His elegy on Hallam, _In Memoriam_, was not published till 1850. He kept it by him all those years, adding section after section, gathering up into it whatever reflections crystallized about its central theme. It is his most intellectual and most individual work; a great song of sorrow and consolation. In 1842 he published a third collection of poems, among which were _Locksley Hall_, displaying a new strength, of passion; _Ulysses_, suggested by a passage in Dante: pieces of a speculative cast, like the _Two Voices_ and the _Vision of Sin_; the song _Break, Break, Break_, which preluded _In Memoriam_; and, lastly, some additional gropings toward the subject of the Arthurian romance, such as _Sir Galahad, Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere_, and _Morte d' Arthur._ The last was in blank verse, and, as afterward incorporated in the _Passing of Arthur_, forms one of the best passages in the _Idylls of the King_. The _Princess, a Medley_, published in 1849, represents the eclectic character of Tennyson's art; a mediaeval tale with an admixture of modern sentiment, and with the very modern problem of woman's sphere for its theme. The first four _Idylls of the King_, 1859, with those since added, constitute, when taken together, an epic poem on the old story of King Arthur. Tennyson went to Malory's _Morte Darthur_ for his material, but the outline of the first idyl, _Enid_, was taken from Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the Welsh _Mabinogion_. In the idyl of _Guinevere_ Tennyson's genius reached its high-water mark. The interview between Arthur and his fallen queen is marked by a moral sublimity and a tragic intensity which move the soul as nobly as any scene in modern literature. Here, at least, the art is pure and not "decorated;" the effect is produced by the simplest means, and all is just, natural, and grand. _Maud_--a love novel in verse--published in 1855, and considerably enlarged in 1856, had great sweetness and beauty, particularly in its lyrical portions, but it was uneven in execution, imperfect in design, and marred by lapses into mawkishness and excess in language. Since 1860 Tennyson has added little of permanent value to his work. His dramatic experiments, like _Queen Mary_, are not, on the whole, successful, though it would be unjust to deny dramatic power to the poet who has written, upon one hand, _Guinevere_ and the _Passing of Arthur_, and upon the other the homely dialectic monologue of the _Northern Farmer_.