ved. The gradual growth of Tennyson's elegy can be
discerned from the letters of his friends, to whom from time to time he
read some of the stanzas which he had completed. Even in the first
winter after Hallam's death, he wrote a few lines in the manuscript book
which he kept by him for the purpose during the next fifteen years, and
which he was within an ace of losing in 1850, just when the poem was
completed and ready for publication. As a statesman turns from his
private sorrow to devote himself to a public cause, so the poet's
instinct was to find comfort in the practice of his art. Under the
stress of feelings aroused by this event and under the influence of a
wider reading, his mind was maturing. We hear of a steady discipline of
mental work, of hours given methodically to Italian and German, to
theology and history, to chemistry, botany, and other branches of
science. Above all, he pondered now, as he did later so constantly, on
the mystery of death and life after death. Outwardly this seems the most
uneventful period of his career; but, in their effect on his mind and
work, these years were very far from being wasted. When next, in 1842,
he emerges from seclusion to offer his verses to the public, he had
enlarged the range of his subjects and deepened his powers of thought.
We see less richness in the images, less freedom in the play of fancy,
but there is a firmer grip of character, a surer handling of the
problems affecting the life of man. Underground was flowing the hidden
stream of _In Memoriam_, unknown save to the few; only in part were the
fruits of this period to be seen in the two volumes containing 'English
Idyls' and other new poems, along with a selection of earlier lyrics now
revised and reprinted.

The distinctive quality of the book is given by the word Idyl, which was
to be so closely connected with Tennyson's fame. Here he is working in a
small compass, but he breaks fresh ground in describing scenes of
English village life, and shows that he has used his gifts of
observation to good purpose. Better than the slight sketches of
character, of girls and their lovers, of farmers and their children, are
the landscapes in which they are set; and many will remember the
charming passages in which he describes the morning songs of birds in a
garden, or the twinkling of evening lights in the still waters of a
harbour. More original and more full of lyrical fervour was 'Locksley
Hall', where he expresses