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."

WHEN, as "little more than boy," Mr. Tennyson first chanced upon a copy of Mallory's "King Arthur,"-till then an utterly unknown subject to him, the world at large was as ignorant as he. And if since then a whole school of Arthur literature has arisen, it is to him that it is mainly traceable.

The story kindled in him a fire of enthusiasm and delight, and at once the vision of a great poem rose before him. Schemes for its treatment are still extant, and prove the consistency and tenacity with which through evil report and good report the leading idea of it and the original determination have clung to him.

The "evil report" took the shape of a discouragement of any such large project, and caused its abandonment for a time. The "Mort d'Arthur" was published as a fragment, but with an introduction which is easily readable between the lines, and shows how thoroughly a great plan was already in the author's mind.

Then came after a long interval the first four Idylls of the King, made as four separate pictures, each according to the character of its heroine-and so made while still the earlier design was given up -but nevertheless pervaded by the one leading and cardinal thought which always lay at the bottom of the writer's mind about it. So that when after their immense success, and the consequent importunities for more about Arthur, the abandoned plan was at length revived, scarce any remodelling of these was needed save here and there of a phrase, but the four already finished pictures fell at once into their natural places as parts of a series.

The remaining pictures being by degrees completed, the whole are at last arranged in proper order and sequence, and we can now walk, as it were, through this new "painted chamber" from beginning to end, to see the effect and learn the import of the most considerable work of art done in our times.

The first result of such a general survey

is not at all necessarily to exhibit the inward thought or connecting undermeaning which really knits the whole together, and makes its vital thread and clue.

On the contrary, the first impression is rather one of simple and complete external loveliness of a series of gorgeous landscapes taken exactly from nature-of a glittering and splendid revival of the past -of knightly days and doings set to mellifluous music under the shining skies of chivalry. The eye is satisfied with seeing, and the ear with hearing, and nothing more or further is desired or asked.

Soon, however, artistic unities begin to emerge, and add the charm of purpose and intention-if only in the sense of æsthetic completeness. For instance, we soon perceive that each after each of the series of pictures presents a different local coloring and dominant landscape effect. The various backgrounds before which the actions of the Poem pass, are seen to change from earliest spring to latest winter, and comparing these differences we come to find that all the seasons of the year are, turn by turn, set before us.

We go from the marriage season of spring in the "Coming of Arthur," where the blossom of the May seems to spread its perfume over the whole scene, to the early summer of the honeysuckle in Gareth, the quickly following mowing-season of Geraint, and the sudden summer-thundershower of Vivien-thence to the "full summer" of Elaine, with oriel casements "standing wide for heat"-and later, to the sweep of equinoctial storms and broken weather of the "Holy Grail." Then come the autumn roses and brambles of "Pelleas," and in the "Last Tournament" the close of autumn-tide, with all its "slowly mellowing avenues," through which we see Sir Tristram riding to his doom. In Guinevere the creeping mists of coming winter pervade the picture, and in the "Passing of Arthur" we come to "deep mid-winter on the frozen hills,"-and the end of all, on the year's shortest day (taken as the end of the year)" that day when the great light of heaven burned at his lowest in the rolling year." The king, who first appears on "the night of the New Year," disappears into the dawning

light of" the new sun bringing the New Year," and thus the whole action of the poem is comprised precisely within the limits of the one principal and ever-recurring cycle of time.

But no sooner is this cycle perceived, than we perceive also a "keeping" which exists between the local color in each poem proper to the season, and the dramatic action which is presented in it. The scenic background of the piece is evidently set with due regard to the events and persons for which it is to form the framework. And so exactly is this done, that had the deliberate object of the author been to write a peem of "The year and the Soul," it could hardly have been better contrived.

Thus, in the clear and brilliant air, jocund with the sights and sounds and hopes and promises of Spring-in air so clear that all the most distant things seem plain and obvious" and even in high day the Morning Star," Arthur wins his crown and his wife, and sets up the great Order which is to change the world.

In such like time and season the young Gareth, full of great heart and faith and innocence, passes through all his vassalage to the fresh and merry insolence of Lynette. The light-heartedness and enthusiasm of the young knight—the unpoisoned darts of Lynette's gay sauciness-the laughable overthrow of the surly Kayand the delicious surprise of the ending, when life leaps out of seeming death-all are in most perfect tune with Spring. No trace of canker or of grief mars the sweet air which breathes throughout, and the poem closes as if a door had been shut upon a south-west breeze.

The same harmony and keeping may be traced throughout the Idylls. The sometime wavering and uneasy love of "Geraint" settles down into a full and steady summer blaze: the sudden-passing thunder-storm of "Vivien" (striking down untimely the tallest spire of earthly wit wantonly exposed to it) divides it from the later and more torrid heats of love under which the "lily maid" is withered up: and then the broken weather comes, the just accompaniment of the fitful, unsubstantial madness of the "holy quest." The melancholy autumn of the Knighthood follows-knight after knight, as leaf after leaf, decaying and dropping off from all attempt to keep the promise of the Spring

till everything that seemed so clear to Arthur becomes wreathed and lost in mist all that was warm and living lies round him cold and dead. From beyond the limits of this world his only comfort comes to him in voices of which he alone can understand the words; yet at the very last we see, in token of rekindled hope and trust, his face set towards the East, and "the new sun rising-bringing the new year."

But by the time, or before the time, that we have discovered and followed out such unities as these, we find that the whole series of poems as pictures is gradually transforming itself into a moral series and unity, with a significance far greater than any æsthetical one.

The men and women in the pictures are becoming alive, and their life is far more than their raiment. It is at a real living tragedy, and not at a painting of one, that we find ourselves gazing. Presently we come to see that the high cycle of the soul on earth is set before us as completely by the human actions and passions of the piece as the cycle of the year by its landscapes and seasons.

And here we come upon an aspect of the matter which makes it intelligible why and how any great and thoughtful man should give his mature life to such a work as these Idylls-which else, however exquisite, might stand with other " idle singing of an empty day" as the mere "fiddleplaying" of Mr. Carlyle's scorn. We come upon the practice of the great canon "Art for Man's sake," rather than of the little canon "Art for Art's sake," and on some such canon all art work that is meant to last must surely be built.

The central figure of the hero appears and re-appears through all the series of events in a way which irresistibly suggests that more, if not quite clearly what, is meant by his kingship than mere outward kingliness. So that when we are at last plainly told in the Epilogue that he shadows Soul in its war with Sense, a "sudden clearance of haze" seems to take place, and a sort of diffused and luminous gleaming of which we had been dimly conscious all along "orbs into a perfect star" of meaning.

If now we read the poems again by the light of this meaning, we shall find the soul come first before us as a conqueror in a waste and desert land groaning under

mere brute power. Its history before then is dark with doubt and mystery, and the questions about its origin and authority form the main subject of the introductory poem.

"Many, themselves the basest, hold it to be base-born, and rage against its rule,—

'And since his ways are sweet,

And theirs are bestial, hold him less than man; And there be those who deem him more than man, And dream he dropped from heaven.'

"Of those who recognize its claim, some, as the hoary chamberlain, accept it on the word of wizards who have written all about it in a sacred book which, doubtless, some day will become intelligible. Others, as Ulfias and Brastias, standing for common-place men with commonplace views, are satisfied to think the soul comes as the body does, or not to think at all about it. Others, again, as Bedivere, with warmer hearts, feel there is mystery, where to the careless all is plain, yet seek among the dark ways of excessive natural passion for the key, and drift towards the scandalous accordingly. Then comes the simple touching tenderness of the woman's discovery of conscience and its influence given by Queen Bellicent in the story of her childhood; and this, again, is supplemented and contrasted by the doctrine of the wise men and philosophers put into Merlin's mouth. His 'riddling triplets' anger the woman, but are a wonderful summary of the way, part-earnest, part-ironical, and all-pathetic, in which great wit confronts the problem of

the soul.

"The inscrutableness of its origin being thus signified, we see next the recognition of its supremacy, and its first act of kinghood, the inspiration of the best and bravest near it with a common enthusiasm for Right. The founding of the Order of the Round Table coincides with the solemn crowning of the soul. Conscience, acknowledged and throned as king, binds at once all the best of human powers together into one brotherhood, and that brotherhood to itself by vows so strait and high, "That when they rose knighted from kneeling,

some

Were pale as at the passing of a ghost,

Some flushed, and others dazed, as one who wakes
Half blinded at the coming of a light.'
At that supreme coronation moment, the
Spirit is surrounded and cheered on by all

the powers and influences which can ever help it—earthly servants and allies and heavenly powers and tokens-the knights, to signify the strength of the body; Merlin, to signify the strength of intellect; the Lady of the Lake, who stands for the Church, and gives the soul its sharpest and most splendid earthly weapon; and above all, three fair and mystic queens, 'tall, with bright sweet faces,' robed in the living colors sacred to love and faith and hope, which flow upon them from the image of our Lord above. These, surely, stand for those immortal virtues which only will abide when all that seems shall suffer shock,' and leaning upon which alone, the soul, when all else falls from it, shall go towards the golden gates of the new and brighter morning.

"As the first and introductory idyll thus seems to indicate the coming and the recognition of the soul, so the ensuing idyls of the 'Round Table' show how its influence fares-waxes or wanes—in the great battle of life. Through all of these we see the body and its passions gain continually greater sway, till in the end the Spirit's earthly work is thwarted and defeated by the flesh. Its immortality alone remains to it, and, with this, a deathless hope.

"From the sweet spring breezes of Gareth and the story of Geraint and Enid,' where the first gust of poisoning passion bows for a time with base suspicion, yet passes and leaves pure a great and simple heart, we are led through Merlin and Vivien,' where, early in the storm, we see great wit and genius succumb,-and through Lancelot and Elaine,' where the piteous early death of innocence and hope results from it, to The Holy Grail,' where we find religion itself under the stress of it, and, despite the earnest efforts of the soul, blown into inere fantastic shapes of superstition. It would be difficult to find a nobler and manlier apology for pure and sane and practical religion, fit for mighty men, than the verdict of the King at the end of this wonderful poem.

"In Pelleas and Ettarre' the storm of corruption culminates, whirling the sweet waters of young love and faith (the very life-spring of the world) out from their proper channels, sweeping them into mist, and casting them in hail upon the land. A scarcely-concealed harlot here rides splendid to the Court, and is

crowned Queen of Beauty in the lists; the lust of the flesh is all but paramount. Then comes the dismal autumn-dripping gloom' of the Last Tournament, with its awful and portentous close-and then in 'Guinevere' the final lightning stroke, and all the fabric of the earthly life falls smitten into dust, leaving to the soul a broken heart for company, and a conviction that if in this world only it had hope, it were of all things most miserable.

"Thus ends the Round Table' and the story of the life-long labor of the soul.

6

"There remains but the passing of the soul 'from the great deep to the great deep,' and this is the subject of the closing idyll. Here the last dim, weird battle,' fought out in densest mist, stands for a picture of all human death, and paints its awfulness and confusion. The soul alone, enduring beyond the end wherein all else is swallowed up, sees the mist clear at last, and finds those three crowned virtues, abiding ' true and fast, and waiting to convey it to its rest. Character, upheld and formed by these, is the immortal outcome of mortal life. They wail with it awhile in sympathy for the failure of its earthly plans; but at the very last of all are heard to change their sorrow into songs of joy, and departing, ' vanish into light.'

Now in giving such a significance to the old legends Mr. Tennyson has kept truer and closer to their spirit than some readers of their letter only have perceived. For nothing is more remarkable amongst all the various and disconnected versions of the older times than the tendency to make of King Arthur an ideal man. This constantly pervades them over a sweep of centuries, and notwithstanding all their great diversities of form and

treatment.

Had it been worth his while the poet might easily have justified himself as an antiquary also by adding to the "Flos regum Arturus" of his title-page such extracts as this from Joseph of Exeter :—

"The old world knows not his peer, nor will the future show us his equal,-he alone towers over all other kings, better than the past ones, and greater than those that are to be."

*The greater part of the foregoing passage is extracted from an article which appeared in the Spectator of January, 1870.

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XVIII., No. 2

Or this from the " Brut ab Arthur" :

"In short, God has not male, since Adam was, the man more perfect than Arthur." Or this from Alberic:—

"Hic jacet Arturus, flos regum, gloria regni, Quem probitas morum commendat laude perenni.” Or many others in which (as Sharon Turner says) "all human perfection was collected in Arthur."

But, indeed, it was not worth while. From the very first he had seized upon the cardinal point of the ancient thought about Arthur, and this was sufficient.

The royal Liberator of his people-who shall surely come again and complete. his work ;-the mystically born King, victorious, defeated but deathless-this was the central figure of a whole literature which flourished for generations, and doubtless was the secret of its wonderful influence and duration.

It is difficult not to see the analogy it suggests, and difficult to doubt that as a knightly version of the Christ Himself, that figure became so popular in the days. of chivalry.

It may surely well have been so, for all the thought of the time ran unconsciously into but one mould, and as a sort of compromise between the Christ of the Gospels and the Christ which men were able to bear-the ideal of chivalry was fostered by clerical learning and invention as much as by lay imitation and reverence.

The blemishes and short-comings of it,. inseparable by reason of its traditionary growth, were of course censured, although chiefly from an ecclesiastical point of view ;; and in the latest versions the priest-bred Galahad displaces as an ideal the warrior-king himself. But this is towards the end-ing of its time, and when the whole cycleof the legends was losing influence.

Mr. Tennyson was thus amply justified' by ancient precedent in making of his Arthur an ideal king, and also in moulding. his plastic material, as the old bards and rhymers and compilers did, to suit his purpose.

If he has chosen to make a parable not only of a soul, but of the Crowned Soulto paint a "blameless king,"-in otherwords to write an "Imitation of Christ,"the mass of modern men will think that he has chosen well and wisely, and will thank him for it. What the ancient men did un

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consciously and in part he seems to have done deliberately and thoughtfully.

To a certain set, however, this proceeding gives a great offence, and they assail it precisely on the grounds alleged against the King by the baser sort in the poem itself. Men who dislike the Christian ideal as such, and hold it to be merely effeminate, call the Arthur of the Idylls" an impeccable prig," and rage against his want of manliness. They would cry down "self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control," to set up self-indulgence, and would push back down-hill again towards the brutes the race which has so tediously climbed a little upwards from them.

It may be questioned whether really manly critics would do this, and whether doing it is not in itself a note of effeminacy. Those who cried loudest "Io bacche," were not of old the manliest of their kind. Nor, if in these days women writers and womenlike men fall down and worship animal passion does it even follow that they have most of what they simulate and praise. Rather perhaps they so much lack it that even as animals they are in defect, and as defective animals they make their bleat for it. The full and perfect animal looks further on for his ambition. The imperfect one finds field enough for unfulfilled desires and unattained powers without transcending the limits of the brute.

It is clear that in making of his ideal man so obviously an imitation of Christ, Mr. Tennyson has, and must always have had, the most direct intention to oppose, so far as lies within his power, the gospel of the "fleshly school." He clearly holds that the old chivalrous ideal of a personal and knightly purity is one of the greatest and highest qualities possible to men and nations, and a doctrine moreover which there is good need just now to preach from the housestop.

We would commend to certain writers the high song of the knights as they went before the king:

"Blow, trumpet! he will lift us from the dust. Blow, trumpet! live the strength, and die the lust!

and with this we may pass on from them and their bleatings.

Nothing is more remarkable, touching the symbolic aspect of the Idylls, than the way in which it is attained without the slightest forcing of the realistic narrative.

Indeed so fine are the touches which convey it, that but for the author's own admission many readers would still hold there was no parable at all. It is very interesting to follow the thread of realism which is preserved throughout, and which, whether intentionally or not, serves the double purpose of entirely screening any such symbolic under-meaning from all who do not care to seek it, and also of accounting naturally for the supernatural adventures and beliefs recorded in the story itself.

Thus, for example, in "The Holy Grail," the various apparitions of the mystic vessel are explicable by passing meteors or sudden lightning flashes seen in a season of great tempests and thunderstorms-first acting on the hysterical exaltation of an enthusiastic nun, and then, by contagion from her faith, upon the imaginations of a few kindred natures.

Again, in the "Coming of Arthur," the marvellous story of his birth, as told by Bleys, might simply have been founded on a shipwreck when the sea was phosphorescent, and the dragon-shaped bark lifted up on wave-crests against the heaven, and when all hands suddenly perished, save one infant, who was washed ashore.

Or, again, in the same poem, the three mystic Queens at the Coronation—who become, in one sense, so all-important in their meaning-derive their import in the eyes of Bellicent simply from the accident of colored beams of light falling upon them from a stained-glass window.

It is beyond the scope of the present paper to consider the " Idylls of the King" from more than one point of view, and so much has of late been written on their treatment and execution that little could well be added. Yet it may be permitted in conclusion to call attention to one or two points of workmanship which seem to have escaped the notice of many critics.

One of them is the Proportion which is kept throughout between the fashion of the language employed and the matter which it conveys. It rises and falls in tone very markedly with the nature of the subject. For instance, the first and last idylls have a distinctly more grave, elevated, and, so to speak, " monumental" character than the body of the work, and the reason seems to be that the opening and closing poems deal with the more striking awfulnesses of Birth and Death; while in poems of the "Round Table" we move in and out