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 TENNIS Paint Rock, Flint, and Duck rivers, and Elk and Shoal creeks, entering it from the right ; and the Hiawassee, Big Sandy, and Clark's rivers, and Town and Big Bear creeks, from the left. The fall of the river in its whole course is computed at about 2,000 ft. It is navigable from the Muscle shoals to its en- trance into the Ohio, 259 m. ; and above the shoals steamboats ascend to Knoxville, nearly 500 m. The scenery on the upper portion of the river is very beautiful. Darby estimates the area drained by the Tennessee and its trib- utaries at 41,000 sq. m. TENNIS, a game of ball, played in a court built for the purpose, with a playing floor 112 by 40 ft., end walls 30 ft. high, side walls 20 ft. high, and usually lighted by skylights or windows above the 20-foot line. The players are two or four persons divided as partners on the "service" side and the "hazard" side. The ball is struck with a bat, called a racket, the striking part of which is covered with a close hard network of tendon. The player or party in strikes a ball, or " serves " it, against the head wall of the court. This ball must come to the ground over "the line," which is a network stretched across the middle of the court, 5 ft. high at each end and 3 ft. high in the 'middle. It is returned by the player or party out, who must in turn deliver it, by its rebound, at a certain place in the court, when it is again struck by the player in ; and so the game continues. Whoever fails to " put the ball up " properly on the head wall, or to de- liver it at the proper place on the court, loses. If it is the player in that fails, he loses his hand and goes out ; if it is the player already out, his adversary scores a stroke toward game. There are several other contingencies which go to making the score, and the numerous angles caused by the walls constitute the in- tricacies of the game. The name is from the French tenez, hold, as in striking the ball the racket must be held firmly. The game origi- nated in France in the 15th century, and Louis XL, Henry II., and Charles IX. were expert players.' M. Barre, who died in 1873, for many years superintendent of the tennis court in the Tuileries, was considered the best play- er that ever lived. The oldest English tennis court was built early in the 16th century in Hampton Court palace. There are two or three club courts in London, one at Leaming- ton, and one at Brighton. TEMYSON, Alfred, an English poet, born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, in 1809. His father was the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, rector of Somersby and vicar of Bennington and Grimsby. His mother was a daughter of the Rev. Stephen Fytche, vicar of Louth. Alfred is the third of twelve children. He received his early education from his father, and was sent to Trinity college, Cambridge, where in 1829 he gained the chancellor's medal for a poem in blank verse entitled "Timbuctoo." In 1827, with his brother Charles (who has TENNYSON 651 since become vicar of Grasby and assumed the name of Turner), he had published a small volume entitled " Poems, by Two Brothers." Coleridge expressed the opinion that only the pieces signed " C. T." gave promise of a com- ing poet. In 1830 Alfred published " Poems, chiefly Lyrical," in which the only striking piece was "Mariana;" but a revised and en- larged edition (1833) contained " The Lady of Shalott," " The May Queen," " (Enone," " A Dream of Fair Women," and "The Lotos-Eat- ers." This volume attracted comparatively little attention. In 1842 he published " Eng- lish Idyls, and other Poems " (2 vols.), which contained all that he cared to preserve of the previous volume, and included also "Locksley Hall," " Morte d' Arthur," " The Talking Oak," " The Day-Dream," " The Two Voices," " St. Simeon Stylites," and " Ulysses." Tennyson's acknowledged rank as the first of living poets dates from the publication of these volumes. In 1847 he published " The Princess, a Med- ley," in blank verse, which has for its theme the question of the proper sphere of woman. The songs that form the interludes were in- troduced in the second edition. "In Memo- riam," a series of 129 brief elegiac poems, sug- gested by the death of his friend Arthur Hen- ry Hallam (see HALLAM), and written at inter- vals since 1833, appeared anonymously in 1850. On Nov. 21, 1850, after the death of Words- worth, Tennyson was appointed poet laureate. His only notable performances in that capacity are the " Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington " and the " Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava," the popularity of each of which has been inversely as its merits. Both of these were included in the volume entitled "Maud, and other Poems" (1855). " Maud " was so anomalous, both in narrative treatment and metrical construction, that crit- ics and readers were widely at variance con- cerning it; but there was no dissent from the applause which greeted the "Idyls of the King" (1859), four stories in blank verse, under the titles "Enid," "Vivien," "Elaine," and "Guinevere," drawn from the legends of King Arthur. These began a series which was continued in "The Holy Grail," "Gareth and Lynette," "Pelleas and Etarre," "The Last Tournament," and "The Passing of Ar- thur " (1869-'72). The whole epic had been foreshadowed in the prelude to the fragment entitled "Morte d'Arthur," which after 30 years found its place in the closing poem of the series. " Enoch Arden, and other Poems " (1864), included "Sea Dreams, an Idyl," for which Tennyson had received 10 a line on its original publication in "Macmillan's Ma- gazine." With the exception of "Tithonus," "The Northern Farmer" (in dialect), and one or two other short pieces, the volume contained nothing worthy of the laureate ; but the principal poem met with a wide popularity, and its title has become prover- bial, from the supposed peculiarity of its