ugh in the first of these five decades the pudding if not
the praise was still rather scanty, his reputation waxed steadily and
never waned. To keep for the present to chronicle in biography and
bibliography, he published in 1847 the exquisite "medley" of _The
Princess_, his first attempt at a poem of any length. 1850 was a great
year in his career, for in it he published the collection of elegiacs on
his friend Arthur Hallam, in which some have seen his most perfect work,
and he became Poet Laureate. Three years later he bought a house at
Farringford, near Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, which was for the
rest of his life his occasional and, until 1870 (when to avoid intrusion
he built himself another at Aldworth near Haslemere), his main house.
His poetry now was beginning to bring in some profit, the editions of it
multiplying every year; and during the last thirty years of his life, if
not more, he was probably at least as richly provided with mere gold as
any poet has ever been. He was, however, never seduced into hasty
writing; and he never gave himself to any other occupation save poetry,
while during his entire life he was a hater of what is commonly called
society. In 1855 there appeared _Maud_, the reception of which seemed
at first something of a relapse in welcome, which was in its first form
open to some criticism, and which he touched up to one of the finest as
a whole, as it was in parts one of the most passionate and melodious of
his works. But the _Idylls of the King_, the first and best instalment
of which appeared in 1858, completely revived even his popular vogue,
and made him indeed popular as no poet had been since Byron. It was said
at the time that 17,000 copies of _Enoch Arden_, his next volume (1864),
were sold on the morning of publication.

For the rest of his life his issues were pretty frequent, though the
individual volumes were never large. A series of dramas beginning with
_Queen Mary_ in 1875, and continuing through _Harold_, _The Falcon_,
_The Cup_, the unlucky _Promise of May_, _Becket_, and _The Foresters_,
though fine enough for any other man, could be better spared by his
critical admirers than any other portion of his works. But the volumes
of poems proper, which appeared between 1864 and his death, _Lucretius_,
_Tiresias_, the successive instalments of the _Idylls_, _Locksley Hall
Sixty Years After_, _Demeter_, _The Death of Oenone_, and perhaps
above all the splendid _Ballads_ o