by minds of the highest and most original class.


"You that do profess to teach
And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart."


The universities, in fact, teach a good deal of that which can be
learned, but the best things cannot be taught. The universities give
men leisure, books, and companionship, to learn for themselves. All
tutors cannot be, and at that time few dreamed of being, men like
Jowett and T. H. Green, Gamaliels at whose feet undergraduates sat
with enthusiasm, "did EAGERLY frequent," like Omar Khayyam. In later
years Tennyson found closer relations between dons and
undergraduates, and recorded his affection for his university. She
had supplied him with such companionship as is rare, and permitted
him to "catch the blossom of the flying terms," even if tutors and
lecturers were creatures of routine, terriblement enfonces dans la
matiere, like the sire of Madelon and Cathos, that honourable
citizen.

Tennyson just missed, by going down, a visit of Wordsworth to
Cambridge. The old enthusiast of revolution was justifying passive
obedience: thirty years had turned the almost Jacobin into an almost
Jacobite. Such is the triumph of time. In the summer of 1830
Tennyson, with Hallam, visited the Pyrenees. The purpose was
political--to aid some Spanish rebels. The fruit is seen in OEnone
and Mariana in the South.

In March 1831 Tennyson lost his father. "He slept in the dead man's