tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[20] One writer uncritically imagines him a doctor of divinity.[21] According to some questionable authorities, he died “about 1830;”[22] “in 1830;”[23] “about 1831;”[24] “on the 18th of March, 1831;”[25] and in 1832.[26] Mrs. Tennyson is said to have died “in her eighty-first year;”[27] also “in her eighty-fourth year.”[28]

The number of sons and daughters in the Tennyson household is rarely given correctly. Alfred is called, in a hit-or-miss fashion, one of three, four, six, seven and eight brothers. His sisters are variously reckoned as one, three, four and five.

The Rev. George Clayton Tennyson was born at Market Rasen, December 10, 1778. He graduated at St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1801; he received the degree of M. A. in 1805, and of LL.D. in 1813. He married (August 6, 1805) Miss Elizabeth Fytche of Louth. He moved to Somersby in 1808, where he was rector till his death. If the inscription on his tomb is to be trusted, Dr. Tennyson was rector of two neighboring parishes—Benniworth and Bag Enderby—and was vicar of Great Grimsby;[29] and died March 16, 1831. The poet’s mother died February 21, 1865, in her eighty-fifth year.

Alfred Tennyson was the fourth of eight sons—George (who died in infancy), Frederick, Charles, Alfred, Edward, Arthur, Septimus, and Horatio. The sisters were Mary, Emily, Matilda, and Cecilia. Excepting George and Frederick, all of the children were born at Somersby.

Alfred’s Birthday.

The discussion as to the poet’s birthday is now practically at rest—his lordship himself having authoritatively settled the matter. Would that he would enlighten us on some other perplexing points in his history! Mrs. Tennyson kept August 6 as Alfred’s birthday. Tourists who have hastily examined the parish registers of Somersby have mistaken the figure 6 for a 5, owing to the fading of the ink “at the back, or left, of the loop.”[30] But careless hackwriters, depending upon the compilations published decades ago, continue to assert that the Laureate was born August 5;[31] April 9,[32] or April 6.[33]

Year of Tennyson’s Birth.

In Welsh’s English Literature is a “biography” of Tennyson which says, amid various other slips, that he was born in 1810. Allibone’s Dictionary of Authors (p. 2371) is a year out of the way. When this ponderous work was first published, not much was definitely known of the poet, but Alden’s Cyclopedia of Literature (1890), and other unreliable authorities put 1810 or 1811 as the year of his birth.

In the parish registers of Somersby, Dr. Tennyson’s handwriting records Alfred’s birth and baptism among the entries of 1809. Here is an instance where one can put to flight a host—for the names of those who assign 1810 as the year of the poet’s birth are legion.[34]

Tennyson’s Schooldays.

There is a want of precision in many of the statements that have been made by Tennyson’s biographers concerning his school days. In the Encyclopedia Americana (1889), vol. iv., p. 660, Dr. C. E. Washburn says Alfred “attended for a time Cadney’s village school, and for a brief period the grammar-school at Louth,”—which is partly true, but curiously misrepresents the matter. He was a pupil in Louth Grammar School four years (1816-20)—not a very “brief period.” Howitt and others make the length of time “two or three years,” and some have the mistaken impression that he passed some time in Cadney’s school before he went to Louth. Cadney came to Somersby about 1820, and, in the autumn of the next year, he instructed the Tennyson boys in arithmetic at the rectory. Cook erroneously supposes that Charles and Alfred were at Louth in 1827.[35]

There has been considerable guessing as to the time when Tennyson went to Cambridge. He is said to have entered Trinity College in 1826;[36] in 1827;[37] about 1827;[38] in 1829;[39] and “early in 1829.”[40] There is no occasion for such indefiniteness. To be exact, Alfred became a student of Trinity in October, 1828.[41] He left