We learn from Lady Louisa Stuart, to whom Scott read these lines,
that they referred to his lost love. I cite the passage because the
extreme reticence of Scott, in his undying sorrow, is in contrast
with what Tennyson, after reading The Lady of the Lake, was putting
into the mouth of his complaining lover in Maud.

We have no reason to suppose that Tennyson himself had ever to bewail
a faithless love. To be sure, the hero of Locksley Hall is in this
attitude, but then Locksley Hall is not autobiographical. Less
dramatic and impersonal in appearance are the stanzas -


"Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave;"


and


"Child, if it were thine error or thy crime
I care no longer, being all unblest."


No biographer tells us whether this was a personal complaint or a
mere set of verses on an imaginary occasion. In In Memoriam Tennyson
speaks out concerning the loss of a friend. In Maud, as in Locksley
Hall, he makes his hero reveal the agony caused by the loss of a
mistress. There is no reason to suppose that the poet had ever any
such mischance, but many readers have taken Locksley Hall and Maud