his son Hallam, 1880.

Publishes _Ballads and Other Poems_, 1880.

His drama _The Cup_ successfully performed, 1881.

His drama _The Promise of May_ proves a failure, 1882.

Raised to the peerage as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Farringford, 1884.

Publishes _Becket_, 1884.

His son Lionel dies, 1885.

Publishes _Tiresias and Other Poems_, 1885. This volume contains _Balin
and Balan_, thus completing his _Idylls of the King_.

Publishes _Demeter and Other Poems_, 1889.

Dies at Aldworth, October 6, 1892, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

The _Death of Oenone_ is published, 1892.

APPRECIATIONS

"Since the days when Dryden held office no Laureate has been appointed so
distinctly pre-eminent above all his contemporaries, so truly the king of
the poets, as he upon whose brows now rests the Laureate crown. Dryden's
grandeur was sullied, his muse was venal, and his life was vicious; still
in his keeping the office acquired a certain dignity; after his death it
declined into the depths of depredation, and each succeeding dullard
dimmed its failing lustre. The first ray of hope for its revival sprang
into life with the appointment of Southey, to whom succeeded Wordsworth,
a poet of worth and genius, whose name certainly assisted in
resuscitating the ancient dignity of the appointment. Alfred Tennyson
derives less honor from the title than he confers upon it; to him we owe
a debt of gratitude that he has redeemed the laurels with his poetry,
noble, pure, and undefiled as ever poet sung."--_Walter Hamilton_.

"Tennyson is many sided; he has a great variety of subjects. He has
treated of the classical and the romantic life of the world; he has been
keenly alive to the beauties of nature; and he has tried to sympathize
with the social problems that confront mankind. In this respect he is a
representative poet of the age, for this very diversity of natural gifts
has made him popular with all classes. Perhaps he has not been perfectly
cosmopolitan, and sometimes the theme in his poetry has received a slight
treatment compared to what might have been given it by deeper thinking
and more philosophical poets, but he has caught the spirit of the age and
has expressed its thought, if not always forcibly, at least more
beautifully than any other poet,"--_Charles Read Nutter_.

"In technical elegance, as an artist in verse, Tennyson is the greatest
of modern poets. Other masters, old and new, have surpassed