The interest of the following years was mainly domestic. The poet's
health, hitherto robust, was somewhat impaired in 1888, but his vivid
interest in affairs and in letters was unabated. He consoled himself
with Virgil, Keats, Wordsworth, Gibbon, Euripides, and Mr Leaf's
speculations on the composite nature of the Iliad, in which
Coleridge, perhaps alone among poets, believed. "You know," said
Tennyson to Mr Leaf; "I never liked that theory of yours about the
many poets." It would be at least as easy to prove that there were
many authors of Ivanhoe, or perhaps it would be a good deal more
easy. However, he admitted that three lines which occur both in the
Eighth and the Sixteenth Books of the Iliad are more appropriate in
the later book. Similar examples might be found in his own poems.
He still wrote, in the intervals of a malady which brought him "as
near death as a man could be without dying." He was an example of
the great physical strength which, on the whole, seems usually to
accompany great mental power. The strength may be dissipated by
passion, or by undue labour, as in cases easily recalled to memory,
but neither cause had impaired the vigour of Tennyson. Like Goethe,
he lived out all his life; and his eightieth birthday was cheered
both by public and private expressions of reverence and affection.

Of Tennyson's last three years on earth we may think, in his own
words, that his


"Life's latest eve endured
Nor settled into hueless grey."


Nature was as dear to him and as inspiring as of old; men and affairs