'story, both in its joy and sorrow, lies solely in the realm ' of imaginative and passionate art, and its loveliness is 'there supreme.' How, he asks, can he criticise the 'Garden Song,' or explain why it is beautiful? How even can he praise it? for that which reaches a high loveliness is above all praise.'

Mr. MacCallum, in his recently published work, 'Tennyson's Idylls of the King,' and Arthurian Story from the 'Sixteenth Century,' gives a very interesting account of the changes that successive ages have produced in the famous tale that has for so many centuries and in so many countries stirred the hearts of men. Originating in Celtic myths, and coloured with the imagination of a magic-loving peopleshowing even some traces in its earlier form of the heathenism that had passed away--the tale became in mediæval days the field where the sentiments and aspirations of the Christian chivalry of the time found expression. In the twelfth century Geoffrey of Monmouth collected and translated into Latin the Celtic version of Arthur's story, using for the purpose of his compilation, according to his own statement, 'a certain most ancient book in the British 6 tongue.' Already, before Geoffrey's time, Arthur had been mentioned by William of Malmesbury as a hero truly worthy of historical fame, but about whom the Britons 'nowadays babble frivolous tales,' thus showing that legend and fable had even then gathered thickly round what was believed to be the real history of the British king. When the story of King Arthur and his knights, instead of being known only in the original Celtic, or in the Latin of Geoffrey, was turned into English and into NormanFrench, it obtained, of course, a far wider popularity in England and throughout Europe. Dante, in a well-known passage of the Inferno,' describes how, in reading together the story of Lancelot, Francesca and her lover revealed to each other their mutual passion. Chaucer, half a century later, refers almost contemptuously to this very tale of 'Lancelot de Lake,' of which Dante had made so beautiful a use. Mr. MacCallum thinks that English sentiment leaned more strongly towards medievalism in the days of Edward IV., when Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur' was published, than in the period of Chaucer, which was in some respects in advance of its age and less appreciative of tales of chivalry. In the devout language with which Malory concludes his book there is a mediæval accent.' The work was one of the earliest products of Caxton's

printing press at Westminster, and its author has some claim to be considered the father of modern English prose.' Indeed, Mr. MacCallum considers that Malory's language

is the direct descendant of Chaucer's in verse; his book 'was still popular and influential in the latter half of the 'sixteenth century; and even now, with all its apparent 'artlessness and want of rule, his style has a quaint and 'stately charm that schoolboy and critic can feel and ' respect.'

We are, however, dealing with the King Arthur of Tennyson, not of Malory or of Geoffrey; and Tennyson, like every prevailing author who has given renewed vigour to the Arthurian tale, has inspired it with something of himself and with much that is characteristic of his own age. Nineteenth-century feeling and thought have largely entered into the composition of the 'Idylls,' just as the ecclesiasticism and chivalry of the Middle Ages coloured, or rather took complete possession of, the original Celtic tales. It is through Tennyson that modern Englishmen make acquaintance with King Arthur and his Table Round, with Lancelot and Guinevere, with Enid and Geraint, with Merlin and Vivien, and the Quest for the Holy Grail. For one reader who takes delight in the 'Morte Darthur' of Malory, accessible as it is to the public in Sir Edward Strachey's edition, there are probably fifty whose whole knowledge of the Arthurian legend is derived from the

Idylls of the King.' On this subject, for the present generation and for many yet to come, Tennyson holds the field, and it is interesting, therefore, to note what Mr. Stopford Brooke has to say on the place in literature which the Idylls' bave taken.

We cannot, however, leave the earlier versions of the tale without observing that with no true lovers of the mediaval romance can Tennyson's 'Idylls,' however beautiful in themselves, entirely take the place of Malory's Morte Darthur.' Sir Edward Strachey in very beautiful language gives expression at once to his love of Malory and to his appreciation of Tennyson.

'I have already likened Malory's work to a medieval castle,' and, if I may be allowed to vary my parable a little, I would say this: There are some of us who in their childhood lived in, or can at least remember, some old house with its tower and turret stairs, its hall with the screen, and the minstrel's gallery, and the armour where it was hung up by him who last wore it; the panelled chambers, the lady's bower, and the chapel, and all the quaint, rambling passages and steps which

lead from one to another of these. And when in after
years he comes
to this same house, and finds that it has all been remodelled, enlarged,
furnished, and beautified to meet the needs and the tastes of modern
life, he feels that this is not the very house of his childhood, and that
a glory has departed from scenes he once knew. And yet if the
changes have been made with true judgement, and only with a right-
ful recognition of the claim that modern life should have full scope for
itself while preserving all that was possible of the old, though not letting
itself be sacrificed or even cramped and limited for its sake: if he is thus
reasonable, he will acknowledge that it was well that the old order
should yield place to the new, or at least make room for it at its side.
And such are the thoughts and sentiments with which the lover of the
old "Morte Arthur" will, if he be also a student of the growth of our
national character and life, read the new "Idylls of the King."

In the address to the Queen at the end of the completed series of the Idylls' Tennyson asks her to accept this old 'imperfect tale' as an allegory.

'New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul
Rather than that grey king, whose name, a ghost,

Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak,
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him
Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's, one
Touched by the adulterous finger of a time
That hovered between war and wantonness,
And crownings and dethronements.'

The predominantly allegorical character of the poems which
began in 1870 with the Coming of Arthur' is evident to
every reader; but in 1842, when the Morte d'Arthur'
appeared, the poet did not think of making the story
allegorical. Nor, continues Mr. Stopford Brooke, do the
first four idylls, Geraint and Enid,' Merlin and Vivien,'
'Lancelot and Elaine,' and 'Guinevere,' seem to have been
written with any set allegorical intention. It is certain, at
all events, that the poems can well stand without the alle-
gory, resting upon the human interest that belongs to them,
upon the ethical motive that largely inspires them, upon the
extreme beauty of language employed, sometimes in giving
expression to noble thoughts and feelings, sometimes in the
painting of the most exquisite pictures of natural scenery
and mediæval architecture. In the Pilgrim's Progress'
'the story and the allegory are of almost equal weight in the imagina-
tion. The inherent fault of an allegory-want of human interest-has
been overcome without any loss of the allegorical interest. This is a
real triumph. Nobody else but Dante has done it, and his way was

Sir E. Strachey's introduction to the 'Morte Darthur,' p. xxvi.

only partly allegorical. Tennyson has not done it. His story is not plainly an allegory, nor is it plainly a story.'

Nor is there any need for the allegory.

'The repentance of Guinevere and the forgiveness of Arthur are far more impressive, and far simpler in their lesson to life, when we see Arthur as Arthur and Guinevere as Guinevere, than when we see Arthur as the rational soul and Guinevere as the heart in human nature.'

Moreover this introduction of the allegory is not good art.

'Elaborate thinking has taken the place of creative emotion; art has partly abdicated her throne to the understanding. Whenever the allegory is mingled up with the story the poetry is disturbed, the tale is weak, and we are a little wearied. This is not the case when the story is all allegorical, when it is invented by Tennyson for the allegory, as in the "Holy Grail." Then there is no confusion, and the poem is in the highest degree poetic. What I say applies to the mixed poems, such as "Merlin and Vivien.”'

If, however, Mr. Stopford Brooke thinks that the poet has wandered from true art in his love for his allegory, he does full justice to the other aspects of the 'Idylls.'

"The romance of the story has caught hold of the imagination of Tennyson, and in his treatment of it he has made many fresh and delightful inventions-not allegorical, but romantic. He has had great pleasure in opening out and developing the ancient characters, in clothing them with new dresses of thought, in fitting new emotions to the old events in which they play their parts. He has recreated some characters altogether, and even the leading personages are quite independent of his allegory. He has built around his people the image of a whole country, with its woods and streams, hills and moors, marsh and desert, dark oceans rolling in on iron coasts, vast wastes, ancient records of a bygone world; hamlets and towns and wonderful cities, halls and great palace courts with all their varied architecture; storms and sunshine, all kinds of weather, Nature in her moods of beauty and brightness, of gloom and horror. And over them he has shed a light from the ancient time, a romantic air and sky. These things belong to Art.'*

Arthur is to be the ideal king and the ideal man. By his example and by his courage he is to regenerate his age. The heathen is to be vanquished. Violence is to be put down. Wrongs are to be redressed. Justice is to be established throughout the land. Yet without Guinevere Arthur feels he can never undertake successfully so arduous an enterprise.

* Stopford Brooke, p. 257.

'What happiness to reign a lonely king,
Vext-O ye stars, that shudder over me,
O earth, that soundest hollow under me,
Vext with waste dreams? For saving I be joined
To her that is the fairest under heaven,

I seem as nothing in the mighty world,
And cannot will my will nor work my work
Wholly, not make myself in mine own realm
Victor and lord. But were I joined with her,
Then might we live together as one life,
And reigning with one will in everything
Have power on this dark earth to lighten it,
And power in this dead world to make it live.'

And so, his life full of hopes of happiness and of high resolve, the king is accepted, the marriage celebrated, and the Round Table established.

From the 'Coming of Arthur' the story passes to the idyll of Gareth and Lynette,' representing the golden time' of the Arthurian tale.

'In human affairs, in the history of great causes, in men's lives, in their love, there is a time of glad beginnings, such a time as Nature has in spring. Gareth is the image of this pleasant prophetic time. He is also the image of the Arthurian kingdom in its youthful energy, purity, gentleness, ideality.'

Lynette, a fresh and frank young person. . . over bold, 'perhaps, with the king and with Lancelot, but honourable ' and pure of heat,' is the type of petulance, just as in the later Idylls' End is the type of patience.' Indeed, that virtue is carried to such a pitch in the character of the 'most carefully drawn, most affectionate of all the women of the "Idylls," that Mr. Stopford Brooke, in descanting upon the patience of the heroine, almost loses his own.

'Patience, when it is accompanied by fear or over-fancy, is turned from doing good to doing wrong. Enid is gracious, but she is one of those women who do a great deal of harm to men. . . . Her patience is too overwrought to permit us to class her among the higher types of womanhood. Indeed, these patient women are always painted by men,'

and so on. Her excessive humility is, he thinks, in part to blame for the odious and insulting behaviour of Geraint. 'Limours was twice the lover and twice the gentleman.' The righteous indignation of the critic is strong evidence of the power of the tale. Apart from the character drawing of this idyll he finds there nothing but what is admirable and of the highest poetic art, pointing out the skill with which,