Lord Tennyson
A Biographical Sketch (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Lord Tennyson: A Biographical Sketch<br><br>The materials for a biography of Lord Tennyson, apart from the purely literary incidents of his life, are not considerable. Few among the noteworthy personages of our time more assiduously shrank from the public gaze, or shunned with a more sensitive persistency the "fierce light" which, in this prying age, beats upon the domestic concerns of eminent men. His life was essentially one of retirement, yielding little to the "literary leeches" who swarm in these "days that deal in ana." Seldom, during a long life, to be met with in that vortex of wasted ambitions called "fashionable society" - rarely taking part in public affairs - avoiding with something of shyness all kinds of conventional ceremony and popular hero-worship, he "dwelt apart," in a very literal sense of the words, from the hubbub and turmoil of the great world, and in his country homes, in the company of a few chosen friends, secluded from the reach of the curious, led a life of studious contemplation, shaping into imperishable verse the strivings of the poet's soul. Although in later life the mellowing influences of age relaxed somewhat the austerity of his isolation and social reserve, he cherished for the most part an emphatic prejudice against, sometimes deepening into a great hatred of, the babbledom that dogs the heels of fame.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.