The student of Shakspeare’s sonnets—­poems having much in common with those written in memory of Arthur Hallam—­is never tired of conjecturing the person to whom they were addressed.  Who was the “only begetter” of these passionate offerings of the poet’s love?  Might he be recognized as he walked, a man among men? or was he the splendid idealization of genius and friendship?  There are but faint answers to these questions.  After the claims of Mr. Hart, Mr. Hughes, and the Earls of Southampton and Pembroke have been duly examined, there comes the conclusion that we may not know who and what he was towards whom the august soul of Shakspeare yearned with such exceeding love.  Future readers of the “In Memoriam” of Tennyson will be more favored in their knowledge of the young man there given to fame.  It will be known that he was worthy of the deep sorrow breathed into exquisite verse,—­worthy also of those noble half-lights flashing above the sombre atmosphere, to show the instruction, the blessedness, the beauty, which grow from human grief.  We are compelled to confess that those keen poetic glimpses into the high regions of philosophy and science, with which the memories of his friend inspired Tennyson, seem just dues to the brilliant auguries of a future which this world was not permitted to see.

An outline of Arthur’s life has already been given to the American public.  Little can be added to it from his father’s touching preface to the unpublished edition of these writings in 1834, which is now reprinted.  The childhood of young Hallam exhibits facility in the acquisition of knowledge, sweetness of temper, and scrupulous adherence to a sense of duty.  At the age of nine he reads Latin and Greek with tolerable facility, and achieves dramatic compositions which excite the admiration of the father,—­a thoroughly competent, unless partial, critic.  This luxuriance of fancy is judiciously received; no display is made of it, and Arthur is sent to school at Putney, where he remains for two years.  The common routine of English education is more than once broken by tours upon the Continent.  When the boy leaves Eton in 1827, his father pronounces him “a good, though not, perhaps, first-rate scholar in the Latin and Greek languages.”  As certain Latin verses referred to are, for some inscrutable reason, omitted in this American edition, the reader has no means of deciding whether it is the modest reserve of the parent which pronounces them “good, without being excellent,” or the fond partiality of the father which discovers them to be “good” at all.  In any case, we must consider Arthur’s “comparative deficiency in classical learning,” for which the eminent historian seems almost to apologize, as one of his especial felicities.  The liberalizing effect of travel, and a varied contact with men and things, prevented his powers from contracting themselves to a merely academical reputation.  When at Cambridge, he renounces all competition in the niceties of classical