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 Early in the year 1827 we find Alfred Tennyson and his elder brother Charles together at the Louth grammar-school, and preparing for the press a volume of juvenile poems, written from the age of fifteen upwards. The copyright was disposed of for a small sum to Messrs. Jackson, booksellers and printers of Louth, who published the volume in the spring of 1827, under the title of "Poems by Two Brothers," and with the modest motto, from Martial, on the title-page, "Hæc nos novimus esse nihil."

These poems are 102 in number, few of them extending to great length, as the volume only contains 228 pages. They are written in all kinds of metre, and on all sorts of subjects—classical and modern—strangely alternating. Nearly all of them are loaded with footnotes, and headed by quotations, chiefly from Addison, Beattie, Byron, Cicero, Claudian, Cowper,