Alfred Tennyson, generally accounted the greatest English poet since Milton, was born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, where his early studies were for the most part personally directed by his father, the rector of the parish. He then studied at Cambridge, where "The Lady of Shalott" and "A Dream of Fair Women," were written.
Criticism and the death of a dearly loved friend, Arthur Hallam, now drove the tender-souled Tennyson into a retirement from which he did not reappear for nine years. He was busy during all this time, composing and perfecting "Locksley Hall," "Dora," "Morte D'Arthur," and other poems whose publication placed him in the front rank as a poet. "The Princess" followed in 1847 and "In Memoriam," his noblest work, an elegy on the death of Arthur Hallam, in 1850, seventeen years after his friend's decease.
In the same year he was appointed poet laureate and married a Miss Sellwood. Nine years later appeared his great epic cycle, "Idylls of the King." In 1884 he was raised to the peerage. "Crossing the Bar," published shortly before his death, was a fitting close to a literary life nobly consecrated to the combat against skepticism and materialism.
THE MAN
1. Would you place Tennyson among the aristocracy of England? He is known as "Alfred, Lord Tennyson": was he of noble extraction?
2. What position did he hold at the Court of St. James?
3. Who preceded and who succeeded him as poet laureate? XII, 324; I, 235.
4. How may we account for his strong religious bent?
5. Locate on the map two districts intimately connected with the life of Tennyson, Lincolnshire and the Isle of Wight.