"CROSSING THE BAR."

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12849, 6 July 1907, Page 7

"CROSSING THE BAR."

\n account of the inspiration of Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar" was related by Miss Edith Milner at a meeting lield at York in connection wftTi the fund for the restoration of Selby

\bbey. Miv Milner said it was tho inscription on the slab of a tomb in Selby Abbey which inspired Tennyson ♦:o write "Orossinij the Bar." The inscription, which she copied from the tomb in 1870, wae as follows:— John Johnston, Master Mariner, of tli; place, 1737. Tio' Boreas with hie blustering blast Hut st mc to and fro, Yet by the handywork of God I'm hire enclosed beUrw. And in this sihut bay I lie With many of our fleet, Un'i! the day I *et tail My Admiral Ohnst to meet. Miss Milner said she sent a copy ot tho inscription to a friend who gave it to Alfred Tennyson. The poet was much struok by the it contained, and Miss Milner said she was informed that it suggested tho lines of "Crossing tho Bar." A Mr E. Wilson Dobbs writes as follows to the Melbourne "Argiis" in which the above paragraph was quoted—ln Alfred. Lord Tennyson, a memoir, by His Son (vol. ii, 1897, pp. 366-7), "the latter writes: —" 'Crossing tho Bar , was written in my father's eight-first year, on a day in Octooer, when we came from Aldworth to Faringford. Before reaching Faringfor4 he had tho moaning of the bar in his mind, and after dinner ho ehowed mc this poem written out. I said, That is tho rrown of your life's work.' He answered, 'It came in a moment.' ho explained the pilot as: That Divine and Unseen who is always guiding us." A frw days before mv father's death ho said to mc: 'Mind yon put 'Crossing the Bar" at tm> end of all editions of my pcenft. " iSurok. continues .Mr Dnbbs, if the epitaph Miss Milner copied suggested the lines of "Crossing the Bar,' - it would have been noted in above-mentioned biography. But euch is not the caeo, and. ag.iin, the folk-vorsc u«nolly referred to as tho Admiral Christ epitaph was well known to Tennyson—one would think—as it appears in scores of churchyards in Great Britain and Ireland. It occurs 6evernl times—with slight variations—in the church and churchyard at Selby alone. Besides this, as far back as December 2b"th. 1891, Miss R. H. Busk, in London "Notes and Queries." suggested tho same .origin for Tennyson's poem, and in the following year the "Daily Chronicle" and "Army and Navy Gazette. ,, mede similar suggestions. But through similar correspondence in "The Athenaeum" and elsevrhoro, the oripin of the noom was allowed to be as afterwards simply detriled by Tennyson'e son in hie memoir.