coincident with the death of Mr Browning, "so loving and
appreciative," as Lady Tennyson wrote; a friend, not a rival, however
the partisans of either poet might strive to stir emulation between
two men of such lofty and such various genius.



CHAPTER X.--1890.



In the year 1889 the poet's health had permitted him to take long
walks on the sea-shore and along the cliffs, one of which, by reason
of its whiteness, he had named "Taliessin," "the splendid brow." His
mind ran on a poem founded on an Egyptian legend (of which the source
is not mentioned), telling how "despair and death came upon him who
was mad enough to try to probe the secret of the universe." He also
thought of a drama on Tristram, who, in the Idylls, is treated with
brevity, and not with the sympathy of the old writer who cries, "God
bless Tristram the knight: he fought for England!" But early in
1890 Tennyson suffered from a severe attack of influenza. In May Mr
Watts painted his portrait, and


"Divinely through all hindrance found the man."


Tennyson was a great admirer of Miss Austen's novels: "The realism
and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to
those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare, however, is a sun to which Jane