colnshire, he found the spell broken, he could still describe vividly
what he saw with the less fanciful vision of manhood.

Grey sandbanks, and pale sunsets, dreary wind,
Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea![24]

[Note 24: Lines written in 1837 and published in the _Manchester
Athenaeum Album_, 1850.]

These wide expanses of sea, sand, and sky figure many times in his
poetry and furnish a background for the more tragic scenes in the
_Idylls of the King_.

Nor does the vicarage spoil the harmony of the scene, an old-fashioned
low rambling house, to which a loftier hall adjoining, with its Gothic
windows, lends a touch of distinction. The garden with one towering
sycamore and the wych-elms, that threw long shadows on the lawn, opened
on to the parson's field, where on summer mornings could be heard the
sweep of the scythe in the dewy grass. Here Tennyson's father had been
rector for some years when his fourth child Alfred was born in August
1809, the year which also saw the birth of Darwin and Gladstone. The
family was a large one; there were eight sons and four daughters, the
last of whom was still alive in 1916. Alfred's education was as
irregular as a poet's could need to be, consisting of a few years'
attendance at Louth Grammar School, where he suffered from the rod and
other abuses of the past, and of a larger number spent in studying
literature at home under his father's guidance. These left him a liberal
amount of leisure which he devoted to reading at large and roaming the
country-side. His father was a man of mental cultivation far beyond the
average, well fitted to expand the mind of a boy of literary tastes and
to lead him on at a pace suited to his abilities. He had suffered from
disappointments which had thrown a shadow over his life, having been
disinherited capriciously by his father, who was a wealthy man and a
member of Parliament. The inheritance passed to the second brother, who
took the name of Tennyson d'Eyncourt; and though the Rector resented the
injustice of the act, he did not allow it to embitter the relations
between his own children and their cousins. His character was of the
stern, dominating order, and both his parishioners and his children
stood in awe of him; but the gentle nature of their mother made amends.
She is described by Edward FitzGerald, the poet's friend, as 'one of the
most innocent and tender-hearted ladies I ever met, devoted to husband
and children'