Home they brought her warrior dead.

Arthur Hallam, a gifted son of the distinguished historian, who was betrothed to Tennyson’s sister, died young; and the poet has mourned and eulogized him in a long poem entitled In Memoriam.  It contains one hundred and twenty-nine four-lined stanzas, and is certainly very musical and finished; but it is rather the language of calm philosophy elaborately studied, than that of a poignant grief.  It is not, in our judgment, to be compared with his shorter poems, and is generally read and overpraised only by his more ardent admirers, who discover a crystal tear of genuine emotion in every stanza.

IDYLS OF THE KING.—­The fragment on the death of Arthur, already mentioned, foreshadowed a purpose of the poet’s mind to make the legends of that almost fabulous monarch a vehicle for modern philosophy in English verse.  In 1859 appeared a volume containing the Idyls of the King.  They are rather minor epics than idyls.  The simple materials are taken from the Welsh and French chronicles, and are chiefly of importance in that they cater to that English taste which finds national greatness typified in Arthur.  It had been a successful stratagem with Spenser in The Fairy Queen, and has served Tennyson equally well in the Idyls.  It unites the ages of fable and of chivalry; it gives a noble lineage to heroic deeds.  The best is the last—­Guinevere—­almost the perfection of pathos in poetry.  The picturesqueness of his descriptions is evinced by the fact that Gustave Dore has chosen these Idyls as a subject for illustration, and has been eminently successful in his labor.

Maud, which appeared in 1855, notwithstanding some charming lyrical passages, may be considered Tennyson’s failure.  In 1869 he completed The Idyls by publishing The Coming of Arthur, The Holy Grail, and Pelleas and Etteare.  He also finished the Morte d’Arthur, and put it in its proper place as The Passing of Arthur.

Tennyson was appointed poet-laureate upon the death of Wordsworth, in 1850, and receives besides a pension of L200.  He lived for a long time in great retirement at Farringford, on the Isle of Wight; but has lately removed to Petersfield, in Hampshire.  It may be reasonably doubted whether this hermit-life has not injured his poetical powers; whether, great as he really is, a little inhalation of the air of busy every-day life would not have infused more of nature and freshness into his verse.  Among his few Odes are that on the death of the Duke of Wellington, the dedication of his poems to the Queen, and his welcome to Alexandra, Princess of Wales, all of which are of great excellence.  His Charge of the Light Brigade, at Balaclava, while it gave undue currency to that stupid military blunder, must rank as one of the finest battle-lyrics in the language.