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Submitted by divhead on June 1, 2007
Category: English
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James E. Reynolds
English 742X
September 11, 2006
Arthur Henry Hallam: His Tragic Death Inspires Poetic Brilliance
In 1827 Alfred Tennyson—long before Queen Victoria would dub him, Lord Tennyson—followed his two older brothers to Trinity College. Tennyson would quickly make his mark as a poet by winning the Chancellor's Gold Medal for his poem "Timbuctoo." Competing for the prize was a young man, a year and half younger than Tennyson, but a similarly brilliant literary up-and-comer: Arthur Henry Hallam.
Hallam, born in London in 1811, was the son of noted historian Henry Hallam. A precocious youth, according to his father, Arthur began to study both Latin and French by the time he was seven years old. Hallam would go on to Eton College, where studied Greek and Latin, and showed a great interest in English literature, particularly admiring Fletcher and Shakespeare, and the poet Byron. As he got older his taste in poetry would change and Wordsworth and Shelley entered his personal Pantheon. In 1827, the same year Hallam graduates from Eton, his family moves to Italy where he discovers and is infatuated with the poetry of Dante and Petrarch. Later in '27 Hallam returns to England to enter Trinity College, Cambridge. According to his father, Hallam's health became an issue. Hallam senior writes: In the first year of his residence at Cambridge, symptoms of disordered health, especially in the circulatory system, began to show themselvesÂ…"
At Cambridge, Hallam befriended Alfred Tennyson to whom Hallam was the runner-up for the Chancellor's Prize Poem in 1829. That same year, both Hallam and Tennyson are invited to join The Apostles, the college's prestigious and secretive literary and intellectual society. Also, Hallam falls in love with Tennyson's younger sister, Emily.
In 1831, while still an undergraduate, Hallam publishes a prescient essay entitled, "On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry...
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