a
masterly work, and all the time that he lived in semi-solitude and read
and thought and tramped the fields, his soul was growing strong and his
spirit was taking on the silken self-sufficient strength that marked his
later days. This hiatus of ten years in the life of our poet is very
similar to the thirteen fallow years in the career of Browning. These men
crossed and recrossed each other's pathway, but did not meet for many
years. What a help they might have been to each other in those years of
doubt and seeming defeat! But each was to make his way alone.

Browning seemed to grow through society and travel, but solitude served
the needs of Tennyson.

"There must be a man behind every sentence," said Emerson. After ten years
of silence, when Tennyson issued his book, the literary world recognized
the man behind it. Tennyson had grown as a writer, but more as a man. And
after all, it is more to be a man than a poet. All who knew Tennyson, and
have written of him, especially during those early years, begin with a
description of his appearance. His looks did not belie the man. In
intellect and in stature he was a giant. The tall, athletic form, the
great shaggy head, the classic features, and the look of untried strength
were all thrown into fine relief by the modesty, the half-embarrassment,
of his manner.

To meet the poet was to acknowledge his power. No man can talk as wise as
he can look, and Tennyson never tried to. His words were few and simple.

Those who met him went away ready to back his lightest word. They felt
there was a man behind the sentence.

Carlyle, who was a hero-worshiper, but who usually limited his worship to
those well dead and long gone hence, wrote of Tennyson to Emerson: "One of
the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of dusky hair; bright,
laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most
delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes
cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is
musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that
may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet
in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will
grow to."

And then again, writing to his brother John: "Some weeks ago, one night,
the poet Tennyson and Matthew Arnold were discovered here sitting smoking
in the garden. Tennyson had been here before, but was still