Chapter 3

--1837-1842.

In 1837 the Tennysons left the old rectory; till 1840 they lived at
High Beech in Epping Forest, and after a brief stay at Tunbridge
Wells went to Boxley, near Maidstone.

It appears that at last the poet had "beat his music out," though his
friends "still tried to cheer him." But the man who wrote Ulysses
when his grief was fresh could not be suspected of declining into a
hypochondriac. "If I mean to make my mark at all, it must be by
shortness," he said at this time; "for the men before me had been so
diffuse, and most of the big things, except King Arthur, had been
done." The age had not la tete epique: Poe had announced the
paradox that there is no such thing as a long poem, and even in
dealing with Arthur, Tennyson followed the example of Theocritus in
writing, not an epic, but epic idylls. Long poems suit an age of
listeners, for which they were originally composed, or of leisure and
few books. At present epics are read for duty's sake, not for the
only valid reason, "for human pleasure," in FitzGerald's phrase.

Between 1838 and 1840 Tennyson made some brief tours in England with
FitzGerald, and, coming from Coventry, wrote Godiva. His engagement
with Miss Sellwood seemed to be adjourned sine die, as they were
forbidden to correspond.

By 1841 Tennyson was living at Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast;
working at his volumes of 1842, much urged by FitzGerald and American
admirers, who had heard of the poet through Emerson. Moxon was to be
the publisher, himself something of a poet; but early in 1842 he had
not yet received the MS. Perhaps Emerson heard of Tennyson through
Carlyle, who, says Sterling, "said more in your praise than in any
one's except Cromwell, and an American backwoodsman who has killed
thirty or forty people with a bowie-knife." Carlyle at this time was
much attached to Lockhart, editor of the Quarterly Review, and it may
have been Carlyle who converted Lockhart to admiration of his old
victim. Carlyle had very little more appreciation of Keats than had
Byron, or (in early days) Lockhart, and it was probably as much the
man of heroic physical mould, "a life-guardsman spoilt by making
poetry," and the unaffected companion over a pipe, as the poet, that
attracted him in Tennyson. As we saw, when the two triumphant
volumes of 1842 did appear, Lockhart asked Sterling to review
whatever book he pleased (meaning the Poems) in the Quarterly. The
praise of Sterling may seem lukewarm to us, especially when compared
with that of Spedding in the Edinburgh. But Sterling, and Lockhart
too, were obliged to "gang warily." Lockhart had, to his constant
annoyance, "a partner, Mr Croker," and I have heard from the late
Dean Boyle that Mr Croker was much