Alfred Lord Tennyson was the typically English poet, and none, perhaps not even Shakespeare, has appealed so keenly to the human heart. No other man's poems have caused as many readers to shed tears of sympathy nor have awakened higher sentiments in the human heart. The critics agree in pronouncing him the ideal poet laureate. In his Idylls from the King are found the loftiest and proudest deeds of English history and even in the retelling of these in prose the high spirit that is an inspiration to the noblest deeds cannot fail to be preserved.Tennyson was acclaimed in his own day as the chief poetic voice of his age, and he remains one of the most highly regarded masters of the music and mood of poetry. Yet at the height of his fame as Poet Laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson devoted eight years to seven plays that he considered to be the best work he had done. They form an epical history of England.