Tennyson's work but slightly, while he constantly reminds us of
Virgil, Homer, Theocritus, and even Persius and Horace. Mediaeval
French, whether in poetry or prose, and the poetry of the "Pleiad"
seems to have occupied little of his attention. Into the oriental
literatures he dipped--pretty deeply for his Akbar; and even his
Locksley Hall owed something to Sir William Jones's version of "the
old Arabian Moallakat." The debt appears to be infinitesimal. He
seems to have been less closely familiar with Elizabethan poetry than
might have been expected: a number of his obiter dicta on all kinds
of literary points are recorded in the Life by Mr Palgrave. "Sir
Walter Scott's short tale, My Aunt Margaret's Mirror (how little
known!), he once spoke of as the finest of all ghost or magical
stories." Lord Tennyson adds, "The Tapestried Chamber also he
greatly admired." Both are lost from modern view among the short
pieces of the last volumes of the Waverley novels. Of the poet's
interest in and attitude towards the more obscure pyschological and
psychical problems--to popular science foolishness--enough has been
said, but the remarks of Professor Tyndall have not been cited:-


My special purpose in introducing this poem, however, was to call
your attention to a passage further on which greatly interested me.
The poem is, throughout, a discussion between a believer in
immortality and one who is unable to believe. The method pursued is
this. The Sage reads a portion of the scroll, which he has taken
from the hands of his follower, and then brings his own arguments to
bear upon that portion, with a view to neutralising the scepticism of
the younger man. Let me here remark that I read the whole series of
poems published under the title "Tiresias," full of admiration for
their freshness and vigour. Seven years after I had first read them