Tennysoniana/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
THE CAMBRIDGE PRIZE POEM, "TIMBUCTOO."
It was apparently not long after the publication of their joint volume that Charles and Alfred Tennyson removed to Trinity College, Cambridge,[1] where, in the summer of 1829, they formed a friendship with another young student of the same college, Arthur Henry Hallam,[2] the son of Hallam the historian,
Arthur Hallam entered at Trinity College in October, 1828, being then in his eighteenth year.
In 1829 Hallam and Tennyson both competed for the Chancellor's gold medal for a poem on Timbuctoo, That of Hallam is written in the terza rima of Dante.[3]
That of Tennyson, which is in blank verse, obtained the prize,[4] and was published in the same year, being the first production to which he set his name.
It is curious that three lines of this poem appear also in the "Ode to Memory," published in the volume of 1830, but as that Ode is stated by the author to have been "written very early in life," its composition may have preceded that of the prize poem.
Here are the passages:
Timluctoo (1829).
Man's first, last home: and thou with ravish'd sense[5]
Listenest the lordly music flowing from
Th' illimitable years."
Ode to Memory.[6]
Listening the lordly music flowing from
Th' illimitable years."
The poem of "Timbuctoo" was noticed as follows in the "Athenæum" of July 22, 1829:
"We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any very good reason, that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period after the great generation of poets which is now passing away. The age seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner; for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should least expect it—namely, in a prize poem. These productions have often been ingenious and elegant, but we have never before seen one of them which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have done honour to any man that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to affirm, is the little work before us; and the examiners seem to have felt it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to its author, though the measure in which he writes was never before, we believe, thus selected for honour. We extract a few lines to justify our admiration. [Here fifty lines (62-112) are quoted.] How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?"[7]
- ↑ Frederick Tennyson, the eldest of the seven brothers, was already at Trinity when Charles and Alfred joined the College. He gained the prize for a Greek poem on Egypt in 1828, which was published in the 'Prolusiones Academicæ" of that year, with the following title, "Carmen Græcum Numismate Annuo dignatum et in curiâ Cantabrigiensi recitatum comitiis maximis A. D. MDCCCXXVIII., auctore Frederico Tennyson, Coll. SS. Trin. Alumno." More lately (1854) Frederick Tennyson has become known to the public as the author of a graceful volume of verses entitled "Days and Hours."
- ↑ Their friendship having been at Hallam's death of four years' duration and verging into a fifth autumn. (See "In Memoriam," xxii.)
- ↑ Printed separately at the time, and afterwards in his "Remains in Verse and Prose" (London, 1834).
- ↑ "On Saturday last the Chancellor's gold medal for the best English poem by a resident undergraduate was adjudged to Alfred Tennyson, of Trinity College."—Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, Friday, June 12, 1829. The poems were sent in in the month of April. In Thackeray's juvenile publication, "The Snob" (Cambridge, 1829), pp. 18-21, is a curious little burlesque on the subject, with a mock poem on Timbuctoo, which the writer pretends was finished too late to be sent in.
- ↑ This is misprinted "lavish'd sense" in all editions subsequent to the first.
- ↑ "Poems, chiefly Lyrical" (1830), p. 60.
- ↑ This notice was probably written either by John Sterling or Frederick Maurice, who were at that time joint editors of the "Athenæum." Let us honour the critic, whoever he was, who had the foresight and the courage to write such words.