ABSTRACT
One of Alfred Tennyson's strangest acts was the publication of his first volume, Poems by Two Brothers, in which the three oldest of the eccentric and melancholy Tennyson brothers had a share. Nor were the young Apostles engaged in mere youthful illusionary idealism; almost everyone who was a member of the group with Tennyson went on to an important career. Concealed within the charm, the beauty, the splendor, the sentimentality, the moralizing of the Idylls lies a bleakness that makes it quite understandable that Tennyson felt he could not live were it not for his belief in the immortality of the soul. The Idylls, however, are so constructed that the fault for the failure of Arthur Hallam's kingdom lies with Arthur, who attempts to impose the vision of the subject upon the recalcitrance of the object, and who, psychologically, is dependent upon his own charismatic vision of himself.
