Sales catalogue 449: Maggs Bros

Date:
1924
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/13/28
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue 449: Maggs Bros. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    432/486 (page 316)
    418 MANUSCRIPT OF ‘‘ IN MEMORIAM.”’ TENNYSON (ALFRED, LORD, 1809-1892). Poet Laureate. AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF A CONSIDERABLE PORTION OF HIS ‘* IN MEMORIAM.”’ Comprising 49 Verses (including two cancelled, unpublished verses), on EOD elLOuG: (SRE LULUSTRA TION ~bLA TE NOmOL Lh) £285 A manuscript of the greatest possible interest, comprising as many as 49 verses of this immortal Elegy, entirely in the poet’s hand and including two unpublished verses. It is believed that no portion of the manuscript of the poem has ever come on the market before, and it was not known to Tennyson’s bibliographer that any existed outside the manuscript which is now in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. There are 26 verses on the recto of the manuscript commencmg with Canto XXX:— “With trembling fingers did we weave The holly reund the Christmas hearth; A rainy cloud possess’d the earth, And sadly fel! our Christmas-eve.” Ete. whilst the verso comprises 23 verses commencing with Canto XL:— “Thy spirit ere our fatal loss Did ever rise from high to higher ; As mounts the heavenward altar-fire, As flies the lighter thro’ the gross.” Ete The order of the Cantos is very irregular compared with the published version, and there are many variations from the printed text. _ The two cancelled unpublished verses appear in Cantos XL. and LXXIII. “How far, how far gone upward now? Too far for me to catch the while The sweetness of this proper smile Thro’ those new splendours of thy brow! “So here shall silence guard thy fame But somewhere out of human view Whate’er thy hands are set to do Is wrought with tumult of acclaim.’ This is evidently an early manuscript, written at intervals; Tennyson, as is known, taking some years in the writing of the poem.