete; and having by him an old poem on the 'Battle of Armageddon,' he adapted it to the new theme, and so impressed the examiners that, in spite of the daring innovation of blank verse, they awarded him the prize. Monckton Milnes and Arthur Hallam were among his fellow-candidates. The latter, writing to his friend W. E. Gladstone, spoke with no less generosity than true critical insight of 'the splendid imaginative power that pervaded' his friend's poem. It certainly deserved this praise, and is as purely Tennysonian as anything its author ever produced.

'Timbuctoo' was speedily followed by the appearance of a slender volume of 150 pages entitled 'Poems chiefly Lyrical,' which appeared in 1830 from the publishing house of Effingham Wilson in the Royal Exchange. The volume contained, among other pieces which the author did not eventually care to preserve, such now familiar poems as 'Claribel,' the 'Ode to Memory,' 'Mariana in the Moated Grange' (based upon a solitary phrase in 'Measure for Measure'), the 'Recollections of the Arabian Nights,' the 'Poet in a golden clime was born,' the 'Dying Swan: a Dirge,' the 'Ballad of Oriana,' and 'A Character.' If the unconscious influence of any poetic masters is to be traced in such poems, it is that of Keats and Coleridge; but the individuality is throughout as unmistakable and decisive as the indebtedness. If the poems exhibit here and there on their descriptive side a lush and florid word-painting unchastened by that perfect taste that was yet to come, there is no less clearly discernible a width of outlook, a depth of spiritual feeling as well as a lyric versatility, which from the outset distinguished the new-comer from Keats. The poetry-loving readers of the day were not, however, at once attracted by the book. The spell of Byron was still powerful with one public, and Wordsworth had already won the hearts of another. The poets and thinkers of the day, however, promptly recognised a kindred spirit. In the 'Westminster Review' the poems were praised by Sir John Bowring. Leigh Hunt noticed them favourably in the 'Tatler;' and Arthur Hallam contributed a very remarkable review (lately reprinted) to the 'Englishman's Magazine'—a short-lived venture of Edward Moxon. In the summer of this year Tennyson joined his friend Hallam in an expedition to the Perenees. Hallam, with John Sterling, Trench, and others, had deeply interested himself in the ill-fated insurrection, headed by General Torrijos, against the government of Ferdinand II. Tennyson returned from the expedition stimulated by the beautiful scenery of the Pyrenees. Parts of 'Œnone' were then written in the valley of Cauterets.

In February 1831 Tennyson left Cambridge without taking a degree. His father was in bad health, and his presence was much desired at Somersby. Although the two years and a half spent at Trinity had brought him, through the friends made there, some of the best blessings of his life, he left college on no good terms with the university as an Alma Mater. In a sonnet penned in 1830 he denounced their 'wax-lighted' chapels and 'solemn organ-pipes,' because while the rulers of the university professed to teach, they 'taught him nothing, feeding not the heart.' But his friends, and notably Arthur Hallam, had supplied this defect in the Cambridge curriculum; and Tennyson returned to his village home full of devotion to his mother, who was soon to be his single care, for his father died suddenly— leaning back in his study chair—within a month of his son's return. Meantime Arthur Hallam had become a frequent and intimate visitor to the house, and had formed an attachment to