Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/77

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The true Tennysonian ring is in the thirty-one lines of " A Fragment," forewarning of the glorious instrument of beauty blank verse was to become later on in the "Idyls of the King":

A veil of mystery overhangs the Continental tour of Tennyson and Hallam in 1830: of it we are told in the Life no record has been preserved. But of the journey through Spain a reminiscence remains in the poem contributed to the Yorkshire Literary Annual for 1832:

In December, 1832, Tennyson's second volume was issued, and sold about 300 copies. Its reception by the reviewers was less than doubtful, the Quarterly in particular distinguishing itself by a savage attack. Tennyson's reply was ten years' silence, broken only by the publication of "St. Agnes" in Lady Blessington's annual for 1837, The Keepsake, and by the appearance, the same year, in Lord Northampton's volume The Tribute, of the exquisite poem, as Mr. Andrew Lang rates it, "Oh that 'twere possible," which was to become the germ of "Maud," published twenty-three years later. Over this contribution a passage of arms occurred between Tennyson and Monckton Milnes. Milnes had written begging for a contribution to a volume Lord Northampton was editing on behalf of the destitute family of a man of letters, and Tennyson in serio-sarcastic vein replied:

"Three summers back, provoked by the incivility of editors, I swore an oath I would never again have to do with their vapid books, and brake it in the sweet face of Heaven when T wrote for Lady What's-her-name Wortley. But then her sister wrote Brookfield and said she (Lady W.) was beautiful, so I could not help it. But whether the Marquis be beautiful or not I don't much mind; if he be let him give