The splendid and sombre procession has passed, leaving us to muse as to how far the poet has fulfilled his own ideal. There could be no new epic: he gave a chain of heroic Idylls. An epic there could not be, for the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ have each a unity of theme, a narrative compressed into a few days in the former, in the latter into forty days of time. The tragedy of Arthur’s reign could not so be condensed; and Tennyson chose the only feasible plan. He has left a work, not absolutely perfect, indeed, but such as he conceived, after many tentative essays, and such as he desired to achieve. His fame may not rest chiefly on the Idylls, but they form one of the fairest jewels in the crown that shines with unnumbered gems, each with its own glory. VIII. _ENOCH ARDEN_. THE DRAMAS. THE success of the first volume of the Idylls recompensed the poet for the slings and arrows that gave _Maud_ a hostile welcome. His next publication was the beautiful _Tithonus_, a fit pendant to the _Ulysses_, and composed about the same date (1833–35). “A quarter of a century ago,” Tennyson dates it, writing in 1860 to the Duke of Argyll. He had found it when “ferreting among my old books,” he said, in search of something for Thackeray, who was establishing the _Cornhill Magazine_. What must the wealth of the poet have been, who, possessing _Tithonus_ in his portfolio, did not take the trouble to insert it in the volumes of 1842! Nobody knows how many poems of Tennyson’s never even saw pen and ink, being composed unwritten, and forgotten. At this time we find him recommending Mr Browning’s _Men and Women_ to the Duke, who, like many Tennysonians, does not seem to have been a ready convert to his great contemporary. The Duke and Duchess urged the Laureate to attempt the topic of the Holy Grail, but he was not in the mood. Indeed the vision of the Grail in the early _Sir Galahad_ is doubtless happier than the allegorical handling of a theme so obscure, remote, and difficult, in the Idylls. He wrote his _Boadicea_, a piece magnificent in itself, but of difficult popular access, owing to the metrical experiment.