But when he tells of his poverty to Emily Sellwood, the woman of his choice, there is anguish in his cry.  In fact, her parents succeeded in breaking off her relations with Tennyson for a time, on account of his very uncertain prospects.  His brothers, even those younger than he, had slipped into snug positions—­“but Alfred dreams on with nothing special in sight.”  Poetry, in way of a financial return, is not to be commended.  Honors were coming Tennyson’s way as early as Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, but it was not until Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, when a pension of two hundred pounds a year was granted him by the Government, that he began to feel easy.  Even then there were various old scores to liquidate.

The year Eighteen Hundred Fifty, when he was forty-one, has been called his “golden year,” for in it occurred the publication of “In Memoriam,” his appointment to the post of Poet Laureate, and his marriage.

Emily Sellwood had waited for him all these years.  She had been sought after, and had refused several good offers from eligible widowers and others who pitied her sad plight and looked upon her as an old maid forlorn.  But she was true to her love for Alfred.  Possibly she had not been courted quite so assiduously as Tennyson’s mother had been.  When that dear old lady was past eighty she became very deaf, and the family often ventured to carry on conversations in her presence which possibly would have been modified had the old lady been in full possession of her faculties.  On a day as she sat knitting in the chimney-corner, one of her daughters in a burst of confidence to a visitor, said, “Why, before Mamma married Papa she had received twenty-three offers of marriage!”

“Twenty-four, my dear—­twenty-four,” corrected the old lady as she shifted the needles.

No one has ever claimed that Tennyson was an ideal lover.  Surely he never could have been tempted to do what Browning did—­break up the peace of a household by an elopement.  His love was a thing of the head, weighed carefully in the scales of his judgment.  His caution and good sense saved him from all Byronic excesses, or foolish alliances such as took Shelley captive.  He believed in law and order, and early saw that his interests lay in that direction.  He belonged to the Church of England, and doubtless thought as he pleased, but ever expressed himself with caution.

It is easy to accuse Tennyson of being insular—­to say that he is merely “the poet of England.”  Had he been more he would have been less.  World-poets have usually been revolutionists, and dangerous men who exploded at an unknown extent of concussion.  None of them has been a safe man—­none respectable.  Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo and Whitman were outcasts.

Tennyson is always serene, sane and safe—­his lines breathe purity and excellence.  He is the poet of religion, of the home and fireside, of established order, of truth, justice and mercy as embodied in law.