time." He did not neglect the movements of the great world in that
dawn of discontent with the philosophy of commercialism. But it was
not his vocation to plunge into the fray, and on to platforms.

It is a very rare thing anywhere, especially in England, for a man
deliberately to choose poetry as the duty of his life, and to remain
loyal, as a consequence, to the bride of St Francis--Poverty. This
loyalty Tennyson maintained, even under the temptation to make money
in recognised ways presented by his new-born love for his future
wife, Miss Emily Sellwood. They had first met in 1830, when she, a
girl of seventeen, seemed to him like "a Dryad or an Oread wandering
here." But admiration became the affection of a lifetime when
Tennyson met Miss Sellwood as bridesmaid to her sister, the bride of
his brother Charles, in 1836. The poet could not afford to marry,
and, like the hero of Locksley Hall, he may have asked himself, "What
is that which I should do?" By 1840 he had done nothing tangible and
lucrative, and correspondence between the lovers was forbidden. That
neither dreamed of Tennyson's deserting poetry for a more normal
profession proved of great benefit to the world. The course is one
which could only be justified by the absolute certainty of possessing
genius.



CHAPTER III.--1837-1842.



In 1837 the Tennysons left the old rectory; till 1840 they lived at
High Beech in Epping Forest, and after a brief stay at Tunbridge