been written at five, and he has told of going when thirteen years of age
to visit his grandfather, and of presenting him a poem. The old gentleman
gave him half a guinea with the remark, "This is the first money you ever
made by writing poetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last!"
When eighteen years of age, with his brother, Charles, he produced a thin
book of thin verses.

We have the opinion of Coleridge to the effect that the only lines which
have any merit in the book are those signed C.T. Charles became a
clergyman of marked ability, married rich, and changed his name from
Tennyson to Turner for economic and domestic reasons. Years afterward,
when Alfred had become Poet Laureate, rumor has it he thought of changing
the "Turner" back to "Tennyson," but was unable to bring it about.

The only honor captured by Alfred at Cambridge was a prize for his poem,
"Timbuctoo." The encouragement that this brought him, backed up by Arthur
Hallam's declaiming the piece in public--as a sort of defi to
detractors--caused him to fix his attention more assiduously on verse. He
could write--it was the only thing he could do--and so he wrote.

At Cambridge he was in the habit of reading his poetry to a little coterie
called "The Apostles," and he always premised his reading with the
statement that no criticism would be acceptable.

The year he was twenty-one he published a small book called, "Poems,
Chiefly Lyrical." The books went a-begging for many years; but times
change, for a copy of this edition was sold by Quaritch in Eighteen
Hundred Ninety-five for one hundred eighty pounds. The only piece in the
book that seems to show genuine merit is "Mariana."