Anachronism in the setting foundation of the Round Table "for love of God and men," his continued endeavour to keep his knights true to their vows, his failure, and his mysterious passing which is not death, we see a reflection of the conflict eternally waged in human life between the spirit and the flesh "with the lusts thereof." Arthur's visible enemies are the heathen, whom he overcomes; but more subtle foes than the heathen are the evil passions and the mystic delusions of his own Christian court and household, which in the end prevail over and ruin his "boundless purpose." Tennyson's disavowal of an historical intention such as of the story in is characteristic of the true Epic, has been quoted above. Malory and in Tennyson. Indeed, the legends themselves, as read in Malory's book, make no pretence to chronological truth: even Malory's setting of the stories belongs to times near his own rather than to the times which he tells of, to the age of chivalry and the Crusades rather than to the rude simplicity of the real Arthur's era, to the twelfth rather than to the sixth century. The author of the Idylls in his turn has gone still further, and while preserving from Malory the scenic accessories of tilt and tournament and heraldic device, as well as the chivalric virtues of courtesy and reverence for womanhood, has placed the court of Arthur in a mental and moral atmosphere not far remote from that in which the poet's own contemporaries move. As the pomp and circumstance and the refinement of chivalry in Malory's compilation are foreign to the times of the ancient British war-leader, so the self-questioning of Tristram and the philosophies of Dagonet, for example, in The Last Tournament, are a development quite beyond the purview of Malory's times. Tennyson has taken the dim personages of the early annals, surrounded as he found them in Malory by the romantic glamour and mysticism of a later age, and has idealised them still further to suit his own poetic purpose and the advanced thought of the nineteenth century. Arthur an original con chroniclers. It must not, however, be forgotten that the idea of The ideal Arthur as a type of half-divine manhood and supreme origin of kingliness is no invention of Tennyson's. "Flos Regum the old Arturus," Arthur the Flower of Kings, the motto prefixed to the Idylls, is a phrase from the old chronicler, Joseph of Exeter, who also writes, "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." Caxton, in his preface to Malory's Morte Darthur, uses similar language: "For in all places, Christian and heathen, he is taken for one of the nine worthy, and the first of the three Christian men." This halo of spiritual glory is, both in the Chronicles and in Malory's book, crossed and blurred by sin and shame; but such a stigma is inconsistent with the ideal perfection also ascribed to Arthur's character, and even in Malory's presentment it leaves no taint on the king's later career. After the elevation of the older stories, by the blending with them of the Christian mysticism of the Sangraal legends, the unearthly excellence of the king is the stronger element, and over-rules the admixture of crime and retribution. development It is this view of Arthur that Tennyson has adopted; Tennyson's and it was necessary to reject the inconsistent evil before of the ideal any coherent design of the character could be formed for Arthur. character of The Idylls in their complete form. Unity of design of the Idylls. the purpose of a modern Arthuriad. The "pure severity of perfect light" in which the faultless king of Tennyson's Idylls moves, as in his proper element, is the natural development of the loftier spirit infused in the tenth century into the old Chroniclers' conception of Arthur's character: the new leaven was bound to work until it had leavened the whole lump. The Idylls of the King as now published comprise the Dedication to the Prince Consort Hereafter through all times Albert the Good -The Coming of Arthur-ten Idylls grouped together under the general title of The Round Table-The Passing of Arthur and an epilogue To the Queen. The first Idyll and the last are thus separated from the ten intermediate poems, and deal, the one with the birth of Arthur and his founding of the great Order, and the other with the king's last battle and his passing from earth. They thus differ in subject from the Idylls treating of Arthur's knights and the ladies of his court, and this difference is marked in their style, which is intentionally archaic. Yet the unity of design of the whole series of Idylls clearly appears: it is seen not only in the gradually developed story of one great sin and its spreading taint, but also in incidental features. Thus the story in its course runs through the seasons of one complete year, the phases of Nature in their succession forming a background for the successive scenes of the poem. In The Coming of Arthur we read that it was on the "night of the new year" that Arthur was born. Gareth, in the next Idyll, starts on his quest of glory at the dawn of a spring morning; the melody of birds sounds around him, and under foot The live green had kindled into flowers, For it was past the time of Easterday. The marriage of Arthur and Guinevere (described in The Coming of Arthur) takes place amid the flowers in May. In The Marriage of Geraint and its continuation, Geraint and Enid, the action of the characters begins "on a summer morn," and later in the poem we come to the mowers at work, while the sun blazes on the turning scythe. Summer is further advanced in Balin and Balan and in Merlin and Vivien at the outset Merlin, as he crosses the fields, is "foot-gilt" with "blossom-dust," and in the concluding scene a summer tempest breaks overhead. In Lancelot and Elaine the blossoming meadow has given place to a field that "shone full-summer," and we read of "the casement standing wide for heat." The summer is not yet past in the next two Idylls: it is " a summer night” that the vision of the Holy Grail appears to the assembled knights. Pelleas and Etarre is the last of the summer Idylls: the sun beats "like a strong man" on the young knight's helm, and, later, we have the mellow moon and the roses of the waning season. In The Last Tournament autumn, with its "yellowing woods" and "withered leaf," succeeds, and the scene closes "all in a death-dumb, autumn-dripping gloom." The last of the Round Table Idylls shows us Guinevere's flight at a time when the white mist of early winter clings to the dead earth. And, finally, the last weird battle in The Passing of Arthur is fought when the great light of heaven Burn'd at his lowest in the rolling year. on Spiritual significance of Arthur. The wounded king is carried at midnight across rocks covered with the ice of the dead of winter; and he passes away from earth when the mystic year has rolled full circle. The "new Sun" now rises to usher in a new year," and a different era : The old order changeth, yielding place to new. The more particular significance of the incidents and of The Coming characters in the first Idyll, The Coming of Arthur, may now be considered. The mystery of Arthur's birth points to the searchings of heart, the difficulties, and the doubts which ever accompany any human conception of the origin of spiritual authority and of duty; and the different views taken of that mystery aptly represent the varieties of soil upon which the seed of any new gospel must fall. Some will always be found who talk and act in direct opposition to him who would lead them to higher things, and to say, as the scribes of Jerusalem said of Christ, "He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils”:— For there be those who hate him in their hearts, In contrast with such base-minded foes we have the And there be those who deem him more than man, -for the mystic is always "seeking for a sign," and Another class of minds, which may be placed midway between the base opponents and the mystic believers, (is |