'IN MEMORIAM
A.H.H.
OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII.'

refers to Mr. Arthur Hallam, a son of the historian. It may be
gleaned from the book, that the deceased was betrothed to a sister of
Tennyson, while the friendship on the poet's part has 'passed the love
of women.' Feeling, especially in one whose vocation it is to express
sentiments, is not, indeed, always to be measured by composition;
since the earnest artist turns everything to account, and when his
theme is mournful it is his cue to make it as mournful as he can:
but when a thought continually mingles with casual observation, or
incident of daily life, or larger event that strikes attention, as
though the memory of the past were ever coloring the present, and that
over a period of seventeen years, it must be regarded as a singular
instance of enduring friendship, as it has shown itself in a very
singular literary form. There is nothing like it that we remember,
except the sonnets of Petrarch; for books of sportive and ludicrous
conceits are not to be received into the same category.

"The volume consists of one hundred and twenty-nine separate poems,
numbered but not named, and which in the absence of a more specific
designation may be called occasional; for though they generally bear
a reference to the leading subject, _In Memoriam_, yet they are not
connected with sufficient closeness to form a continuous piece. There
is also an invocatory introduction, and a closing marriage poem,
written on the wedding of one of the writer's sisters, which, strange
as it may seem, serves again to introduce the memory of the departed.
The intervening poems are as various as a miscellaneous collection;