endured, in spite of the lack of historians, living from generation to generation between the lips of men. And so his glory grew from age to age, and was made magnificent beyond the truth, till Geoffrey, partly collecting and partly inventing the fabulous history of his life and acts, made a groundwork for all the romances which have come down to us. And thus, too, in later ages, Arthur has come to be considered, even by those who know but little more of him than his name, as the ideal of a king and hero, brave, generous, and chivalric. Such was he, in fact, to the old romancers. Their ideal of a Christian knight and heroic king may have been a low one, although not always quite so low as some modern critics would have us believe it, but that ideal was Arthur, reigning at Camelot among his knights of the round table, and inciting them by precept and example to be perfect in whatever should become a noble knight. The romances of these old writers are best known to modern readers in the compilation which was made so long ago as the year 1470, by Sir Thomas Malory, a knight of the court of Edward the Fourth of England, and his version of them has been the authority which Mr. Tennyson has apparently recognized, so far as he has thought proper to confine himself to them.

In regard to "La Morte d'Arthure," under which title Sir Thomas Malory's book was published, it is not out of place to say briefly that it seems to have been considered by its author to be chiefly a fictitious romance, but founded upon veracious history; that it was published for the delight and profit of the reader, and for the purpose of perpetuating the fame of a king whose existence had even then begun to be questioned. The three volumes appear, at first, to be filled merely with monotonous and somewhat tirseome descriptions of wars and tournaments, of the adventures of the noble knights of the round table, encountering giants and sometimes dragons, jousting perpetually with stranger knights, delivering damsels from distress in which uncourteous knights had held them, meeting with rebuffs and disfavor, or with love and goodly cheer, from the damsels to whom they offered their devotion. But through all the monotony and din of these successive adventures,

appear the characters, clearly drawn and memorable for their vividness and power, of "the blameless king" himself, of Guinevere—that is, Winifred-his beautiful but faithless queen, of Lancelot and Tristram, peers in bravery, and bound together in the truest friendship,—of the crafty Gawaine, and, above all, of the pure Sir Galahad, who surpassed all others in his worth and glory, and who, with Sir Percivale and Sir Bors, achieved at last the quest of the Sanc Greal. And the simplicity and beauty of the old knight's narrative, the power of his descriptions, the appreciation which he shows of what is beautiful and noble wherever he finds it, the tinge of the supernatural with which his stories are colored, just enough to make them fascinating, but not enough to make them monstrous,— all these combine to make the volumes not wearisome but delightful; add to this that they are written in the purest and strongest Saxon style, in such language as we rarely meet with now except in King James's version of the Bible.

The times of chivalry, and the romances which in those times attained so wide a popularity, have been often and justly condemned as in a high degree immoral and impure. It must be confessed that, to a fearful extent, this censure is a well deserved one. We can hardly claim, even for Sir Thomas Malory's book, that it is to be recommended as widely useful for popular reading. It is a mere collection of romances, and as such, of course, is not a book of the highest utility. No doubt the real morality which Malory's picture of chivalry presents to us, is sometimes no morality at all. But it is not true that his ideal is thus low and unworthy, and that it finds its expression in the criminality of a Lancelot, for instance. We can sympathize, indeed, with good old Roger Ascham's indignation, when he tells us that he knows of a time "when God's Bible was banished the court, and 'La Morte d'Arthure' received into the Prince's chamber." Just so we should be indignant, and should know what to believe of the character of such a court, if it were true in our day that the Bible were cast out and "Vanity Fair," for instance, or even "Oliver Twist," welcomed in its place. But that good old schoolmaster spoke too hastily, and evidently without knowing whereof he affirm

ed, when he declared that, in that book, "they are counted the noblest knights who do kill most men without any quarrel, and commit fowlest adulteries by subtlest shiftes." What shall we say of the whole romance of the quest of the Sanc Greal, if Roger Ascham's statement is correct? And what shall we say about the pure Sir Galahad,-beyond all question the strongest, bravest, noblest of the knights of the round table, who sat in the "seat perilous," in which no other man might sit and live, and who was kept, by heavenly power, from pride and arrogant presumption, from cruelty and from defilement? How is it, if these tales are all so steeped in licentiousness as some modern critics would have us believe,how is it that we find in them a character so supernaturally lovely, and so bright an example of religious purity, simplicity, and faith, fanciful, it may be, but so fascinating and so elevated in its tone that we know not where to look in all English allegory for its superior, unless in the dream of the Elstow tinker? It is something of the spiritual beauty and of the ethereal, almost colorless, purity of this "quest of the Sanc Greal," that Mr. Tennyson has made familiar to us in the lyric to which we have had occasion once already to refer. This is the same Sir Galahad who says and feels

"My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure ;"-

this is the "just and faithful knight of God," doing frequent and perilous battle, and going through much tribulation, but always fighting in a righteous cause, and always aspiring to a heavenly reward. No earthly love is his, although he counts as sweet, indeed, and worthy of all gratitude, the pure love of

woman;

"But all my heart is drawn above,

My knees are bowed in crypt and shrine."

He is content with faith in heavenly things of which he sometimes has a foretaste here:

"A maiden knight-to me is given

Such hope I know not fear;

I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven
That often meet me here.

I muse on joy that will not cease,

Pure spaces clothed in living beams,
Pure lilies of eternal peace,

Whose odors haunt my dreams."

So living and so diligently following his quest, he at last achieves it, and in great peace and glory, kissing his comrades Percivale and Bors, and commending them to God, he sends a farewell message to his sinful father, the great Sir Lancelot, bidding him, simply and solemnly, to "remember this unstable world. And therewith," as Sir Thomas Malory simply tells us, in his quaint old English, "hee kneeled down before the table and made his praiers; and then sodainely his soule departed unto Jesu Christ, and a great multitude of angels beare his soule up to heaven, that his two fellowes might behold it." Before we can condemn, with sweeping and indiscriminate censure, all the old romances of chivalry as being penetrated through and through with immorality, we must forget such stories as the quest of the Sanc Greal, and such characters as Galahad and Percivale and Bors. And we venture to say that, when Sir Thomas Malory's book usurped the place of the Bible, in the Prince's chamber, this romance was not a favorite one, nor these the characters that were most read and imitated.

We should be glad to show, if it could be done without too great a digression from our plan in these pages, after how excellent a sort this old knight moralizes over the fortunes of the heroes whom he describes in his book, and to illustrate by examples the simple, reverent, and noble spirit in which he wrote. What we have already said is enough to prove that the field of old chivalric romance is not, at least, so wholly vile as some would have us believe it. It was, at any rate, a field into which a soul like Milton's could enter without defilement. For, as he himself tells us,* he found, as he read, that the ideals, at least, were noble; and if the real attainments of the characters fell short of them, or were in gloomy contrast with them, he was saddened to be sure, and made indignant,

*Masson's Life of Milton, Boston edition, p. 239.

but was not polluted. "So that," he says, even those books which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose living-I cannot think how unless by Divine indulgence-proved to me so many incitements to the love and steadfast observation of virtue."

In this hurried and inadequate view of the age of chivalry, and especially of the times of Arthur, and of the literature which has depicted to us the manners of that age, it is not difficult to see why it must prove so fascinating to the poet. It appears, in a sort of fantastic way, and to a very limited extent, as a golden age. And it is so far distant in the dim past, and so almost unknown to authentic history, that the imagination wanders back to it unconstrained, and accepts with ease and wild delight the unreal supernaturalism that fills it. We are willing enough that, as we look back into that far-off horizon of the past, the sky should seem to mingle with the earth; that the powers of heaven and of the air should come into a closer contact with men. That unreasonable love for fanciful impossibilities which is so powerful in the minds of children, and which makes so attractive to then a fairy tale, for instance, or one of those grotesque books which the Germans in our day manufacture for the children of this favored age, exists with no little power among many children of a larger growth, and gives to such fables of the olden time as these of King Arthur and his knights a continual power to charm. Especially is this true of any mind which is in an uncommon degree imaginative and poetic. No wonder, then, that Milton, when he was young and had not acquired the sterner and more practical character which his later years. brought to him, and when he was lingering at Naples, captivated by the soft sky and pleasant landscape, and by the memory of classic days, was led to think of Arthur, and the

age,—exists

"goodly usage of those antique tymes,
In which the sword was servaunt unto right;"

whereof, not long before, his predecessor, Edmund Spenser, had sung so sweetly. No wonder, too, that Tennyson has turned again and again to the romances of those bygone times,