The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson

A Character

First printed in 1830.

The only authoritative light thrown on the person here described is what the present Lord Tennyson gives, who tells us that "the then well-known Cambridge orator S--was partly described". He was "a very plausible, parliament-like, self-satisfied speaker at the Union Debating Society ". The character reminds us of Wordsworth's Moralist. See 'Poet's Epitaph';--

Shakespeare's fop, too (Hotspur's speech, 'Henry IV.', i., i., 2), seems to have suggested a touch or two.