time his name appeared, Poems*, by Alfred Tennyson, 1832. Here the poet while losing none of the lyrical gift of his earlier work, adds to it an ever deepening grasp of life. Here, too, we see him entering on three phases of his most characteristic work: Classical reproduction in the Lotos-Eaters, Arthurian poetry in The Lady of Shalott, and the English idyll in The Miller's Daughter.

In London. In September of 1833 Arthur Hallam, who had been long ailing, died abroad. The family at Somersby were plunged in affliction, and Tennyson whose loss was not less than his sister's, threw himself into work in London.

Nothing is more strikingly characteristic of Tennyson's self-restraint than the following ten years of his life. He wrote constantly, but with the exception of a stray poem in annual collections, printed nothing. They were years of silence and meditation that genius must have. Some of his college friends were in London, and saw something of the poet either in the gatherings of the Anonymous Club or dining at the Cock in Fleet Street, "sitting late into the evening over the pint of port and cigars." Carlyle had come up to London, and between him and the poet there sprang up a lasting friendship. With Carlyle, FitzGerald, Spedding and Milnes as associates, Tennyson was kept in touch with the world; while an occasional visit or excursion into the country kept him in touch with nature.

Poems of 1842. In 1842 he broke silence with the two volumes of Poems by Alfred Tennyson. The volume contained The Epic, The Gardener's Daughter, Dora, Locksley Hall, Ulysses, Sir Galahad, Break, Break,

*References to the contents may be found on pp. 217, 225, 242. +See pp. 228, 242,

Break, and other poems of sustained power and sweetness, of rich pictorial art, of lofty faith in humanity and in human progress. It was received with instant favour, conquering even the critics, and establishing deep and sound the foundations of his fame.

Two pictures of him at this time are given by his two friends, Carlyle and his wife. Jane Welsh Carlyle's is womanly: "A very handsome man, and a whole-hearted one, with something of the gipsy in his appearance, which for me is perfectly charming." But how the poet lives in the portrait Carlyle sent Emerson! "A great shock of rough, dusty-musty hair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free and easy; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musically metallic-fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, or all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe."

The Laureateship. Little by little Tennyson's circle of friends increased, embracing even men of political prominence like Gladstone. It was therefore not difficult to secure him a pension which set him free from anxiety about money. In 1847 The Princess was published. In 1850, on the death of Wordsworth, Tennyson, not without some hard feelings of the envious, received the laurel. The same year after a quiet growth of ten years in the poet's mind, In Memoriam was issued, commemorating in a series of elegies, the loss of Arthur Hallam.

The third event of this remarkable year was the poet's marriage to his Lincolnshire friend of early days, Miss Sellwood. They settled in Twickenham, but removed three years later to Farringford, in the Isle of Wight.

At Farringford. The first work from this new home was Maud, 1855, about which critical opinion is still unsettled. Four years later followed Enid, Vivien, Elaine, and Guinevere, about which criticism speaks out bold and clear, as making with the other Idylls of the King, Tennyson's greatest contribution to English literature. To his noble group of English idylls, he added in 1864, Enoch Arden, Aylmer's Field, and The Northern Farmer.

At Aldworth. The narrative of later years is the story of constant production and of increasing fame. In 1869 the poet, "frightened away by hero-worshippers" built a new home at Blackburn, in a remote part of Surrey, henceforth dividing his time between Farringford and Aldworth. It is from these two residences that he took his title of baron, when in 1884 he accepted the peerage he had before refused. It was at Aldworth in December of 1869 that Sir Frederick Pollock staying with the Tennysons heard the poet read The Holy Grail.

Entering on a form of composition to which he had long been tentatively approaching, Tennyson devoted himself in his remaining years chiefly to dramatic composition. He gave to the world, Queen Mary, 1875; Harold, 1877; The Falcon, 1879; The Cup, 1881; The Promise of May 1882; Becket, 1884; The Foresters, 1892,—all of which have been produced on the stage, some with indifferent, others with pronounced success. Scattered through these years of dramatic work were the many short poems that make up the volumes Ballads, Tiresias, Demeter, and The Death of Enone.

Old age came upon the poet with his powers unimpaired and death found him girt with his singing robe, in his heart faith in progress, in the Gleam, and the strong hope to meet his Pilot beyond the bar of the great deep. On

Oct. 6th, 1892, at half-past one in the morning, Alfred Tennyson died.

"Death's ltttle rift hath rent the matchless lute:

The singer of undying song is dead."

SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF TENNYSON'S

POETRY.

Of all the poets of this century Tennyson has been the most widely read, and the most widely influential. The reasons for the charm of his poetry are in part due to the substance of his work, the character of his thought, and in part due to its beauty of language, tone, and form.

As interpreting nature. No poet, not even Wordsworth, has had a keener eye for the processes of nature, for the loveliness of English landscape. Whether it be the blackness of the ash-buds or the ruby buds of the lime, the chestnut buds glistening to the breezy blue, the pillor'd dusk of the sycamores, the smoking of the yewtree, the netted sunbeam of the brook, the wave greenglimmering towards its summit, or the falls like a downward smoke, -- everywhere we see the poet fixing the beauty in a phrase, and helping to make the charm of nature a greater part in the life of ordinary men. When Holbrook in Cranford comes upon an old cedar, he quotes, "The cedar spreads his dark-green layers of shade."

"Capital term-layers! Wonderful man!...When I saw the review of his poems in Blackwood, I...walked seven miles and ordered them. Now, what colour are ash-buds in March? An old fool that I am-this young man comes and tells me. Black as ash-buds in March. And I've lived all my life in the country."

As the voice of his age. Without being a leader of thought, Tennyson has given, of all writers, the fullest utterance to the thoughts of his time. Early Liberalism is in Locksley Hall, and late Conservatism in its sequel. The moral condition of commercial England at the middle of the century is depicted in Maud. The war of the Crimea lives in The Charge of the Light Brigade. The Princess takes all its serious background from the problem of the relations of men and women in the changing conditions of modern life. In St. Simeon Stylites as a negative, in Arthur as a positive picture, we see how closely his conception of the duty of labour, of active duty in life coincides with the best spirit of his contemporaries. The ideal of infinite progress, gradual, enlightened progress, that buoys up this nineteenth century, and makes it distinct from every preceding age, animates his poetry from his first volume to his last.

As a dramatic creator. To his accurate and poetical interpretation of nature and his age must be added some gift in interpreting human character. Here we must not rely on his more elaborate attempts at the portrayal of character, as in the Idylls. It is generally felt that the poet has not succeeded in giving the personages of the Arthurian story the life and individuality that make them live before us. They are at times animated into life, but on the whole they are picturesque figures, noble paintings. It is the secret of life in art to paint from life; and so in poetry. Tennyson's true creations are those that lie, not far off in the misty past, but living about him. Even here his secluded life cut him off from a full knowledge of humanity. But within his limits what a series of living figures he has added to our acquaintance. How much more we know of human nature, and on its loveable side too, by