But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crost the bar.

(Written after the poet had turned eighty.)

[The authoritative biography, prepared by the second Lord Tenny. son, appeared in two volumes in the autumn of 1897. The literature, biographical, critical, or elucidatory, is very extensive, and is added to yearly-it includes books on Tennyson and his works by Mr W. E. Wace (1881), Professor Van Dyke (5th ed. 1896), Mr E. C. Tainsh (1868; new ed. 1893), Mr H. J. Jennings (1884; new ed. 1892), Mr Thomas Davidson (Boston, 1889), Mr Churton Collins (1891), Mr Eugene Parsons (Chicago, 1891), Mr A. Waugh (1892), Mr A. Ritchie (1892-93), Mr A. Jenkinson (1892), Mr Joseph Jacobs (1893), Mr Stopford Brooke (1894), Signor Bellezza (Italian, 1894), Mr Stephen Gwynn (1899), Mr A. Lang (1901), and Sir Arthur Lyall (1902), besides essays, criticisms, and articles by the most notable English and American critics, of which a list up to that date will be found in the bibliography appended to Mr R. H. Shepherd's Tennysoniana (1866; new ed. 1879; bibliography separate, 1896). The article by Professor Palgrave in Chambers's Encyclopædia (1892), and that by Canon Ainger in the Dictionary of National Biography (1898), deserve special mention; also Mrs Richmond Ritchie's Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and the Brownings (1892), and Lord Tennyson and his Friends (1893); Mr Frederic Harrison's Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill (and others, 1899); and Canon Rawnsley's Memories of the Tennysons (1900). There is an analysis of In Memoriam by F. W. Robertson (1862), a Key to it by Dr Gatty (1881; 4th ed. 1891), a Commentary on it by Professor A. C. Bradley (1901); and an edition of it, The Princess, and Maud by Mr Charles Collins; a Concordance to Tennyson by Mr D. B. Brightwell (for the works up to 1869); a Tennyson Hand-book by Morton (1895), and a Tennyson Primer by Dixon (1896). See also Mr A. J. Church's The Laureate's Country (1890), Mr J. C. Walters's In Tennyson Land (1890), Mr G. G. Napier's Homes and Haunts of Alfred Tennyson (1892), and Mr B. Francis's Scenery of Tennyson's Poems (1893). Many of the poems have been translated; of Enoch Arden there are nine German versions, seven French, and two Dutch, as well as Italian, Spanish, Danish, Hungarian, and Bohemian.]

MARY BROTHERTON.

Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-33), the son of the historian (see page 193), passed from Eton to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became one of the Tennyson group. He had an exceptional aptitude for literary studies, and showed a precocious faculty for verse-writing and criticism. But his health was already matter of anxiety, and, travelling in Austria little more than a year after entering the Inner Temple, he died suddenly from heart weakness at Vienna before completing his twentythird year. His father wrote a touching Memoir to accompany a privately-printed volume of Remains of his work-prose and verse. His poems and one of his essays were republished by Mr Le Gallienne in 1893; Mr Gollancz also reprinted the poems in his edition of In Memoriam. It would be unfair to judge of what he might have done by what he actually accomplished when little more than a boy, under the visible influence of Keats,

Shelley, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. He will more certainly be remembered as the 'A. H. H.' of Tennyson's In Memoriam, the only begetter of that great elegiac series.

William Cox Bennett (1820-95), son of a Greenwich watchmaker, carried on his father's business, but wrote much for the papers and became famous as a song-writer. He published several collections of songs, including War Songs and Songs of Sailors (set to music by J. L. Hatton), besides Prometheus the Fire-giver.

John Tyndall (1820-93), born at LeighlinBridge, County Carlow, was employed on the ordnance survey, and for three years was a railway engineer; but in 1847 he became teacher of physics at Queenwood College, Hampshire, and in 1848 studied physics and chemistry at Marburg. Already F.R.S., he was in 1853 made professor to the Royal Institution. In 1856 he and Professor Huxley visited the Alps; and this expedition resulted in a famous joint work on glaciers. In 1859 he began his researches on radiation; a later subject was the acoustic properties of the atmosphere. In 1874, as President of the British Association at Belfast, he gave an address which, denounced as materialistic, led to keen and prolonged controversy, but ultimately came to be regarded as little more than a fair claim for the full freedom of scientific investigation about the origin of the world and of life. Conspicuous as were his services to the sciences as an investigator, he was even more eminent as a populariser-in the best sense of the term-of great scientific truths. He did much to secure the recognition by the educated public of much that otherwise might long have been the peculiar property of specialists. His style of exposition was exceptionally lucid, graceful, and free from technical terminology. His wife, who undertook his Life, has in the article in the Dictionary of National Biography given a list of sixteen separate publications; but his contributions to the scientific journals amounted to one hundred and forty-five. His works are largely read in America and in a German and other translations. In 1894 a memorial on his Life and Work was issued, with reminiscences by various friends. He was for some years scientific adviser to the Board of Trade and to the lighthouse authorities, but in 1883 retired from most of his appointments. He was LL.D. and D.C.L., and held numerous honours, British and foreign. Among his works are The Glaciers of the Alps (1860); Mountaineering (1861); Heat as a Mode of Motion (1863); Radiation (Rede Lecture, 1865); volumes on Light, Sound, Electricity, Faraday, and the forms of water in clouds, rivers, lakes, and other aggregations; Fragments of Science (1871; 6th ed. 1879); Hours of Exercise in the Alps (1873); Essays on the Floating Matter of the Air (1881); and New Fragments (1892). Tyndall died from an overdose of chloral administered by his devoted wife.

that it was decided she should winter at Torquay, to which she was accompanied by her beloved brother Edward. For two winters she remained there, for months only lifted from her bed to the sofa, but the bright, keen spirit and indomitable will remained as vigorous as ever. In February 1840 'The Crowned and Wedded Queen appeared in the Athenæum, and shortly afterwards 'Napoleon's Return.' On the 11th July 1840 the sad event occurred which was to throw a shadow over her future life. Her brother Edward, with two companions, all experienced yachtsmen, started for a few hours' pleasure sail in a small yacht on a fine summer's day. Day after day passed in agonising suspense, but the boat did not return; still they hoped against hope, till at last the sea gave up its dead. The blow completely prostrated the stricken invalid; a morbid feeling took possession of her that she was responsible for her dear one's death, who had remained at Torquay moved by her tears at the prospect of parting with him. Her poem De Profundis, never published till after her own death, is

Horne (with whom, though they had never met, she carried on a charming literary correspondence, since published) in his work called The New Spirit of the Age, a series of critical papers on contemporary literature; and in this work she came into connection, all unconsciously, for the first time, with the great influence of her future life. 'The Mottoes' (for the various critiques), says Horne, which are singularly happy and appropriate, were for the most part supplied by Miss Barrett and

a faint reflex of her feelings at this time, of which she could never afterwards speak, even to him she loved the most. In the September number of the Quarterly Review an important notice appeared of her Poems, while she herself was hovering between life and death. It was not till late in the summer of 1841 that she was able to be removed in an invalid carriage, by stages of twenty-five miles a day, to the house in Wimpole Street, where she was to pass, in the seclusion of her darkened rooms, so many invalid years. Meanwhile her fame as a poet was growing. 'The Cry of the Children,' suggested by Mr R. H. Horne's Report on Mines and Factories, appeared in Blackwood's Magazine and attracted much attention. She also co-operated with Mr

Robert Browning, then unknown to each other.'

Late in the autumn of 1844 two volumes of her Poems, dedicated to her father, and including 'The Drama of Exile,' 'The Cry of the Children,' 'A Vision of Poets,' 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,' &c., were published by Moxon, and received with a burst of applause, and Elizabeth Barrett was universally recognised as the greatest womanpoet of her time. Meanwhile, as she lay in her darkened room, and the world was sounding with her praises, the great unlooked-for happiness of her life was coming all unknown to meet her. Dining one day in 1839

at Sergeant Talfourd's, some one pointed out to her cousin, Mr Kenyon, a 'slim, dark, very handsome' young man as Mr Robert Browning, the author of a notable poem called Paracelsus. The name recalled old memories, and Mr Kenyon accosted the young author, and asked, 'Was your father's name Robert, and did he go to school at the Rev. Mr Bell's at Cheshunt?' Next morning the young man asked his father if he remembered a school-fellow named John Kenyon. 'Certainly,' he answered, 'this is his face,' and he sketched a boy's head, in which his son at once recognised his acquaintance of the previous evening. The old comradeship was renewed, and Mr Kenyon often spoke in his friend's house of his invalid poetcousin Miss Barrett, and when her poems appeared

he sent a copy to the author of Paracelsus. When the volumes arrived the poet himself was abroad, but his sister read and was much struck with their beauty, and on his return drew her brother's attention to them, who was at once enamoured with them, and at Mr Kenyon's suggestion wrote to tell the invalid poetess how much he prized her work. This letter, dated 10th January 1845, is the first of that unique series of letters between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, recently published, which embalms for the world its most idyllic courtship.

Robert Browning, whose greatness the Englishspeaking world is tardily coming to recognise, was born in an old house at Camberwell (since taken down) on the 7th of May 1812. His father and grandfather both bore the same name, and both held positions of trust in the Bank of England. His grandfather married Margaret Morris Tittle, who was born in the West Indies and owned property there. The poet's father was their eldest son, and was sent out as a young man to his mother's sugar plantation in St Kitts; but the slave-system was so repugnant to him that he sacrificed a fortune to his convictions, and returned home to take up a small post in the Bank of England. All who knew him intimately agree in considering him one of the most remarkable men they had ever known. A child-like simplicity, unworldliness, and sweetness of nature was joined in him with extraordinary intellectual and artistic gifts. His detective faculty in criminal cases is said to have amounted to genius-as did also his artistic talent (his own desire, thwarted by his father, was to have been an artist); and his power of versifying, his son declared to be far greater than his own. He was a scholar in the finest sense of the word, and had a passion for old books and pictures. In 1811 he married Sarah Anna Wiedemann, daughter of a German shipmaster from Hamburg, who had settled in Dundee and married a Scottish wife whose name was Sarah Revell. From his maternal grandfather, who is said to have been a skilled musician, Robert Browning probably inherited his love for music, as to his German and Scotch ancestry combined he probably owed his metaphysics, and perhaps to the præfervidum ingenium Scotorum somewhat of his poetic fire. Mrs Browning was a woman in every way worthy of such a husband and such a son. Carlyle speaks of her as 'the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman,' and Mr Kenyon declared that such as she had no need to go to heaven, because they made it wherever they were. From the first, Robert Browning's love for his mother was a passion. It is told of him that as a little boy he always said, 'When I am a man I will marry my mamma!'

All through his life at home,

however late he might be out, he never went to bed without seeking her room for his good-night kiss. She was a divine woman,' he used to say, with a tremor in his voice to the very last; and

those who know best say that his mother's was, out of sight, the strongest influence in his life. One little sister, eighteen months younger than her brother, named Sarianna after her mother, and well worthy of her place in that unique family group, completed the quiet Camberwell household. Very early the poetic instinct showed itself in the little Robert; his sister remembered him walking round the dining-room table scanning his verses on the mahogany when his head hardly reached above it. A beautiful, impetuous, passionate and passionately-loving child, full of restless energies, keenly susceptible to music and art, devoted to all

living things-coming home with his pockets full of all sorts of insect and reptile pets, all-from the little speckled frog picked up by him in the strawberry-beds to the mutilated cat rescued from torturing boys-to be given into his mother's loving care, and the boy never forgot the skill and tenderness with which she sewed and dressed and bandaged poor pussy's wounds, till she nursed her back to health. Probably for the sake largely of a few hours' peace in the household, the restless little sprite was very early sent to a lady's school near, with the result of a mutiny among the mothers of the other pupils, who declared that their darlings must be neglected as they were so speedily outstripped by Master Browning; to which the worthy lady pertinently replied that if they could give their children 'Master Browning's intellect' she could easily satisfy them! By the time he was twelve he had written a little volume of poems, which he called Incondita; but a publisher was sought in vain, and in disgust he threw the neatly-stitched little manuscript into the fire.

His mother, however, had shown it meanwhile to her friend Miss Flower, who admired some of the verses so much that she copied them and showed them to the well-known Unitarian minister, Mr W. J. Fox; Mr Fox was also much struck by their promise, and proved in later years of valuable literary assistance to the boy-poet. For. Miss Flower the young Robert conceived a warm boyish affection, and never to the end could mention her name with indifference. From his earliest school he was sent to that of the Misses Ready, and afterwards to that of their brother, where he remained till he was fourteen. Schoollife, however, did not seem suited to him, and though he was well and kindly cared for he greatly disliked it, and his parents decided to allow him to continue his education under masters at home. His father's house was crammed with books, and he read omnivorously. Like his future wife, he delighted as a child in Pope's Homer. Byron was his first poetical master, and he always retained much of his early admiration for him. When he was about fourteen he fell under the influence of Shelley, whose works he had seen advertised at a second-hand book shop and begged his mother to procure for him. She brought him home on the same day most of Shelley's poems, and those also of the still less known Keats. They came to him, as he afterwards said, like the two nightingales that sang that May night by his father's garden. For long Shelley was for him the master of song; nor was it alone on his literary and poetic side that Shelley's influence was felt; for a time it was subversive of his religious faith, and the boy became a professing atheist. For two years also he became a vegetarian, but finding his eyesight becoming weak he returned to his ordinary diet. These years, between childhood and manhood, while the growing mind was wrestling with the great problems of the universe, were for him a time of unrest and rebellion, to which in later years he looked back, for the grief they caused his mother, with a tender sorrow. In his eighteenth year he attended for a short time the Greek class in the London University, and it was about this time that his final choice of poetry as a profession was made. His first attempt to qualify himself for it was by reading through the whole of Johnson's Dictionary! How Robert Browning's mind worked itself clear from the unsettling influences of Shelley we have no definite record; but it is evident that over the weltering mental chaos already was beginning to brood the cosmic spirit of God when, before the completion of his twentyfirst year, he wrote Pauline. He was the child of a Christian household-his idolised mother was deeply devout; his own instincts were, he tells us, 'passionately religious;' about this time also Canon Melville's preaching attracted him strongly ; and all of these influences doubtless combined to dispel the atheistic darkness.

His one confidante in the writing of Pauline was

his sister-his parents were not in the secret; hence it was an aunt who, hearing that 'Robert had written a poem,' volunteered money for its publication. A publisher was found in Saunders and Otley, and Pauline appeared anonymously early in 1833. Mr Fox reviewed it favourably in his Monthly Repository, and in thanking him the young poet says, 'I shall never write a line without thinking of the source of my first praise.' The poem is boyish, feverish, chaotic, but it is full of fire and passion and genius, and gives rich promise of what was in store for the future. A graceful word or two in a subsequent article in the Monthly Repository, and a passing notice in the Athenæum and the Literary Gazette were its only other reviews, and most of the unsold copies were deliberately torn up by the poet and his sister! In 1833-34 he visited Russia with Mr Benckhausen, the Russian Consul-General, and to his experiences then we owe his wonderful description of Russia's 'black verst on verst of pine' in Ivàn Ivànovitch. After his return home he applied for appointment to a political mission to Persia, and was much disappointed to find the place filled up. In 1834 he began a series of contributions to the Monthly Repository, to which he sent five poems, including 'Porphyria's Lover' and 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation.' In 1835 he published Paracelsus. Mr Fox reviewed it in the Monthly Repository; and John Forster was the first to draw public attention to the young poet by his article in the Examiner, in which he ungrudgingly admits its unequivocal power and promise.

Soon after the publication of Paracelsus, the family removed from Camberwell to a quaint old house in a large garden opening on the Surrey Hills at Hatcham. Paracelsus had compelled the recognition of the literary men of the day, and a wider social life was opened to its author. The actor Macready was among the new acquaintances of this time, and at his house he first met his reviewer, Forster. After a supper-party at Sergeant Talfourd's, where Wordsworth, Browning, and Landor met for the first time, Wordsworth answered the toast of their host to 'Robert Browning, the youngest poet of England ;' and as they were leaving the house Macready said, 'Write a play, Browning, and keep me from going to America.' The reply was, 'What do you say to a drama on Strafford?' On 1st May 1837 Strafford was performed in Covent Garden Theatre, Macready and Helen Faucit acting the principal parts; it promised to prove a success on the stage, but after the first five nights the actor who took the part of Pym deserted. The play was published by Longman, in April 1838. Meanwhile Mr Browning was at work on Sordello, and on Good Friday 1838 he sailed for Trieste, en route for Venice, on his first visit to Italy. On this voyage the two poems, How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix and Home Thoughts from the Sea, were written. 'I went to Trieste,' he writes, 'then