A History of English Literature

few years later came another deep sorrow. Tennyson formed an engagement of
marriage with Miss Emily Sellwood, but his lack of worldly prospects led
her relatives to cancel it.
Tennyson now spent much of his time in London, on terms of friendship with
many literary men, including Carlyle, who almost made an exception in his
favor from his general fanatical contempt for poetry. In 1842 Tennyson
published two volumes of poems, including the earlier ones revised; he here
won an undoubted popular success and was accepted by the best judges as the
chief living productive English poet. Disaster followed in the shape of an
unfortunate financial venture which for a time reduced his family to
serious straits and drove him with shattered nerves to a sanitarium. Soon,
however, he received from the government as a recognition of his poetic
achievement a permanent annual pension of two hundred pounds, and in 1847
he published the strange but delightful 'Princess.' The year 1850 marked
the decisive turning point of his career. He was enabled to renew his
engagement and be married; the publication of 'In Memoriam' established him
permanently in a position of such popularity as few living poets have ever
enjoyed; and on the death of Wordsworth he was appointed Poet Laureate.
The prosperity of the remaining half of his life was a full recompense for
his earlier struggles, though it is marked by few notable external events.
Always a lover of the sea, he soon took up his residence in the Isle of
Wight. His production of poetry was steady, and its variety great. The
largest of all his single achievements was the famous series of 'Idylls of
the King,' which formed a part of his occupation for many years. In much of
his later work there is a marked change from his earlier elaborate
decorativeness to a style of vigorous strength. At the age of sixty-five,
fearful that he had not yet done enough to insure his fame, he gave a
remarkable demonstration of poetic vitality by striking out into the to him
new field of poetic drama. His important works here are the three tragedies
in which he aimed to complete the series of Shakspere's chronicle-history
plays; but he lacked the power of dramatic action, and the result is rather
three fine poems than successful plays. In 1883, after having twice refused
a baronetcy, he, to the regret of his more democratic friends, accepted a
peerage (barony). Tennyson disliked external show, but he was always
intensely loyal to the institutions of England, he felt that literature was
being honored in his person, and he was willing to secure a position of
honor for his son, who had long rendered him devoted service. He died
quietly in 1892, at the age of eighty-three, and was buried in Westminster
Abbey beside Browning, who had found a resting-place there three years
earlier. His personal character, despite some youthful morbidness, was
unusually delightful, marked by courage, honesty, sympathy, and
straightforward manliness. He had a fine voice and took undisguised
pleasure in reading his poems aloud. The chief traits of his poetry in form
and substance may be suggested in a brief summary.
1. Most characteristic, perhaps, is his exquisite artistry (in which he
learned much from Keats). His appreciation for sensuous beauty, especially
color, is acute; his command of poetic phraseology is unsurpassed; he
suggests shades of, feeling and elusive aspiration with, marvelously
subtile power; his descriptions are magnificently beautiful, often with
much detail; and his melody is often the perfection of sweetness. Add the
truth and tenderness of his emotion, and it results that he is one of the
finest and most moving of lyric poets. Nor is all this beauty vague and
unsubstantial. Not only was he the most careful of English poets, revising
his works with almost unprecedented pains, but his scientific habit of mind
insists on the greatest accuracy; in his allusions to Nature he often
introduces scientific facts in a way thitherto unparalleled, and sometimes