The _Ode on the Death of Wellington_ is worthy of study, because it is the best specimen of a class of poems for which Tennyson was distinguished from first to last. He was always a patriot, and there is no feeling he expresses more fervently than that of pride in England. He contrasts her stability with the fickleness of France. He is proud of her freedom slowly won and surely kept. Patriotic ballads like _The Revenge_ and _The Defence of Lucknow_ are among the most prominent characteristics of his later volumes. His great success in the case of the _Ode_ is due to the fact, first that his heart is stirred by the sense that 'the last great Englishman is low;' and secondly, to the fact that he saw in Wellington an impersonation of all that he had admired in England. The picture he draws of the duke is identical in its great features with that he had painted of the nation, and it has the advantage of being concrete. The passionate fervour of which Tennyson's lyric strain was capable is best illustrated from _Maud_, a poem which it is more easy to praise in parts than as a whole; for it must be admitted that the character of the hero is deficient in greatness and self-restraint; and the part which depicts his madness is poor. A good deal of at best exaggerated blame has likewise been meted out to the references to war in the course of the poem. But these faults are more than redeemed by such lyric outbursts as 'Come into the garden, Maud,' and 'O that 'twere possible.' The first is perhaps the most splendid, as it is one of the most justly popular, of all Tennyson's lyrics; while the second is among the most exquisite and delicately finished. These pieces have a deeper tone of feeling and more reality of passion than we find in Tennyson's earlier lyrics. The _Idylls of the King_ are the outcome of an interest in Arthurian legends that seems to have gradually developed. _The Lady of Shalott_ proves that Tennyson's mind was dallying with the story of Arthur as early as 1833; and _Sir Galahad_ and _Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere_ attest the continuance of the interest in the volumes of 1842. Another piece, the _Morte d'Arthur_, published along with these, was afterwards embodied in the _Idylls_. It was professedly a fragment, and the epic of which it was described as the sole relic was spoken of disparagingly as 'faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth.' Notwithstanding the disparagement, _The Passing of Arthur_ is the gem of the _Idylls_; but the reference serves at least to direct attention to an actual difference between Tennyson's earlier and later work. Though the _Morte d'Arthur_ is far from being a mere echo of Homer, there are numerous lines and phrases in it directly recalling Homer, and different in tone from the context. In the later _Idylls_ the classical allusions seem to be one with the piece, they do not call attention to themselves but are transformed and made Tennyson's own.