Portraits of Celebrities at different times of their Lives.
AGE 22
AGE 52
ALFRED TENNYSON.
Born 1809.
HE novel portrait gallery which is here commenced, and in which it is our purpose to give portraits, month by month, of the most eminent men and women of the day at different times of life, cannot be more fitly opened than with those of the great poet whose name has been for more than fifty years the glory of our literature. Portraits of Lord Tennyson in youth are rare; but Lord Tennyson himself has had the kindness to assist us. "Mayall, of Regent-street," he writes, "has done the best photograph, and Cameron, of 70, Mortimer-street, has a photograph, as a young man, from a portrait by Lawrence." These are the two here reproduced. Both have a special interest, besides the interest of comparison which belongs to all the series: the first, as a portrait of the poet, by one of the best artists of that day, at an age when his first volume—tiny, but of dazzling promise—had just been given to the world; and the second, as that which Lord Tennyson regards as the best portrait of himself in later life.
