University of Virginia Library

Edgar F. Shannon, Jr., 'The History of a Poem: Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington', Studies in Bibliography, 13(1960), 149-177, hereafter cited parenthetically in the text by page numbers; Christopher Ricks, 'A Note on Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington', SB, 18(1965), 282, and The Poems of Tennyson (1969), pp. 1007-1017.

For permission to print from the Trinity MS and the Lincoln galley proof, we are grateful to the Lord Tennyson and to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College.

The Works of Tennyson, annotated Alfred Tennyson, ed. Hallam Tennyson, 9 vols. (1907; rpt. 1908), II, 210-221.

Repetitions are of particular importance in a poem which twice makes use of the phrase 'Not once or twice . . .'; the phrase had occurred not once or twice but thrice in the first draft [223].

It may have been some sense of a possible interference with the needed simplicity of 'leader', obtruding from 'follows' and 'leads', which caused Tennyson to delete on the Lincoln proof the lines:

Many of Tennyson's revisions were a response to the slipperiness of prepositions. Thus he deleted on the Lincoln proof a line found in the Trinity MS which equivocated with 'for' (in the service of / in order to gain): 'Nor fought for glory tho' he gain'd it' [218/219]. Tennyson likewise re-worded the unsteady lines in the Trinity MS on Wellington's life as having honourably

There the from / to sequence was misleading, since the sense was rather 'bare . . . / To'; moreover, 'till' suffered from the dangerous possibilities of the ambiguous 'till' in English (up to and including, or up to but not including). The American language has shrewdly adopted 'through' to resolve this difficulty.

Contrast the clarifying change reflected in the printed text of the Lincoln proof, from 'the'—which might have applied to the British—to 'their', in 'Their surging charges foam'd themselves away' (126).

For some other significant revisions involving 'true', see Collation 162, [173-179], [192-231], [232-281], 276.

For other revisions involving 'such', see Collation [80-150], [192-231], [232-281].

On the Lincoln proof, Tennyson added the word 'and' ('With a nation weeping, and breaking on my rest'), and this too gave a less intensively interrupting rhythm.

The word 'great' figures significantly in many of Tennyson's revisions.

An intermediate draft in the Trinity MS had a nudging introduction here: 'Our archives have a name of might | Truthlover was our Saxon Alfred named' [151-191].

The Trinity MS had not arrived at this, and moreover it had a clumsy he/him transition: 'Till he that sought but Duty's iron crown | On that loud Sabbath shook him down'.

The Trinity MS lacked lines 92-94 on this equipollence, lines which compacted it with the rhythm he/thee: '. . . this is he | Worthy of our gorgeous rites, | And worthy to be laid by thee;'.