It has always been incomprehensible to me how the author of those poems ever brought himself to alter them, as he did, in so many instances—­all (as it seemed to me) for the worse rather than the better.  I certainly could hardly love his verses better than he did himself, but the various changes he made in them have always appeared to me cruel disfigurements of the original thoughts and expressions, which were to me treasures not to be touched even by his hand; and his changing lines which I thought perfect, omitting beautiful stanzas that I loved, and interpolating others that I hated, and disfiguring and maiming his own exquisite creations with second thoughts (none of which were best to me), has caused me to rejoice, while I mourn, over my copy of the first version of “The May Queen,” “OEnone,” “The Miller’s Daughter,” and all the subsequent improved poems, of which the improvements were to me desecrations.  In justice to Tennyson, I must add that the present generation of his readers swear by their version of his poems as we did by ours, for the same reason,—­they knew it first.

The early death of Arthur Hallam, and the imperishable monument of love raised by Tennyson’s genius to his memory, have tended to give him a pre-eminence among the companions of his youth which I do not think his abilities would have won for him had he lived; though they were undoubtedly of a high order.  There was a gentleness and purity almost virginal in his voice, manner, and countenance; and the upper part of his face, his forehead and eyes (perhaps in readiness for his early translation), wore the angelic radiance that they still must wear in heaven.  Some time or other, at some rare moments of the divine spirit’s supremacy in our souls, we all put on the heavenly face that will be ours hereafter, and for a brief lightning space our friends behold us as we shall look when this mortal has put on immortality.  On Arthur Hallam’s brow and eyes this heavenly light, so fugitive on other human faces, rested habitually, as if he was thinking and seeing in heaven.

Of all those very remarkable young men, John Sterling was by far the most brilliant and striking in his conversation, and the one of whose future eminence we should all of us have augured most confidently.  But though his life was cut off prematurely, it was sufficiently prolonged to disprove this estimate of his powers.  The extreme vividness of his look, manner, and speech gave a wonderful impression of latent vitality and power; perhaps some of this lambent, flashing brightness may have been but the result of the morbid physical conditions of his existence, like the flush on his cheek and the fire in his eye; the over stimulated and excited intellectual activity, the offspring of disease, mistaken by us for morning instead of sunset splendor, promise of future light and heat instead of prognostication of approaching darkness and decay.  It certainly has always struck