always so many, most of them bad, that nature has protected mankind
by an armour of suspiciousness. The world, and Lockhart, easily
found good reasons for distrusting this new claimant of the ivy and
the bays: moreover, since about 1814 there had been a reaction
against new poetry. The market was glutted. Scott had set everybody
on reading, and too many on writing, novels. The great reaction of
the century against all forms of literature except prose fiction had
begun. Near the very date of Tennyson's first volume Bulwer Lytton,
as we saw, had frankly explained that he wrote novels because nobody
would look at anything else. Tennyson had to overcome this
universal, or all but universal, indifference to new poetry, and,
after being silent for ten years, overcome it he did--a remarkable
victory of art and of patient courage. Times were even worse for
poets than to-day. Three hundred copies of the new volume were sold!
But Tennyson's friends were not puffers in league with pushing
publishers.

Meanwhile the poet in 1833 went on quietly and undefeated with his
work. He composed The Gardener's Daughter, and was at work on the
Morte d'Arthur, suppressed till the ninth year, on the Horatian plan.
Many poems were produced (and even written out, which a number of his
pieces never were), and were left in manuscript till they appeared in
the Biography. Most of these are so little worthy of the author that
the marvel is how he came to write them--in what uninspired hours.
Unlike Wordsworth, he could weed the tares from his wheat. His
studies were in Greek, German, Italian, history (a little), and
chemistry, botany, and electricity--"cross-grained Muses," these
last.

It was on September 15, 1833, that Arthur Hallam died. Unheralded by