y-five, when a pension of two
hundred pounds a year was granted him by the Government, that he began to
feel easy. Even then there were various old scores to liquidate.

The year Eighteen Hundred Fifty, when he was forty-one, has been called
his "golden year," for in it occurred the publication of "In Memoriam,"
his appointment to the post of Poet Laureate, and his marriage.

Emily Sellwood had waited for him all these years. She had been sought
after, and had refused several good offers from eligible widowers and
others who pitied her sad plight and looked upon her as an old maid
forlorn. But she was true to her love for Alfred. Possibly she had not
been courted quite so assiduously as Tennyson's mother had been. When that
dear old lady was past eighty she became very deaf, and the family often
ventured to carry on conversations in her presence which possibly would
have been modified had the old lady been in full possession of her
faculties. On a day as she sat knitting in the chimney-corner, one of her
daughters in a burst of confidence to a visitor, said, "Why, before Mamma
married Papa she had received twenty-three offers of marriage!"

"Twenty-four, my dear--twenty-four," corrected the old lady as she shifted
the needles.

No one has ever claimed that Tennyson was an ideal lover. Surely he never
could have been tempted to do what Browning did--break up the peace of a
household by an elopement. His love was a thing of the head, weighed
carefully in the scales of his judgment. His caution and good sense saved
him from all Byronic excesses, or foolish alliances such as took Shelley
captive. He believed in law and order, and early saw that his interests
lay in that direction. He belonged to the Church of England, and doubtless
thought as he pleased, but ever expressed himself with caution.

It is easy to accuse Tennyson of being insular--to say that he is merely
"the poet of England." Had he been more he would have been less.
World-poets have usually been revolutionists, and dangerous men who
exploded at an unknown extent of concussion. None of them has been a safe
man--none respectable. Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo and Whitman were
outcasts.

Tennyson is always serene, sane and safe--his lines breathe purity and
excellence. He is the poet of religion, of the home and fireside, of
established order, of truth, justice and mercy as embodied in law.

Very early he became a close personal friend of Queen Victoria