with as much science as art. Yet the result is all his own. His blank verse stands apart, original, growing out of his own character and temper, and frequently modified and specialised by the special characters whom he is describing, and by the special forms of natural scenery which he paints. Lastly, it is extraordinarily concise-almost too concise. It sometimes becomes bald; its "tricks" are sometimes too plain and too often repeated; it often wants a rushing movement, and it is always a little too academic. We are too conscious of its skill, of the infinite care spent on it, of a certain want of naturalness; that is, it has the defects of its qualities. But we forget these defects when it is at its best. Then indeed it is extraordinarily a full-fed river through the country of imagination. Such is it in The Holy Grail, in Guinevere, in The Passing of Arthur. noble, rolling like The Coming of Arthur, the first of these Idylls, is Tennyson's prologue to them all. The allegory and the story are both mingled in it—but in this poem the allegory is more prominent than the story. In this Induction, Tennyson, having now determined on an allegory, is forced to place its main lines before his readers. The Idyll opens with the waste and harried kingdom of Leodogran, beast-ridden, heathen-ridden, and the weak king hiding with his daughter Guinevere in his castle. Then Leodogran calls on Arthur for help, and Arthur, riding by the castle, sees Guinevere, and loves her for his life; and having set her father free from foes, asks in reward her hand. So stand forth the two, Arthur and Guinevere, who are to grow more and more apart as life moves on; who, meeting in high youth and joy, are to meet for the last time in deep repentance and forgiveness on the banks of the river of Death-a whole world of failure and sin and the ruin of great hopes behind them: a common tragedy! Tennyson hews out these figures with a rough, animating chisel in this first poem. In the poems that follow they are finished. But he does all that is needed now, and does it well. Guinevere is but slightly touched, but Arthur's character is, as is fitting, more elaborately treated. He is to be the ideal king-the ruler of men; the bringer of law and peace and good government into his world, the redeemer of waste places and wasted lives, the knitter together into one compact body of his knights for purity of life and overthrowing of wrong. But he is to be more than king: he is to be the ideal man; and for that he must love. Love then is born in him, but it is put into connection with his kingly work. No work without love, but no continuance of love without work; equal love of woman and work, but neither the woman nor the man made more than the work. "But were I joined with her," cries Arthur, "Then might we live together as one life, This is the ideal of marriage laid down in The Princess, and consistently supported through all the Idylls of the King; and herein is the emotional side of Arthur. But his spiritual side is also sketched. He has dim dreams and visions, like the prince in The Princess, during which the outward world fades away. Strange and mystic powers from the unseen world stand round about him. He moves in God and in eternity while yet on earth; and in these hours all phenomena are mist and dream. The mighty warrior on whom it seems to his knights the fire of God descends in battle; the great ruler who is to the world's work as the glove is to the hand, cries in the spiritual hour when this solid earth is as a vapour, and in words worthy of a great poet O ye stars that shudder over me, O earth that soundest hollow under me Vext with waste dreams! His Then the allegorical side of him is sketched. senses are so exalted that he sees the morning star at noonday; he comes from the great deep and goes to it again; he is made king by immortal queens; he is not doomed to death but to return and live again. The sword he wields blinds the eyes of men; the city he lives in and the great hall of his knights is built by the intellectual and spiritual powers. Half, then, of this world, half of the mysterious world beyond, Arthur has the qualities of both, and does his work in both with equal steadiness and fire. As such, he smites his own spirit into those who love him, so that, when his knights swear allegiance, into every face there comes A momentary likeness of the king. So carefully, and with such foresight for the rest of the poem, is Arthur hewn out before us by the poet. But another personage needs also to be introduced : Lancelot, friend of the King, yet the lover of the Queen. He first appears with Arthur in the battle for Arthur's rights with the rebellious kings. They each save one another's life, and they swear on the stricken field a deathless love: And Arthur said: "Man' sword is God in man; Let chance what will, I trust thee to the death." Alas! in the trust, and in the friendship, lies hidden all the tragic fate to come; and when we hear that Lancelot is sent by Arthur to fetch Guinevere, we know that the joy, splendour, and hopes of the King are already doomed. The rift is in the lute which will make all the music dumb. What faith has bound together, unfaith unbinds. O tragic world and tragic life of man! Tennyson has lifted to the highest peak in this poem the early inspiration of the King and his people, that our pity may be wrought to fulness by the catastrophe. Only a hint here and there suggests the pain to come, but the hints are clear. There is admirable skill shown in the management of this. Thus the characters are placed in preparation for the whole. The story, as story, is set afloat by the questions of Guinevere's father concerning Arthur's birth. Is he a lawful king or not? Arthur's knights tell Leodogran the old legend of Uther and Ygerne and the siege of Tintagil. Thus Tennyson keeps touch. with the tale which is his basis; but after that, for the sake of his allegory, he invents, and Bellicent tells the story of Arthur's coronation, and the mighty oath by which the soul binds all the powers of man to follow him in purity to redress the wrongs of the world. In the midst there arises that fine vision of the Church as the Lady of the Lake-a splendid picture, in which every word is a symbol: A mist Of incense curl'd about her, and her face Well-nigh was hidden in the minster gloom ; A voice as of the waters, for she dwells Down in a deep; calm, whatsoever storms May shake the world, and when the surface rolls, Then, to restore the humanity of the tale, Arthur's youth with his half-sister, Bellicent, is pictured-one of Tennyson's homely pictures of domestic tenderness; and then, lifting himself easily into more exalted thought, he invents the magic story which signifies the coming of the soul into this world from the high heaven and out of the great deep. The allegory may be let go, but the description of Merlin and Bleys, descending |