in Morris_, and {291}
the _Gardener's Daughter_. The songs in the _Miller's Daughter_ had a
more spontaneous, lyrical movement than any thing that he had yet
published, and foretokened the lovely songs which interlude the
divisions of the _Princess_, the famous _Bugle Song_, the no-less
famous _Cradle Song_, and the rest. In 1833 Tennyson's friend, Arthur
Hallam, died, and the effect of this great sorrow upon the poet was to
deepen and strengthen the character of his genius. It turned his mind
in upon itself, and set it brooding over questions which his poetry had
so far left untouched; the meaning of life and death, the uses of
adversity, the future of the race, the immortality of the soul, and the
dealings of God with mankind.

"Thou madest Death; and, lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made."

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 {292} 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 medieval
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 d' Arthur_ 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 sublim