The Dowager Lady Tennyson died on Monday, but not till
she had completed, we are told, the revision of the proofs of the biographical portion of her husband's Life, in the prepara- tion of which she had taken the liveliest interest. She sur- vived the Poet-Laureate nearly four years. Lady Tennyson was the daughter of Mr. Henry Sellwood, and niece of the great Arctic explorer, Admiral Sir John Franklin, and was born in 1813. She lived the early part of her life in Lincoln- shire, where she first met her future husband, but they were not married till the year of Wordsworth's death, in 1850.
It is often said, we know not with how much truth, that the lines in " In Memoriam,"-
" You say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted you, whose light blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies, You tell me Doubt is devil-born,"
were intended as a reference to the tenderness of his wife's nature, and we should be glad to hear the rumour either con- firmed or contradicted. It is certain that Lady Tennyson exerted the utmost influence on the Poet-Laureate's use of his genius, and that many of the shades of thought and feeling in his poems were due to her fine and delicate criticisms.
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