Note I — BEER AND CIDER By George Saintsbury

It came from Alford, the chef-lieu, if it cannot be called the capital, of the Tennyson country. I have pleasant associations with the place, quite independent of the beery ones. And it made me, partially at least, alter one of the ideas of my early criticism—that time spent on a poet's local habitations was rather wasted. I have always thought "The Dying Swan" one of its author's greatest things, and one of the champion examples of pure poetry in English literature. But I never fully heard the "eddying song" that "flooded"

the creeping mosses and clambering weeds,

And the willow branches hoar and dank,

And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds.

And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank,

And the silvery marish-flowers that throng

The desolate creeks and pools among—

till I saw them.