Page images
PDF
EPUB

wide. Chaucer owned its power; Malory embodied it; Spenser seized it; Milton thought of it as an epic; Dryden considered it; Wordsworth touched it; Tennyson took up its lyre again; Morris and Swinburne and Arnold entered into its enchanted land. But it was characteristic of Tennyson's steadiness of temper and fulness of thought that he should try to make his form of it complete and new-created. At first it moved him only as romance, and we have seen how his youth played with it in The Lady of Shalott, in Sir Galahad, and in the ride of Lancelot and Guinevere through woods of love and spring. Then in the Morte d'Arthur the story was fitted in 1842 by certain modern touches to modern life, yet these had to be explained by the prologue and epilogue. In that poem itself the tale was chief; it follows the old romance and breathes its air.

In 1842, when the Morte d'Arthur appeared, Tennyson does not seem to have thought of making the story allegorical. I do not even think that when the first four Idylls were published-Geraint and Enid; Merlin and Vivien; Lancelot and Elaine; and Guinevere-Tennyson wrote them with a set allegorical intention. They are only modernised by being made a representation of true love and false love. Vivien the harlot is set over against the tender innocence of Elaine. Enid, the true wife, is opposed to Guinevere who has been untrue. The men also represent different phases of love as modern as they are ancient. Geraint and Merlin, Lancelot and Arthur, have each their distinct lesson-beyond the story-to

modern life. They have not yet become allegorical, and even the lesson, the ethical aim, is as yet subordinate to the story. True conduct, as is just in art, is indirectly, not directly taught.

But when we come to 1870-to the volume which began with The Coming of Arthur-the inner intention of the whole poem seems to be changed. The making of a kind of epic out of the story of Arthur, which should have an instructive but indirect relation to the moral needs of society and the individual, is placed upon the second plane. The poem is now an allegory of the soul of man warring with sense, and passing on its way through life to death, and through death to resurrection. The great rulers of the kingdom of human nature-the intellect, the conscience, the will, the imagination, the divine spirit in man-are shadowed forth in mystic personages. The historic powers which stand outside the soul and help it to reign and work-the Church, the Law, the great Graces of God-are also embodied. Moreover, the various conditions of human nature in its growth from brutality to an ordered kingdom, that which saves or loses true life, the general desires and tendencies of man, the temptations which beset him, the wise and unwise views of the goal of life, the love which saves, the love which ruins, the religious passion which leads aright and that which leads astray, are symbolised before us in a number of other personages, episodes, and events invented by Tennyson for the sake of his allegory. The Coming of Arthur shows this conception fully

orbed in the mind of Tennyson. Arthur is the rational soul, not the son of Uther and Ygerne, but coming mysteriously from heaven and washed into Merlin's arms by a great wave. Merlin, who educates him is intellectual power, with all the magic of science. Arthur's kingship is opposed by the brutal and sensual powers in human nature, but the soul beats them down, and lets in light and justice over the waste places of human nature where the ape, the tiger, and the bandit lurk Guinevere is the heart, and all we mean by the term. The soul, to do its work, must be knit to the heart in noble marriage— Arthur must be wed to Guinevere. The Knights of the Round Table are the high faculties in man whom the soul builds into order round it, to do its just and reforming will. When the King is crowned and married the three great fairies that stand by are Faith, Hope, and Charity; and the Lady of the Lake, “clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful," who gives the soul Excalibur -the sword of the Spirit-with which to do his warwork against base sense, appetite, and their disordered. tyranny, is the Church. In embodying these conceptions, every word, every adjective, every description is weighed by Tennyson. The symbolism is extended into the remotest recesses of the tale. The allegory is thus fully launched in The Coming of Arthur, and the Idylls that were published with it, and that followed it, were written to the allegory. Even those that preceded it appear to have been somewhat modified to suit its requirements.

The question now arises, Of what kind was this allegory of Tennyson's, and how did he manage it? It differed from the allegories that preceded it. The great mediæval allegory, The Romance of the Rose (the type of all allegory in the Middle Ages), was nothing but an allegory. There was no story connected with it which. was independent of the allegory. The series of events and adventures which brought the knight at last to the enjoyment of the Rose were allegorically invented, and each of them had its meaning. The story was obscure and the allegory was plain. But in Tennyson's poem the story existed already; it was independent of the allegory, and it forms an important part of the poem. Neither is the allegory plain; it is hidden beneath the story.

Our next great allegory is The Faerie Queene. That is also plainly allegorical. The names make the meaning clear. The Red Cross Knight, Una, Duessa, Orgoglio, the Dragon, all tell their tale. But there is much more of a story in this first book of The Faerie Queene (and I speak of the first book alone, for it is the only one which has a clear unity) than there is in The Romance of the Rose. We are nearly as much interested in the knight, in Una, and in many of the minor characters, as we might be if they were real personages, and not images of truth and purity, of pride and falsehood and hypocrisy. But in Tennyson's poem the story is often greater than the allegory; it still breathes, and moves, and interests those to whom allegory is a weariness. At other times the story is of equal weight with the allegory, and

we can ignore the allegory if it please us to do so. This separates altogether the Idylls of the King from The Faerie Queene. Moreover, the names are not allegorical. We have to search for a hidden, not to follow a plain allegory. Spenser invented a story to suit his conception; Tennyson took an old tale and inserted his conception into it. But he was forced by his allegorical end to frequently invent as well, and his inventions, though they are often of the finest quality (as in The Holy Grail), confuse our interest in the story as much as the story confuses their meaning. The allegory and the tale do not fit throughout. They clash and trouble one another. An allegory, to be right in art, ought to have a story entirely invented for its purpose.

The next great allegory with which we may compare that of Tennyson is the first book of The Pilgrim's Progress. This is the finest allegory in the English language the ideal art-thing. It proclaims itself an allegory by the names. The city of Vanity Fair, the Delectable Mountains, tell what they are; and yet these places seem as real as London and the Surrey hills. Christian and Pliable, Faithful and the Old Adam, Wanton and Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Great-Heart and Giant Despair, tell also who and what they are; and yet they are all alive, they talk like living beings; we have met them in life-yesterday in the streets; they awaken the keenest human interest.

It is this combination of reality and allegory, of story and symbol, each of them clear, vivid, and human, and

« PreviousContinue »