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Rh year; in the ensuing summer he travelled in Germany. The time slipped by with incidents but few and slight, Tennyson's popularity in Great Britain growing all the time to an extent unparalleled in the whole annals of English poetry. This universality of fame led to considerable practical discomfort; he was besieged by sightseers, and his nervous trepidation led him perhaps to exaggerate the intensity of the infliction. In 1867 he determined to make for himself a haven of refuge against the invading Philistine, and bought some land on Blackdown, above Haslemere, then a secluded corner of England; here Mr (afterwards Sir) James Knowles began to build him a house, ultimately named Aldworth. This is the time of two of his rare, privately printed pamphlets, The Window; or, the Loves of the Wrens (1867), and The Victim (1868). The noble poem Lucretius, one of the greatest of Tennyson's versified monographs, appeared in May 1868, and in this year The Holy Grail was at last finished; it was published in 1869, together with three other idyls belonging to the Arthurian epic, and various miscellaneous lyrics, besides Lucretius. The reception of this volume was cordial, but not so universally respectful as that which Tennyson had grown to expect from his adoring public. The fact was that the heightened reputation of Browning, and still more the sudden vogue of Swinburne, Morris and Rossetti (1866-1870), considerably disturbed the minds of Tennyson's most ardent readers, and exposed himself to a severer criticism than he had lately been accustomed to endure. He went on quite calmly, however, sure of his mission and of his music. His next volume (1872), Gareth and Lynette and The Last Tournament, continued, and, as he then supposed, concluded The Idylls of the King, to the great satisfaction of the poet, who had found much difficulty in rounding off the last sections of the poem. Nor, as he was to find, was the poem yet completed, but for the time being he dismissed it from his mind. In 1873 he was offered a baronetcy by Gladstone, and again by Disraeli in 1874; in each case the honour was gracefully declined. Believing that his work with the romantic Arthurian epics was concluded, Tennyson now turned his attention to a department of poetry which had long attracted him, but which he had never seriously attempted—the drama. He put before him a scheme, which he cannot be said to have carried far, that of illustrating "the making of England" by a series of great historical tragedies. His Queen Mary, the first of these chronicle-plays was published in 1875, and played by Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum in 1876. Although it was full of admirably dramatic writing, it was not theatrically well composed, and it failed on the stage. Extremely pertinacious in this respect, the poet went on attempting to storm the theatre, with assault upon assault, all practically failures until the seventh and last, which was unfortunately posthumous. To have really succeeded on the stage would have given Tennyson more gratification than anything else, but he was not permitted to live long enough to see this blossom also added to the heavy garland of his glory. Meanwhile Harold, a tragedy of doom, was published in 1876; but, though perhaps the finest of its author's dramas, it has never been acted. During these years Tennyson's thoughts were largely occupied with the building of Aldworth. His few lyrics were spirited ballads of adventure, inspired by an exalted patriotism—"The Revenge" (1878), "The Defence of Lucknow" (1879)—but he reprinted and finally published his old suppressed poem, The Lover's Tale, and a little play of his, The Falcon, versified out of Boccaccio, was produced by the Kendals at their theatre in the last days of 1879. Tennyson had reached the limits of the threescore years and ten, and it was tacitly taken for granted that he would now retire into dignified repose. In point of fact, he now started on a new lease of poetical activity. In 1880 he published the earliest of six important collections of lyrics, this being entitled Ballads and other Poems, and containing the sombre and magnificent "Rizpah." In 1881 The Cup and in 1882 The Promise of May, two little plays, were produced without substantial success in London theatres: the second of these is perhaps the least successful of all the poet's longer writings, but its failure annoyed him unreasonably. This determination to be a working playwright, pushed on in the face of critical hostility and popular indifference, is a very curious trait in the character of Tennyson. In September 1883 Tennyson and Gladstone set out on a voyage round the north of Scotland, to Orkney, and across the ocean to Norway and Denmark. At Copenhagen they were entertained by the king and queen, and after much fêting, returned to Gravesend: this adventure served to cheer the poet, who had been in low spirits since the death of his favourite brother Charles, and who now entered upon a phase of admirable vigour. During the voyage Gladstone had determined to offer Tennyson a peerage. After some demur, the poet consented to accept it, but added, "For my own part, I shall regret my simple name all my life." On the 11th of March 1884 he took his seat in the House of Lords as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Farringford. He voted twice, but never spoke in the House. In the autumn of this year his tragedy of Becket was published, but the poet at last despaired of the stage, and disclaimed any hope of "meeting the exigencies of our modern theatre." Curiously enough, after his death Becket was the one of all his plays which enjoyed a great success on the boards. In 1885 was published another interesting miscellany, Tiresias and other Poems, with a posthumous dedication to Edward FitzGerald. In this volume, it should be noted, The Idylls of the King was completed at last by the publication of "Balin and Balan"; it contained also the superb address "To Virgil." In April 1886 Tennyson suffered the loss of his second son, Lionel, who died in the Red Sea on his return from India. The untiring old poet was steadily writing on, and by 1886 he had another collection of lyrics ready, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, &c.; his eyes troubled him, but his memory and his intellectual curiosity were as vivid as ever. Late in 1888 he had a dangerous attack of rheumatic gout, from which it seemed in December that he could scarcely hope to rally, but his magnificent constitution pulled him through. He was past eighty when he published the collection of new verses entitled Demeter and other Poems (1889), which appeared almost simultaneously with the death of Browning, an event which left Tennyson a solitary figure indeed in poetic literature. In 1891 it was observed that he had wonderfully recovered the high spirits of youth, and even a remarkable portion of physical strength. His latest drama, The Foresters, now received his attention, and in March 1892 it was produced at New York, with Miss Ada Rehanr as Maid Marian. During this year Tennyson was steadily engaged on poetical composition, finishing "Akbar's Dream," "Kapiolani" and other contents of the posthumous volume called The Death of Oenone, 1892. In the summer he took a voyage to the Channel Islands and Devonshire; and even this was not his latest excursion from home, for in July 1892 he went up for a visit to London. Soon after entering his eighty-fourth year, however, symptoms of weakness set in, and early in September his condition began to give alarm. He retained his intellectual lucidity and an absolute command of his faculties to the last, reading Shakespeare with obvious appreciation until within a few hours of his death. With the splendour of the full moon falling upon him, his hand clasping his Shakespeare, and looking, as we are told, almost unearthly in the majestic beauty of his old age, Tennyson passed away at Aldworth on the night of the 6th of October 1892. Cymbeline, the play he had been reading on the last afternoon, was laid in his coffin, and on the 12th he was publicly buried with great solemnity in Westminster Abbey. Lady Tennyson survived until August 1896.

The physical appearance of Tennyson was very remarkable. Of his figure at the age of thirty-three Carlyle has left a superb portrait: "One of the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of rough, dusky, dark hair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and