early date, are printed in the first volume of Mr. Wemyss Reid's "Memoir (published in 1890) of Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton," a fellow-collegian of Tennyson at Trinity College, Cambridge; the second, confirming a statement of Alford's, that he had seen an unpublished poem of Tennyson's entitled "Anacaona," of which Milnes apparently possessed a transcript; as he had playfully threatened Tennyson to publish the poem in The Tribute (1837) if no other original contribution were forthcoming. In later years, partly through failing powers of vision, the Poet's letters, except to very intimate friends, were generally dictated to his wife or eldest son, or written by them in the third person, in accordance with his instructions. Autograph letters of his, especially those of later date, are of the utmost rarity. The Prefaces, Notes, and prose Dedications to his published or privately-printed poems are also very few and scanty, so that scarcely any specimen of sustained prose from his pen has appeared, if any such exist.
