In writing this brief sketch of the Life of Tennyson, and this attempt to appreciate his work, I have rested almost entirely on the Biography by Lord Tennyson (with his kind permission) and on the text of the Poems. As to the Life, doubtless current anecdotes, not given in the Biography, are known to me, and to most people. But as they must also be familiar to the author of the Biography, I have not thought it desirable to include what he rejected. A fascinating look at twelve historical mysteries by famed anthropologist and historian Andrew Lang.
37 'The common ... among men': William Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel and Their Place in History (Edinburgh: A & C Black, 1882); the words in square brackets have been inserted by Lang. as spectral as Bathybius: in 1868, ...