tion of Nature in this Idyll which enables me, by contrasting it with Coleridge's image of the same thing, to mark out a quality in Tennyson's natural description. There is a spring in the wood, and the spring makes a clear pool with a sandy bottom. Tennyson looks into the spring, and sees the sand leaping up under the waterglass, impelled by the fountain jet. Balin and Balan sit statuelike To right and left the spring, that down Sang, and the sand danced at the bottom of it. The thing to be seen is perfectly clear, and no poet in the world could put it into a shorter phrase. This is Tennyson's brief, concise method, and it has its special value. And now let us hear Coleridge telling the same story of the spring and the dancing sand: This sycamore, oft musical with bees Such tents the Patriarchs loved! O long unharmed May all its aged boughs o'er-canopy The small round basin which this jutting stone Keeps pure from fallen leaves! Long may the spring, Send up cold waters to the traveller With soft and even pulse! Nor ever cease Yon tiny cone of sand its soundless dance Which at the bottom, like a Fairy's page, As merry and no taller, dances still, Nor wrinkles the smooth surface of the fount. The comparison of these, for the purpose of saying which is the best, would not be fair, for Tennyson, as I have said already, refrains deliberately in these stories, more. lest the human interest should be overwhelmed, from any set description of Nature; and Coleridge has given himself wholly to such description. Nevertheless, the two pieces illustrate two methods-the concise and the expanded of describing Nature; and Tennyson, as he grew older, loved and used the concise method more and We meet very rarely in his later work anything like the long description of the land around the town of Lincoln in The Gardener's Daughter. It was his way, and we are grateful for it; but, on the whole, I love Coleridge's way better. It is more pleasant that the piece of Nature we have to see should be dwelt on with curious love, coloured as well as outlined, played with by the imagination, as when Coleridge turns the cone of sand into a fairy's page, as merry and no taller, dancing alone. This pleases more, and I feel in it the life that is in Nature more than in the other. But Tennyson is no less the artist than Coleridge, only he is an artist of another kind. We should feel ourselves happy to have these different musicians of Nature, whose varying harmonies fit our changing moods; for it is not by saying that one poet is better than another that we shall win a good delight for ourselves, or learn how to see or company with beauty. It is by loving each of them for his proper work, and by our gratitude to them all. There are two things which, according to Tennyson, break up the Table Round; which first decay and then destroy the work of Arthur. The first of these is the lust of the flesh, and the second is mystic-ascetic religion. Merlin and Vivien represents the first, and The Holy Grail the second. Tennyson expresses in them the set of his mind towards two recurring problems of society. He looked, and in the direst light, on the growth of sensuality, on the indifference to purity, on the loosening of the marriage vow, on the unchaste results of luxury of life, on the theory and practice of free love, as one of the worst evils, and perhaps the worst, which can inflict individual, social, and national life. The sin of Lancelot and Guinevere, which he takes care to represent as induced by a love almost irresistible and as supported by unbroken faithfulness, and which does not therefore wholly destroy the noble elements in their characters, is nevertheless (though "the light that led astray seemed light from heaven," though every excuse that can be made for it is made) the primal cause of the ruin that follows. The sin of these two high-placed persons, however modified in them, initiated and licensed an unmodified guilt of a similar kind, and brought with it when it was committed by others not as noble as Lancelot or Guinevere, lightness of character, loose desire, scorn of truth and honesty in the things of love, and naturally in other matters; and, finally, a luxurious life, in which the doing of justice and the support of good government were neglected for sensual enjoyment. There is a difference between Lancelot, faithful all his life to one love, and Gawain who lightly flies from one to another all his life; between Lancelot, whose love was mingled with a vast remorse, and Tristram who in the Idyll of The Last Tournament has, in the airy cynicism of free loving, become careless of faithfulness, and then uncourteous towards the woman whom he once loved so well. Nevertheless, it was not in Tennyson's way to finally excuse Lancelot and Guinevere because they loved faithfully. He brings all the ruin back to them. It is their guilt also which made the invasion of the Court by Vivien possible-that is, through their love, with all its faithfulness, the lust of the flesh stole in, and the whole of society was corrupted. Again and again this point is made by Tennyson. No matter how seeming fair an unlicensed love may be, no matter how faithful and how deep, it ends in opening to others the door to sensuality, which itself has no faithfulness, no depth, and no enduring beauty. Guinevere is followed by Vivien, and Lancelot by Tristram. That is his view, and I give it without comment. It is part of the ethical message Tennyson chose to set forth for our society. But the state of things to which he finally brings Arthur's Court and realm-the state of which Vivien is the true queen-is not reached at once. There are reactions against it, and such a reaction is described in The Holy Grail. It was not a useful nor a permanent reaction, though it was a religious one. On the contrary, it did as much harm to the State and to Arthur's work as the sensualism. But then it would not have done so much harm had it not been for the previous existence of the sensualism. That had weakened not only individual moral power, but the collective force of righteous statesmanship, so that work for the good of the whole people no longer seemed the best and wisest thing. It was better, men who were half repenting of a sinful life began to think, to pursue after a mystic and ascetic holiness than to live naturally in the present world and strive to make it wiser and happier. It was better, or pleasanter, to seek for supernatural excitements of religious passion than to confirm the good and deliver the oppressed and walk humbly with God in the common duties of home, society, and the State. This is only another form of sensualism, or its probable consequence. The unbridled life according to the senses induces a condition both of body and mind which cannot do without excitement. When, therefore, as in Arthur's realm, there is a reaction. against sensualism and folk turn to religion, they demand a religion which replaces the sensual by a spiritual thrill, or by the excitement of the miraculous; which revels in the mystic ectasies of ascetic purity; which thinks that human love injures the love of God; and which takes men and women away from their nearest duties. This, in Tennyson's mind, was a deadly misfortune, not only for the spiritual life of the individual, but for the civic life of societies. In making this clear, he spoke another part of what he conceived to be his message to his time. How far he was right is not the ques |