"Think of his stopping in _Maud_," she goes on, "every now and then--'There's a wonderful touch! That's very tender! How beautiful that is!' Yes and it _was_ wonderful, tender, beautiful, and he read exquisitely in a voice like an organ, rather music than speech." One of the few persons who were invited to meet Tennyson on this occasion, Mr W.M.Rossetti, is still living, and his record of that memorable evening ought not to be omitted.

"The audience was a small one, the privilege accorded to each individual all the higher: Mr and Mrs Browning, Miss Browning, my brother, and myself, and I think there was one more--either Madox Brown or else [Holman] Hunt or Woolner ...
Tennyson, seated on a sofa in a characteristic attitude, and holding the volume near his eyes ...

read _Maud_ right through.

My brother made two pen-and-ink sketches of him, and gave one of them to Browning.

So far as I remember, the Poet-Laureate neither saw what Dante was doing, nor knew of it afterwards.