pursued as literature, not as a course of grammar and philology. No
English poet, at least since Milton, had been better read in the
classics; but Tennyson's studies did not aim at the gaining of
academic distinction. His aspect was such that Thompson, later
Master of Trinity, on first seeing him come into hall, said, "That
man must be a poet." Like Byron, Shelley, and probably Coleridge,
Tennyson looked the poet that he was: "Six feet high, broad-chested,
strong-limbed, his face Shakespearian and with deep eyelids, his
forehead ample, crowned with dark wavy hair, his head finely poised."

Not much is recorded of Tennyson as an undergraduate. In our days
efforts would have been made to enlist so promising a recruit in one
of the college boats; but rowing was in its infancy. It is a
peculiarity of the universities that little flocks of men of unusual
ability come up at intervals together, breaking the monotony of
idlers, prize scholars, and honours men. Such a group appeared at
Balliol in Matthew Arnold's time, and rather later, at various
colleges, in the dawn of Pre-Raphaelitism. The Tennysons--Alfred,
Frederick, and Charles--were members of such a set. There was Arthur
Hallam, son of the historian, from Eton; there was Spedding, the
editor and biographer of Bacon; Milnes (Lord Houghton), Blakesley
(Dean of Lincoln), Thompson, Merivale, Trench (a poet, and later,
Archbishop of Dublin), Brookfield, Buller, and, after Tennyson the
greatest, Thackeray, a contemporary if not an "Apostle." Charles
Buller's, like Hallam's, was to be an "unfulfilled renown." Of
Hallam, whose name is for ever linked with his own, Tennyson said
that he would have been a great man, but not a great poet; "he was as
near perfection as mortal man could be." His scanty remains are
chiefly notable for his divination of Tennyson as a great poet; for
the rest, we can only trust the author of In Memoriam and the verdict