Entirely different in spirit is another collection of poems called English Idyls,[236] which began in the Poems of 1842, and which Tennyson intended should reflect the ideals of widely different types of English life.  Of these varied poems, “Dora,” “The Gardener’s Daughter,” “Ulysses,” “Locksley Hall” and “Sir Galahad” are the best; but all are worthy of study.  One of the most famous of this series is “Enoch Arden” (1864), in which Tennyson turns from mediaeval knights, from lords, heroes, and fair ladies, to find the material for true poetry among the lowly people that make up the bulk of English life.  Its rare melody, its sympathy for common life, and its revelation of the beauty and heroism which hide in humble men and women everywhere, made this work an instant favorite.  Judged by its sales alone, it was the most popular of his works during the poet’s lifetime.

Tennyson’s later volumes, like the Ballads (1880) and Demeter (1889), should not be overlooked, since they contain some of his best work.  The former contains stirring war songs, like “The Defence of Lucknow,” and pictures of wild passionate grief, like “Rizpah”; the latter is notable for “Romney’s Remorse,” a wonderful piece of work; “Merlin and The Gleam,” which expresses the poet’s lifelong ideal; and several exquisite little songs, like “The Throstle,” and “The Oak,” which show how marvelously the aged poet retained his youthful freshness and inspiration.  Here certainly is variety enough to give us long years of literary enjoyment; and we need hardly mention miscellaneous poems, like “The Brook” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” which are known to every schoolboy; and “Wages” and “The Higher Pantheism,” which should be read by every man who thinks about the old, old problem of life and death.

CHARACTERISTICS OF TENNYSON’S POETRY.  If we attempt to sum up the quality of Tennyson, as shown in all these works, the task is a difficult one; but three things stand out more or less plainly.  First, Tennyson is essentially the artist.  No other in his age studied the art of poetry so constantly or with such singleness of purpose; and only Swinburne rivals him in melody and the perfect finish of his verse.  Second, like all the great writers of his age, he is emphatically a teacher, often a leader.  In the preceding age, as the result of the turmoil produced by the French Revolution, lawlessness was more or less common, and individuality was the rule in literature.  Tennyson’s theme, so characteristic of his age, is the reign of order,—­of law in the physical world, producing evolution, and of law in the spiritual world, working out the perfect man. In Memoriam, Idylls of the King, The Princess,-here are three widely different poems; yet the theme of each, so far as poetry is a kind of spiritual philosophy and weighs its words before it utters them, is the orderly development of law in the natural and in the spiritual world.