TENNYSON'S NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 294, 5 September 1908, Page 12

TENNYSON'S NOTES.

The latest volume of the 'f Annotated Tennyson" contains " Demeter, land other Poems," and has as a frontispiece a beautifully executed portrait of Emily Lady Tennyson, from a drawing by G. P. Watts, R.A. 'Among the' notes (says the "Westminster Gazette") we find this by tho poet's son concerning " Crossing the Bar " " Made in my father's eight-first year,,after his serious ijlucss in 1888-9,' on a day in October, 1889, while crossing tho Solent, as we camo from Aldworth to'Farringford. When he repeated it' tp me in tho evening I said, 'That is. the crown of, your life's work.' He answered' 'It came in a moment.'" A similar statement, if we remember rightly, appears' in tho " Life." Concerning, the line "I hope to see by Pilot faco to faCo" tho poet himself said: "The Pilot has been on board all tho whilo, but in the dark I bavo not seen Him." The question has often been asked as to the meaning of Tennyson's reference to the " Pilot "„in his poem. His son on this point writes as follows:-— "He (the poet) explained the Pilot as 1 that Divine-, and Unseen: Who is , always guiding lis.' A few days before his death he said to me, 'Mind you put my " Crossing the Bar " at the.'end of all editions of my poemsi' This poem, ' tho Death of tho Duke of Clarence,' 'The Dawn,' 'The Making of Man,' 'The Dreamer' (expressive of Hope in the Light that leads us), ' Tho i\Yanderer ) f ; (', , A Voice spake out of'the Skies,'i'-Donbt and' Prayer,' 'Faith,' 'God and-tho.-Universejf -and 'The Silent Voices,' breathing peace and courage and hope and iaith, .were felt by my father when he, wrote them to' be his last testament to the' world." . " Poetry," Tennyson wrote, " should be the flower and fruit of a man's life, in whatever stage of . it, to be a worthy offering to the world." "Demoter and Persephone was written at the request of the present Lord Tennyson, who knew that his father considered Demeter one of tho most beautiful types of womanhood. To Signor Francisco Clementi, who translated the poem into Italian, and told the Laureate that the Italian youth were grateful to him and had profited much by his work, the poet wrote thanking him in 1891. ' "If," he said, "I have done any good to your oountrymen or others by what I have written,' that is more grateful to trie than any modern fame, which, to a man nearing eighty-two —for I was born in 1809 —seems somewhat pale and colourless." Tennyson's estimate of the author of " Waverley "is interesting. " Scott," he said, " is the most chivalrous, literary figure of this century, aiid the author, with the widest range since Shakespeare." Tennyson used to read two or three of Scott's novels every year. "Old Mortality" ho thought Scott's " greatest hovel,"