In 1831 Tennyson left the university without taking his degree.  The reasons for this step are not clear; but the family was poor, and poverty may have played a large part in his determination.  His father died a few months later; but, by a generous arrangement with the new rector, the family retained the rectory at Somersby, and here, for nearly six years, Tennyson lived in a retirement which strongly suggests Milton at Horton.  He read and studied widely, cultivated an intimate acquaintance with nature, thought deeply on the problems suggested by the Reform Bill which was then agitating England, and during his leisure hours wrote poetry.  The first fruits of this retirement appeared, late in 1832, in a wonderful little volume bearing the simple name Poems.  As the work of a youth only twenty-three, this book is remarkable for the variety and melody of its verse.  Among its treasures we still read with delight “The Lotos Eaters,” “Palace of Art,” “A Dream of Fair Women,” “The Miller’s Daughter,” “Oenone,” and “The Lady of Shalott”; but the critics of the Quarterly, who had brutally condemned his earlier work, were again unmercifully severe.  The effect of this harsh criticism upon a sensitive nature was most unfortunate; and when his friend Hallam died, in 1833, Tennyson was plunged into a period of gloom and sorrow.  The sorrow may be read in the exquisite little poem beginning, “Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!” which was his first published elegy for his friend; and the depressing influence of the harsh and unjust criticism is suggested in “Merlin and The Gleam,” which the reader will understand only after he has read Tennyson’s biography.

For nearly ten years after Hallam’s death Tennyson published nothing, and his movements are hard to trace as the family went here and there, seeking peace and a home in various parts of England.  But though silent, he continued to write poetry, and it was in these sad wandering days that he began his immortal In Memoriam and his Idylls of the King.  In 1842 his friends persuaded him to give his work to the world, and with some hesitation he published his Poems.  The success of this work was almost instantaneous, and we can appreciate the favor with which it was received when we read the noble blank verse of “Ulysses” and “Morte d’Arthur,” the perfect little song of grief for Hallam which we have already mentioned, and the exquisite idyls like “Dora” and “The Gardener’s Daughter,” which aroused even Wordsworth’s enthusiasm and brought from him a letter saying that he had been trying all his life to write such an English pastoral as “Dora” and had failed.  From this time forward Tennyson, with increasing confidence in himself and his message, steadily maintained his place as the best known and best loved poet in England.

The year 1850 was a happy one for Tennyson.  He was appointed poet laureate, to succeed Wordsworth; and he married Emily Sellwood,