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

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, ll. 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