Not rashly, but have proved him everyway
One of our noblest, our most valorous,
Sanest and most obedient: and indeed
This work of Edyrn wrought upon himself
After a life of violence, seems to me
A thousand-fold more great and wonderful
Than if some knight of mine, risking his life,
My subject with my subjects under him,
Should make an onslaught single on a realm
Of robbers, tho' he slew them one by one,
And were himself nigh wounded to the death.'

So spake the King; low bow'd the Prince, and felt
His work was neither great nor wonderful,
And past to Enid's tent; and thither came
The King's own leech to look into his hurt ;
And Enid tended on him there; and there
Her constant motion round him, and the breath
Of her sweet tendance hovering over him,
Fill'd all the genial courses of his blood
With deeper and with ever deeper love,
As the south-west that blowing Bala lake
Fills all the sacred Dee. So past the days.

But while Geraint lay healing of his hurt,
The blameless King went forth and cast his eyes
On each of all whom Uther left in charge
Long since, to guard the justice of the King:
He look'd and found them wanting; and as now
Men weed the white horse on the Berkshire hills
To keep him bright and clean as heretofore,

He rooted out the slothful officer

Or guilty, which for bribe had wink'd at wrong,

And in their chairs set up a stronger race

910

920

930

With hearts and hands, and sent a thousand men 940 To till the wastes, and moving everywhere

Clear'd the dark places and let in the law,

And broke the bandit holds and cleansed the land.

Then, when Geraint was whole again, they past With Arthur to Caerleon upon Usk.

There the great Queen once more embraced her friend,
And clothed her in apparel like the day.

And tho' Geraint could never take again
That comfort from their converse which he took
Before the Queen's fair name was breathed upon,
He rested well content that all was well.
Thence after tarrying for a space they rode,
And fifty knights rode with them to the shores
Of Severn, and they past to their own land.
And there he kept the justice of the King
So vigorously yet mildly, that all hearts
Applauded, and the spiteful whisper died:
And being ever foremost in the chase,
And victor at the tilt and tournament,

They call'd him the great Prince and man of men.
But Enid, whom her ladies loved to call
Enid the Fair, a grateful people named
Enid the Good; and in their halls arose
The cry of children, Enids and Geraints
Of times to be; nor did he doubt her more,
But rested in her fealty, till he crown'd
A happy life with a fair death, and fell
Against the heathen of the Northern Sea
In battle, fighting for the blameless King.

950

960

NOTES.

THE MARRIAGE OF GERAINT.

1. Geraint is a Welsh name, which appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth in the form of 'Geruntius' as the name of an early British king, but the hero of this story is called Erec fiz Lac by Chrestien de Troyes, and if, as seems probable, the Welsh tale of Geraint ab Erbin is derived from the French, the story has been transferred in its Welsh form to the national hero Geraint ab Erbin, Prince of Dyvnaint (Devon), who 'fell fighting valiantly against the Saxons, under Arthur's banner, in the battle of Llongborth.' Lady Charlotte Guest quotes some stanzas from the ancient Welsh poet Llywarch Hên upon his death :

At Llongborth I saw the tumult
And the slain drenched in gore,

And red-stained warriors from the assault of the foe.

Before Geraint, the scourge of the enemy,

I saw steeds white with foam,

And after the shout of battle, a fearful torrent.

At Llongborth was Geraint slain,

A valiant warrior from the woodlands of Devon,
Slaughtering foes as he fell.'

We are told also that he was canonized, and a church dedicated to him at Hereford. Geraint, however, is an exclusively British hero, whereas the tale of Erec et Enide is a part of the common stock of European romance. Erec is by Chrestien de Troyes placed second among the knights of Arthur, Gauvain being first.

2. A tributary prince of Devon etc. Arthur through the puissance of his Table Round' had made a realm by drawing together under him the petty princes who warred with one another, and of these some he made knights of his Order. In Gareth and Lynette, 413 ff., he says:

The kings we found, ye know we stayed their hands
From war among themselves, but left them kings;
Of whom were any bounteous, merciful,

Truth-speaking, brave, good livers, them we enroll'd
Among us, and they sit within our hall.'

3. Order of the Table Round. In Morte Darthur, 3, 1 (representing here the Roman de Merlin), we are told that the Round Table was presented by King Leodegrance, the father of Guinevere, to Arthur at his marriage. It had places for a hundred and fifty knights, and Leodegrance sent a hundred, bidding Arthur fill up the remaining fifty places; but Merlin left two places void, the 'Siege Perilous' and another. In Morte Darthur, 14, 2. following here the Roman de Lancelot, we are told that Merlin made the Round Table in token of the roundness of the world. For all the world, Christian and heathen, repair unto the Round Table, and when they are chosen to be of the fellowship of the Round Table, they think themselves more blessed and more in worship than if they had gotten half the world.' And he made one place at it where no one might sit but he only who should pass all other knights, and this was the Siege Perilous, in the which Galahad at length sat. At Whitsuntide was held each year the high feast of the Table Round, at which the number of knights was made up to the full tale. Other legends, however, say that the Round Table was made after the model of that used by Christ for the Last Supper and had thirteen seats, of which one, corresponding to that occupied by Christ himself, was left vacant.

In Guinevere, 456 ff., Arthur says:

'But I was first of all the kings who drew
The knighthood-errant of this realm and all
The realms together under me, their Head,
In that fair Order of my Table Round,
A glorious company, the flower of men,
To serve as model for the mighty world,
And be the fair beginning of a time.

I made them lay their hands in mine and swear

To reverence the King, as if he were

Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,

To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,

To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,

To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To honour his own word as if his God's,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds,
Until they won her.'

The idea of an order of chivalry such as is described in the Arthur romances belongs to the 13th and 14th centuries, at which period such institutions flourished. The English order of the Garter, and probably some other orders of chivalry, were founded in imitation of the Round Table. A table called King Arthur's Round Table is preserved at Winchester, and is mentioned by Caxton in the preface to the Morte Darthur as one of the relics which make Arthur's historical existence seem more probable.

4. Had married Enid. The poet begins his story after the marriage of Geraint, but then, in 1. 146, breaks off to tell the tale of that marriage, and the original narrative is not resumed till the beginning of the next idyll, Geraint and Enid, which at first formed simply a second part of the idyll of Enid. We have the same arrangement of the story in Merlin and Vivien, Lancelot and Elaine, The Last Tournament, and Guinevere; here however the narrative of previous events is carried to a much greater length than in any of the other examples, and by some critics is thought to interfere with the artistic unity of the two idylls, which, though divided, are after all one rather than two.

6. And as the light of Heaven etc. This is one of those similes so often found in Tennyson, which suggests to us an application of the comparison in minute details rather than in one salient point. Here it is not only the varying of the light of heaven to which our attention is called, but the particular forms of its variation, which are compared with the different aspects of Enid's beauty, arrayed now in crimson like the sunrise, now in purple like the evening, and now sparkling with gems which are like the trembling light of the stars. In this characteristic Tennyson's similes somewhat resemble those of Virgil. For the substance of the comparison here made, cp. Pelleas and Ettarre, 51:

'Damsels in divers colours like the cloud

Of sunset and sunrise.'

11. but, 'only.' This use of 'but' is apparently derived from its use with a negative, 'She did it but to please him,' meaning 'She did it for no purpose except to please him.' Properly but means 'except,' from Anglo-Saxon butan, 'outside.'

13. fronted him, 'met him,' so in Guinevere, 62:—

'Henceforward rarely could she front in hall
Or elsewhere Modred's narrow foxy face':

and often in older English.

14. the Queen. Arthur's queen is Guinevere, or in the Welsh stories, Gwenhwy var. In the French romances followed by