[1] "The brook alone far off was heard." P. xcv. s. 2.
[2] In Bag Enderby Church is a stone memorial tablet to the Burton family,
let into the wall, and dated 1591. Upon it are carved, in bold relief,
parents and children in a kneeling posture. It has a Latin motto,
signifying, that all begins with the dust of the earth, and ends with it.
[3] The name is happily preserved in his patent of nobility, which runs
thus: "Alfred, 1st Baron Tennyson of Aldworth, in the County of Sussex."
[4] About the time of Dr. Tennyson's death, the population of Somersby was
61, the church accommodation 60, and the annual value of the benefice L92.
The population of Bag Enderby was 115, church accommodation 100, and value
L92.
[5] The use of this word misled the Poet himself, who has since exchanged
the term "chancel" for "dark church."
[6] The scene is not laid in Somersby Churchyard, as there is no clock in
the Church tower.
[7] Critics have regarded the term "lying lip" as too harsh; but in Poem
xxxix. it is again applied to sorrow--
"What whisper'd from her lying lips?"
See also Psalm cxx. 2.
[8] It is said of a celebrated clerical wit, that almost his last words
were, "All things come to an end"--a pause--"except Wimpole Street."
[9] This reminds one of the _Jour des morts_--All Souls' Day, or The Day
of the Dead, when it is a Continental custom to visit the graves of
relatives and friends, with pious offerings of flowers, &c.
[10] This invocation to the ship reminds one of Horace's appeal to the
vessel that was to bring Virgil home:--
_Navis, quae tibi creditum
Debes Virgilium, finibus Atticis
Reddas incolumem, precor;
Et serves animae dimidium meae._
Lib. I., Ode 3.
[11] "Sphere" _glomera_.
[12] This fruit of the vine, Matt. xxvi., 29.
[13] "Tangle," or "oar-weed," _Laminaria digitata_, says the Algologist,
"is never met with but at extreme tide-limits, where some of its broad
leather-like fronds may be seen darkly overhanging the rocks, while
others, a little lower down, are rising and dipping in the water like
sea-serpents floated by the waves." Plato, _Rep._, x., has a noble
comparison from the story of Glaucus (498): "We must regard the soul as
drowned ([Greek: diakeimenon]) like the sea-god, Glaucus: who, buffetted
and insulted by the waves, sank, clustered with [Greek: ostrea te, kai
phokia, kai petras]."
[14] In the month of October, 1884, I walked in the thickly wooded
precincts of Hughenden Manor, the seat of the Earl of Beaconsfield; and I
never heard the horse chestnuts patter to the ground as then and there.
Quite ripe, they were constantly falling; and as they touched the
gravelled walk the shell opened, and out sprang the richly coloured
chestnut.--A. G.
[15] In Job xxxvii., 18, we read, "Hast thou with him spread out the sky,
which is strong, and as a molten looking glass?" This term applies equally
well to the sea.
[16] See 2 Cor. xii., 2.
[17] See P. ix., 5.
[18] The tenant farmers on the Clevedon estate were the bearers. The Rev.
William Newland Pedder, who was Vicar of Clevedon for forty years, and
died in 1871, read the burial service. The "familiar names" are those of
the Elton family, which are recorded both on brass and marble in the
church.
[19] The corpse was landed at Dover, and was brought by sixteen black
horses all the way to Clevedon--so says Augustus James, who, when a boy,
witnessed the interment. Sir A. H. Elton, the late Baronet, kindly
corroborated this statement. Besides the coffin, there was a square iron
box, deposited in the vault, which may have contained
"The darken'd heart that beat no more."
It is certain that the Poet always thought that the ship put in at
Bristol.
Hallam's family resided in London, which accounts for the mourners coming
from so great a distance. Augustus James told me, that the funeral
procession consisted of a hearse and three mourning coaches, each of which
was drawn by four horses; and he saw the sixteen animals under cover after
their journey. My friend, Mr. Edward Malan, heard the same story from A.
James.
[20] _It is a fact, that the Poem was written at both various times and
places--through a course of years, and where their author happened to be,
in Lincolnshire, London, Essex, Gloucestershire, Wales, anywhere, as the
spirit moved him._
[21] The effect of vapour in magnifying objects is shown towards the end
of the Idyll, "Guinevere," where it says
"The moony vapour rolling round the King,
Who seem'd the phantom of a Giant in it."
Can "the haze of grief" refer to the tear, which acts as a magnifying
lens?
[22] "My proper scorn"--_proprius_--is scorn of myself, an imprecation.
See Lancelot's self-condemnation at the end of "Lancelot and Elaine."
[23] The churches are not to be identified. Those in the neighbourhood of
Somersby have too small belfries to allow of change ringing. The sounds
may have been only in the Poet's mind.
[24] John, xii., 3
[25] A South African snake--_bucephalus Capensis_--commonly called the
"Boom-slange "--attracts birds into its mouth as prey, drawing them by an
irresistible fascination. Dr. Smith, in his "Zoology of South Africa,"
describes the process.
[26] In Cary's translation of Dante's "Hell," canto iii., line 21, we find
this note on what Dante and Virgil encountered in the infernal
shades--"_Post haec omnia ad loca tartarea, et ad os infernalis baratri
deductus sum, qui simile videbatur puteo, loca vero eadem horridis
tenebris, faetoribus exhalantibus, stridoribus quoque et nimiis plena erant
ejulatibus, juxta quem infernum vermis erat infinitae magnitudinis, ligatus
maxima catena._" _Alberici Virio_, Sec. 9.
[27] If time be merged and lost in eternity, why may not place, all sense
of locality, be equally lost in infinitude of space?
[28] I remember holding a serious conversation with an enlightened
physician, some years ago, who said, "I hardly like to venture the theory,
but it almost seems to me, as if what is now said and thought becomes
written on the physical brain, like a result of photography, and that a
revelation of this transcript, may be our real accuser at the day of
judgment." Had Shakespeare any such notion, in making Macbeth say,
"Raze out the written troubles of the brain?"
[29] Wordsworth entertains the notion of our having lived before in his
fine Ode, "Intimations of Immortality," wherein he says,
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar," &c.
See Sir W. Scott's "Journal," where a like impression is acknowledged on
17th February, 1828.