In 1837 Arthur Hallam, Tennyson's friend and other self, the one man who predicted that he would be the greatest poet of his age, died suddenly in Vienna while traveling abroad. The shock made a profound impression on Tennyson. For ten years he put forth no work. Finally, in 1842, he issued two volumes of poems that at once caught the public fancy. Among the poems that brought him fame were _Locksley Hall_, _Lady Godiva_, _Ulysses_, _The Two Voices_ and _Morte d' Arthur_. The latter was the seed of the splendid _Idylls of the King_. Five years later he published _The Princess_, with its beautiful songs, and three years after _In Memoriam_ the greatest elegiac poem in the language, in which he lamented the fate of Arthur Hallam and poured forth his own grief over this irreparable loss. In the same year he married Miss Emily Sellwood, who made his home a haven of rest and of whom he once said that with her "the peace of God came into my life." _Maud_, his most dramatic poem, was issued in 1855. As early as 1859 he published the first part of _The Idylls of the King_, but it was not until 1872 that the complete sequence of the _Idylls_ was given to the public. These Arthurian legends are cast by Tennyson in his most musical blank verse, and he has given to them a tinge of mysticism that seems to lift them above the everyday world into a realm of pure romance and chivalry. [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF TENNYSON'S ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF "CROSSING THE BAR" COPYRIGHT BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY] _Enoch Arden_, a domestic idyll, written in 1864, made a great hit. It was followed by several plays--_Queen Mary_, _Harold_, _Becket_ and others--all finely written, but none appealing to the great public. Up to his last years Tennyson remained the real laureate of his people, his words always tinged with the fire of inspiration. Only three years before his death he wrote _Crossing the Bar_, a poem which met with instant response from the English-speaking world because of its signs of courage in the face of death and its proofs of steadfast faith in the life beyond the grave. No adequate estimate of Tennyson's work can be made in the small space allotted to this article. All that can be done is to mention a few of his best works and to quote a few of his stirring lines. If the reader will study these poems he will be pretty sure to read more of Tennyson. To my mind, _Locksley Hall_ is Tennyson's finest poem, as true to-day as when it was written seventy years ago. The long, rolling, trochaic verse, like the billows on the coast that it pictures, suits the thought. The poem is the passionate lament of a returned soldier from India over the mercenary marriage of the cousin whom he loved. Here are a few of the lines that will never die: