22. We return to our proper task. 'Maud,' if an unintelligible or even, for Mr. Tennyson, an inferior work, is still a work which no inferior man could have produced; nor would it be difficult to extract abundance of lines, and even passages, obviously worthy of their author. And if this poem would have made while alone a volume too light for his fame, the defect is supplied by the minor pieces, some of which are admirable. 'The Brook,' with its charming insterstitial soliloquy, and the 'Letters' will, we are persuaded, always rank among Mr. Tennyson's happy efforts; while the 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington,' written from the heart and sealed by the conscience of the poet, is worthy of that great and genuine piece of manhood, its immortal subject.

23. We must touch for a moment upon what has already been mentioned as a separate subject of interest in the 'Princess.' We venture to describe it as in substance a drama, with a plot imperfectly worked and with characters insufficiently chiselled and relieved. Its author began by presenting, and for many years continued to present, personal as well as natural pictures of individual attitude or movement; and as in 'Enone' and 'Godiva,' he carried them to a very high pitch of perfection. But he scarcely attempted, unless in his more homely narrations,

but to use for poetical ends all the moods and phases allowable under the laws of the art, in a special form of character, which is impassioned, fluctuating, and ill-grounded. The design, which seems to resemble that of the Ecclesiastes in another sphere, is arduous; but Mr. Tennyson's power of execution is probably nowhere greater. Even as regards the passages devoted to war-frenzy, equity should have reminded me of the fine lines in the latter portion of X. 3 (Part I.), and of the emphatic words, v. 11 (Part II.):

"I swear to you lawful and lawless war
Are scarcely even akin,"

W. E. G., 1878.]

anything like grouping or combination. It now appears that for this higher effort he has been gradually accumulating and preparing his resources. In the sections of the prolonged soliloquy of 'Maud' we see a crude attempt at representing combined interests and characters with heroic elevation, under the special difficulty of appearing, like Mathews, in one person only; in the Princess' we had a happier effort, though one that still left more to be desired. Each, however, in its own stage, served as a preparation for an enterprise at once bolder and more mature.

24. We now come to the new work of the poet, the 'Idylls of the King.' The field, which Mr. Tennyson has chosen for this his recent and by far greatest exploit, is one of so deep and wide-reaching an interest as to demand some previous notice of a special kind.

Lofty example in comprehensive forms is, without doubt, one of the great standing needs of our race. To this want it has been from the first one main purpose of the highest poetry to answer. The quest of Beauty leads all those who engage in it to the ideal or normal man, as the summit of attainable excellence. By no arbitrary choice, but in obedience to unchanging laws, the painter and the sculptor must found their art upon the study of the human form, and must reckon its successful reproduction as their noblest and most consummate exploit. The concern of Poetry with corporal beauty is, though important, yet secondary: this art uses form as an auxiliary, as a subordinate though proper part in the delineation of mind and character, of which it is appointed to be a visible organ. But with mind and character themselves lies the highest occupation of the Muse. Homer, the patriarch of poets, has founded his two immortal works upon two of these ideal developments in Achilles and

Ulysses; and has adorned them with others, such as Penelope and Helen, Hector and Diomed, every one an immortal product, though as compared with the others either less consummate or less conspicuous. Though deformed by the mire of after-tradition, all the great characters of Homer have become models and standards, each in its own kind, for what was, or was supposed to be, its distinguishing gift.

25. At length, after many generations, and great revolutions of mind and of events, another age arrived, like, if not equal, in creative power to that of Homer. The Gospel had given to the life of civilised man a real resurrection, and its second birth was followed by its second youth. This rejuvenescence was allotted to those wonderful centuries which popular ignorance confounds with the dark ages properly so called-an identification about as rational as if we were to compare our own life within the womb to the same life in intelligent though early childhood. Awakened to aspirations at once fresh and ancient, the mind of man took hold of the venerable ideals bequeathed to us by the Greeks as a precious part of its inheritance, and gave them again to the light, appropriated but also renewed. The old materials came forth, but not alone; for the types which human genius had formerly conceived were now submitted to the transfiguring action of a law from on high. Nature herself prompted the effort to bring the old patterns of worldly excellence and greatness or rather the copies of those patterns still legible, though depraved, and still rich with living suggestion-into harmony with that higher Pattern, once seen by the eyes and handled by the hands of men, and faithfully delineated in the Gospels for the profit of all generations. The life of our Saviour, in its external

aspect, was that of a teacher. It was, in principle, a model for all; but it left space and scope for adaptations to the lay life of Christians in general, such as those by whom the every-day business of the world is to be carried on. It remained for man to make his best endeavour to exhibit the great model on its terrestrial side, in its contact with the world. Here is the true source of that new and noble Cycle which the middle ages have handed down to us in duality of form, but with a close related substance, under the royal sceptres of Arthur in England and of Charlemagne in France.

The one

26. Of the two great systems of Romance, one has Lancelot, the other has Orlando, for its culminating point; these heroes being exhibited as the respective specimens in whose characters the fullest development of man, such as he was then conceived, was to be recognised. put forward Arthur for the visible head of Christendom, signifying and asserting its social unity; the other had Charlemagne. Each arrays, round about the Sovereign, a fellowship of knights. In them, Valour is the servant of Honour; in an age, of which violence is the besetting danger, the protection of the weak is elevated into a first principle of action; and they betoken an order of things, in which Force should be only known as allied with Virtue, while they historically foreshadow the magnificent aristocracy of medieval Europe. The one had Guinevere for the rarest gem of beauty, the other had Angelica. Each of them contained figures of approximation to the knightly model, and in cach these figures, though on the whole secondary, yet in certain aspects surpassed it: such were Sir Tristram, Sir Galahad, Sir Lamoracke, Sir Gawain, Sir Geraint, in the Arthurian cycle; Rinaldo and Ruggiero, with others, in the Carlovingian.

27. The two were not twin systems, but were rather twin investitures of the same scheme of ideas and feelings. Their consanguinity to the primitive Homeric types is proved by a multitude of analogies of character, and by the commanding place which they assign to Hector as the flower of human excellence. Without doubt, this preference was founded on his supposed moral superiority to all his fellows in Homer; and the secondary prizes of strength, valour, and the like, were naturally allowed to group themselves around what, under the Christian scheme, had become the primary ornament of man. The near relation of the two Cycles one to the other may be sufficiently seen in the leading references we have made; and it runs into a multitude of details both great and small, of which we can only note a few. In both the chief hero passes through a prolonged term of madness. Judas, in the College of Apostles, is represented under Charlemagne in Gano di Maganza and his house; who appear, without any development in action, in the Arthurian romance as "the traitours of Magouns," and who are likewise reflected in Sir Modred, Sir Agravain, and others; while the Mahometan element, which has a natural place ready made for it in a history that acknowledges Charlemagne and France for its centres, finds its way sympathetically into one which is bounded for the most part by the shores of Albion. Both schemes cling to the tradition of the unity of the Empire, as well as of Christendom; and accordingly, what was historical in Charlemagne is represented, in the case of Arthur, by an imaginary conquest reaching as far as Rome, the capital of the West. Even the sword Durindana has its counterpart in the sword Excalibur.

28. The moral systems of the two cycles are also essen