From 1870 to 1880 Tennyson was engaged principally on his dramas—­Queen Mary, Harold, and Becket,—­but, with the exception of the last, these did not prove particularly successful on the stage.  In 1880 Ballads and Poems was published, an astonishing volume from one so advanced in years.  In 1882 the Promise of May was produced in public, but was soon withdrawn.  In 1884 Tennyson was raised to the peerage as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Farringford, after having on two previous occasions refused a baronetcy.  In 1885 Tiresias and Other Poems was published.  In this volume was published Balin and Balan, thus completing the Idylls of the King, which now assumed their permanent order and form. Demeter and Other Poems followed in 1889, including Crossing the Bar.  In 1892, on October 6th, the poet died at Aldworth, “with the moonlight upon his bed and an open Shakespeare by his side.”  A few days later he was buried in Westminster Abbey, by the side of Robert Browning, his friend and contemporary, who had preceded him by only a few years.

Carlyle has left us a graphic description of Tennyson as he was in middle life:  “One of the finest—­looking men in the world.  A great shock of rough, dusky dark 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, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe!  We shall see what he will grow to.”  To this may be added a paragraph from Caroline Fox:  “Tennyson is a grand specimen of a man, with a magnificent head set on his shoulders like the capital of a mighty pillar.  His hair is long and wavy and covers a massive head.  He wears a beard and mustache, which one begrudges as hiding so much of that firm, powerful, but finely-chiselled mouth.  His eyes are large and gray, and open wide when a subject interests him; they are well shaded by the noble brow, with its strong lines of thought and suffering.  I can quite understand Samuel Lawrence calling it the best balance of head he had ever seen.”

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

Born, August 6, 1809, at Somersby, Lincolnshire.

Goes to Louth Grammar School, 1816.

Publishes, along with his brother Charles, Poems by Two Brothers, 1827.

Goes to Trinity College, Cambridge, 1828.

Forms friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam, 1828.

Wins Vice-Chancellor’s Gold Medal for his poem Timbuctoo, 1829.

Publishes Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, 1830.

Makes an expedition to the Pyrenees with Arthur Henry Hallam, 1830.