No More Learning

Of the Bibliography I can say no more than that I have done my utmost to
make it complete, and that it is very much fuller than any which has
hitherto appeared. That it is exhaustive I dare not promise.

With regard to the Notes and Commentaries, I have spared no pains to
explain everything which seemed to need explanation. There are, I think,
only two points which I have not been able to clear up, namely, the name
of the friend to whom the 'Palace of Art' was addressed, and the name
of the friend to whom the 'Verses after Reading a Life and Letters'
were addressed. I have consulted every one who would be likely to throw
light on the subject, including the poet's surviving sister, many of his
friends, and the present Lord Tennyson, but without success; so the
names, if they were not those of some imaginary person, appear to be
irrecoverable. The Prize Poem, 'Timbuctoo', as well as the poems which
were temporarily or finally suppressed in the volumes published in 1830
and 1832 have been printed in the Appendix: those which were
subsequently incorporated in his Works, in large type; those which he
never reprinted, in small.

The text here adopted is that of 1857, but Messrs. Macmillan, to whom I
beg to express my hearty thanks, have most generously allowed me to
record all the variants which are still protected by copyright. I have
to thank them, too, for assistance in the Bibliography. I have also to
thank Mr. J. T. Wise for his kindness in lending me the privately
printed volume containing the 'Morte d'Arthur, Dora,' etc.





INTRODUCTION

I

The development of Tennyson's genius, methods, aims and capacity of
achievement in poetry can be studied with singular precision and fulness
in the history of the poems included in the present volume. In 1842 he
published the two volumes which gave him, by almost general consent, the
first place among the poets of his time, for, though Wordsworth was
alive, Wordsworth's best work had long been done.
These two volumes
contained poems which had appeared before, some in 1830 and some in
1832, and some which were then given to the world for the first time, so
that they represent work belonging to three eras in the poet's life,
poems written before he had completed his twenty-second year and
belonging for the most part to his boyhood, poems written in his early
manhood, and poems written between his thirty-first and thirty-fourth
year.

The poems published in 1830 had the following title-page:

"Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson.
London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1830".

They are fifty-six in number and the titles are:--


Claribel. ?
Lilian. ?
Isabel. ?
Elegiacs. +
The "How" and the "Why".
Mariana. ?
To----. Madeline.
The Merman.