INTRODUCTION. THE Idylls of the King should be regarded as one poem, the most important of Tennyson's works. This poem has something of the effect of an Epic, but is not thrown into that form of continuous narrative which belongs to the true Epic, and this difference of treatment is expressed by the title. The word 'idyll,' which originally means 'little picture,' came from its use by Theocritus (and perhaps others of the Greek pastoral poets) to designate a short picturesque poem dealing with the lives and loves of shepherds, fishermen or common people generally; and a beautiful example of this kind is given by Tennyson in the 'small sweet idyl' which occurs in the Princess, 'Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height.' Tennyson, however, has extended the meaning of the term so as apparently to include under it all picturesque narrative poems of moderate length, whatever their subject; and its use in the title of Idylls of the King serves chiefly to express the fact that in this work the subject is dealt with in a series of poems each complete in itself, and generally without direct transition of the narrative from one to another, though at the same time there is a regular progress of narrative from the first to the last, as well as a profound ix unity of conception. Similarly many of the divisions of In Memoriam are complete in themselves, while at the same time each has a vital connection with the whole. The work, however, has grown gradually from the poet's mind, and its unity is probably not the result of a fully preconceived plan, for perhaps no poem was ever published in so fragmentary a manner as this. It may fairly be said that the author began with the end, continued with the beginning, and ended with the middle of the story; and yet, partly from the fact that each idyll is pervaded by the consistent moral ideals of the poet, and partly from the manner in which the new elements have been successively woven in, the poem forms unquestionably an artistic whole. The portion which first appeared of the Idylls was that magnificent fragment called Morte d'Arthur, which forms now a part of The Passing of Arthur, 11. 170-440. This, which was published in 1842, was introduced then as the eleventh book of a young poet's Epic King Arthur, of which all had been destroyed but this. We should certainly not be justified in assuming that Tennyson had himself already written an Epic upon the subject, but it is clear that the idea of such an Epic must have passed through his mind. After an interval of seventeen years, in the year 1859, were published under the title of Idylls of the King the four poems called Enid, Vivien, Elaine and Guinevere, which with little change, hardly any indeed except some additions to Vivien, form a part of the completed work under the names of The Marriage of Geraint, Geraint and Enid, Merlin and Vivien, Lancelot and Elaine, and Guinevere, (Enid having been divided into two.) In 1869 appeared The Coming of Arthur, The Holy Grail, Pelleas and Ettarre, and The Passing of Arthur, the last including the Morte d'Arthur previously published; in 1871 The Last Tournament, in 1872 Gareth and Lynette, and finally in 1885, Balin and Balan, which completes the series of twelve idylls, in which The Coming of Arthur serves as introduction and The Passing of Arthur as conclusion, while the remaining ten, not being pictures of Arthur himself, but of the other personages of the romance, and of the King only indirectly through them, have as a general title The Round Table. Before the appearance of the volume containing The Holy Grail, in 1869, it was impossible to form a conception of the work as a whole. The four idylls which first appeared seemed to be, and perhaps were, simply four independent delineations of woman's character selected from the cycle of Arthurian romance, and representing in Enid the true ideal of maidenhood and wifehood, in Vivien the type of impurity and falseness, in Elaine that of impulsive and wilful girlhood, and in Guinevere that of the erring and repentant wife. It was not therefore until the publication of the next volume that the structure and moral drift of the work began to be perceived, and the addition of Gareth and Lynette as the first, and The Last Tournament as the last of the Round Table series, made the artistic effect far more complete. In the address to the Queen which concludes the series the poet has himself indicated the moral purpose of his poem and the view which he takes of its subject: 'accept this old imperfect tale, New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul Rather than that gray king, whose name, a ghost, Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak, And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him We are not, therefore, to look in the Idylls for a historical presentation of the Celtic Arthur, nor yet for a reproduction of the hero of medieval chivalry, such as we find him in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Britonum or in Malory's Morte Darthur: the framework of the old legends is used, but the tale is in its essentials modern; and to find fault with the poet for making his heroes think the thoughts and speak the language of the nineteenth century is as much out of place as to find fault with the authors of the romances of Merlin and Lancelot for making their heroes, whom they imagine to have lived in the fifth century, think and speak like men and women of the thirteenth and fourteenth. The tale then, for a single tale it is, and not a series of tales loosely strung together, has a definite moral aim. It is not an allegory, for the characters are men and women, and not personified qualities, but it has a spiritual meaning, it shadows 'Sense at war with Soul.' Arthur represents the moral force that works to make the dead world live, which has power for a time to accomplish its purpose, but is gradually overborne and goes down, though not utterly and for ever, for the war is one which is ever to be renewed, 'Nay-God my Christ-I pass but shall not die.' The hero is victorious over the external foe, he conquers rebels and heathen invaders; his failure is due to a |