The next
year he and Charles entered Trinity College, Cambridge. There they
received the greatest impulse toward culture in a society of
undergraduates known as the "Apostles." Its membership included
Thackeray, Trench, Spedding, Monckton Milnes and Alfred and Arthur
Henry Hallam, sons of the famous author of _The Middle Ages_.
In his second year at college Tennyson won the Chancellor's gold medal
with his prize poem, _Timbuctoo_, and in the following year he
published his first volume, _Poems, Chiefly Lyrical_. He left college
without a degree, and in 1833 he issued another volume of poems which
contained some of his best work--_The Lady of Shalott_, _The Lotos
Eaters_, _The Palace of Art_ and _A Dream of Fair Women_. Any one of
these poems if issued to-day would make the reputation of a poet, but
this book made little impression on the Victorian public which had
lost its taste for poetry and was devoted mainly to prose fiction. The
world has yet to catch the note of this master singer.
In 1837 Arthur Hallam, Tennyson's friend and other self, the one man
who predicted that he would be the greatest poet of his age, died
suddenly in Vienna while traveling abroad. The shock made a profound
impression on Tennyson. For ten years he put forth no work. Finally,
in 1842, he issued two volumes of poems that at once caught the public
fancy. Among the poems that brought him fame were _Locksley Hall_,
_Lady Godiva_, _Ulysses_, _The Two Voices_ and _Morte d' Arthur_.
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