ald,
James Spedding, William Thackeray, and Richard Monckton Milnes.

These names were those of "promising young men," our friends and
companions, whose various remarkable abilities we learned to estimate
through my brother's enthusiastic appreciation of them. How bright has
been, in many instances, the full performance of that early promise,
England has gratefully acknowledged; they have been among the jewels of
their time, and some of their names will be famous and blessed for
generations to come. It is not for me to praise those whom all
English-speaking folk delight to honor; but in thinking of that bright
band of very noble young spirits, of my brother's love and admiration
for them, of their affection for him, of our pleasant intercourse in
those far-off early days,--in spite of the faithful, life-long regard
which still subsists between myself and the few survivors of that goodly
company, my heart sinks with a heavy sense of loss, and the world from
which so much light has departed seems dark and dismal enough.

CHAPTER XI.

Alfred Tennyson had only just gathered his earliest laurels. My brother
John gave me the first copy of his poems I ever possessed, with a
prophecy of his future fame and excellence written on the fly-leaf of
it. I have never ceased to exult in my possession of that copy of the
first edition of those poems, which became the songs of our every day
and every hour, almost; we delighted in them and knew them by heart, and
read and said them over and over again incessantly; they were our
pictures, our music, and infinite was the scorn and indignation with
which we received the slightest word of adverse criticism upon them. I
remember Mrs. Milman, one evening at my father's house, challenging me
laughingly about my enthusiasm for Tennyson, and asking me if I had read
a certain severely caustic and condemnatory article in the _Quarterly_
upon his poems. "Have you read it?" said she; "it is so amusing! Shall I
send it to you?" "No, thank you," said I; "have you read the poems, may
I ask?" "I cannot say that I have," said she, laughing. "Oh, then," said
I (not laughing), "perhaps it would be better that I should send you
those?"

It has always been incomprehensible to me how the author of those poems
ever brought himself to alter them, as he did, in so many instances--all
(as it seemed to me) for the worse rather than the better. I certainly
could hardly love his verses better than he did h