has taken to the writing of ballads and dramas. His ballad of +The Revenge+ is one of the noblest and most vigorous poems that England has ever seen. The dramas of +Harold+, +Queen Mary+, and +Becket+, are perhaps his best; and the last was written when the poet had reached the age of seventy-four. In the year 1882 he was created Baron Tennyson, and called to the House of Peers. 6. +Tennyson’s Style.+-- Tennyson has been to the last two generations of Englishmen the national teacher of poetry. He has tried many new measures; he has ventured on many new rhythms; and he has succeeded in them all. He is at home equally in the slowest, most tranquil, and most meditative of rhythms, and in the rapidest and most impulsive. Let us look at the following lines as an example of the first. The poem is written on a woman who is dying of a lingering disease-- “Fair is her cottage in its place, Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides: It sees itself from thatch to base Dream in the sliding tides. “And fairer she: but, ah! how soon to die! Her quiet dream of life this hour may cease: Her peaceful being slowly passes by To some more perfect peace.” The very next poem, “The Sailor Boy,” in the same volume, is-- though written in exactly the same measure-- driven on with the most rapid march and vigorous rhythm-- “He rose at dawn and, fired with hope, Shot o’er the seething harbour-bar, And reached the ship and caught the rope And whistled to the morning-star.” And this is a striking and prominent characteristic of all Tennyson’s poetry. Everywhere the sound is made to be “an echo to the sense”; the style is in perfect keeping with the matter. In the “Lotos-Eaters,” we have the sense of complete indolence and deep repose in-- “A land of streams! Some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go.” In the “Boädicea,” we have the rush and the shock of battle, the closing of legions, the hurtle of arms and the clash of armed men-- “Phantom sound of blows descending, moan of an enemy massacred, Phantom wail of women and children, multitudinous agonies.” Many of Tennyson’s sweetest and most pathetic lines have gone right into the heart of the nation, such as-- “But oh for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!” All his language is highly polished, ornate, rich-- sometimes Spenserian in luxuriant imagery and sweet music, sometimes even Homeric in massiveness and severe simplicity. Thus, in the “Morte d’Arthur,” he speaks of the knight walking to the lake as-- “Clothed with his breath, and looking as he walked, Larger than human on the frozen hills.” Many of his pithy lines have taken root in the memory of the English people, such as these-- “Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.” “For words, like Nature, half reveal, And half conceal, the soul within.”