Describing Tennyson’s experience at Cambridge in his 1955 ‘Introduction’ to Alfred Lord Tennyson Selected Poetry, McLuhan characterizes also his own:

After the rural isolation of Somersby [viz, Manitoba], Trinity College [viz, Trinity Hall], Cambridge, was a tremendous experience, and Tennyson wrote:

For I could burst into a psalm of praise

Seeing the heart so wondrous in her ways.

Would I could pile fresh life on life and dull

The sharp desire of knowledge still with knowing.

Art, Science, Nature, everything is full

As my own soul is full to overflowing. (x)