feeling. Although he takes the stories for the most part as he finds them, he has given to every character in them a form from his own imagination. The incidents are from the romancers; the style is of the poet. To the indistinct forms of old heroes and heroines, he gives a firm outline and vivid colors. In this way, sometimes, the old character is lost, and a new and different one substituted. Where he has found a vague, confused story, he has used it to make the picture that he wished, by arranging, combining, contrasting and coloring, to suit his own feeling. The "Idyls," like all Mr. Tennyson's Poems, are full of the breath of life. Every figure moves by its own strength and impulse. We see no propping up; no pushing or wire-pulling. He has given to Arthur, to Guenever, to Launcelot, to Vivien, to Merlin, even, characters from his own imagination, stronger and more distinct than any of the romances show us. The strength and dignity, the fulness and beauty that we look for in vain among these, we find everywhere in Mr. Tennyson's book. We see king Arthur-not as the romances show him to us, a convenient, dignified man of straw, to hold splendid court and take part in rich pageants— but a grand and noble man, showing well how a great heart can keep its place and its power through and above all the glitter of a life of adventure and prowess. Kingly as we see him here, kingly in his person, kingly in his bearing, in his life and in his heart, we no longer wonder, as we have been tempted to before, that he should form the centre and rallying point of so many brave knights; but we see how, in true manliness, he overtops them all, making every one acknowledge his superiority, but without haughtiness or oppressive authority. He gains and holds the willing service and homage of all by his weight of character, though inferior to many in personal strength and prowess, then gloried in as the highest excellences of manhood. spirit of characterization most shows Mr. Tennyson's great power. We feel at once as if his Arthur were the real Arthur, whom dull chroniclers have failed to recognize and represent in the romances, but whom the eye of the poet at once discerned, that he might point him out to us and make us wonder that we had never before distinguished him. This In his longer poems, Mr. Tennyson has chosen hitherto forms which left him, in a great measure, free from the trammels of regularly studied design and proportion. The Princess, a medley; In Memoriam, a loose congeries ; Maud, a bitter extravaganza-these needed no great effort for unity of effect. The Idyls are detached stories, differing in feeling and events, containing different characters, in part; though connected by time, place, manner and circumstance. Nevertheless the material is most artistically arranged; the connection and progress of the whole carefully studied. The stories selected are all, as the title of the book would lead us to expect, stories of Arthur's court, and unity is given to the series by connecting them all, more or less, with the lives of Launcelot and Guenever, Arthur's queen. Thus far he was guided by the romances themselves, in which the love of this miserable pair is shown to be at the bottom of almost everything that goes on in Arthur's court. This is the key-note of the whole series. It is but lightly touched in the first Idyl; and we are reminded of it again, more forcibly, in the second. In the third, the whole movement bears a distinct reference to it, and the fourth is occupied with its end and consequences. From the beginning, everything is skilfully arranged to retain the interest and heighten the climacteric effect of the whole. The selection of topics is an instance of Mr. Tennyson's remarkable boldness and self-reliance. The stories chosen are almost without incident, and their interest is left to depend wholly on their treatment. The subjects are, with one exception, tender and affecting, speaking always to the heart's finer and softer feelings. The style is carefully subdued to correspondence with the subject. It is simple and melodious, though always strong: sometimes sharp, clear, and startling, as the ring of an anvil. Compact and nervous, often condensing into an epithet, the simile which another would have dressed out in a line; picturesque and quaint at times, it suits rather with the feeling of the particular tale it tells, than with the showy unreal character of the life it describes. So the tone of each poem is perfect, and the consistency of the whole series carefully considered. In each something of an epic form is preserved; the story begins with the leading incident, and we are brought at once into sight of the heroine; forerunning events are presently told in an episode, and the action moves on to the end. They are called simply from the names of their heroines—Enid, Vivien, Elaine, Guenever. The number chosen is perhaps the best possible: a smaller number would have left us unsatisfied; more would have been a dangerous experiment. The first Idyl is founded on the story of Geraint, the son of Erbyn, given in the Welsh Mabinogeon. The heroine, Enid, deeply loving and deeply loved by her husband, is grieved at hearing him laughed at and accused of unmanliness for his devotion to her, and lets fall some words which he, waking out of sleep, hears and misunderstands. He imagines her unfaithful, and here we are first shown the connecting thread of the stories. It was the love which Euid bore to Guenever which had first made Geraint, uneasy at the influence of the faithless queen, withdraw from the court to pass his whole time with his wife in his own castle. This now lends strength to his suspicions and keenness to his pain. He sets out sternly on a wild quest of adventure and strife, keeping only Enid with him, clad in her meanest dress. The final triumph of the wife's love and constancy, the reconciliation and repentance of Geraint, follow at last and end the story. The whole is told with the perfection of simplicity, with great beauty and tenderness, and when occasion offers, with great vividness and strength; yet it is the one which less than any of the others the author has modified and marked with his own peculiarities. The character of Enid is pictured with surpassing grace. In the tale itself she wins us by her patience, her sweet womanliness, and her faithfulness; in the Idyl our sympathy is increased by the delicate treatment of the poet. Geraint is a good manly example of the better hero of chivalry; an actual living man, with a man's love, a man's jealousy, a man's stern self-subjugation or rather self-despotism: a strong man's strength and a strong man's weakness. Mr. Tennyson's force of simile and expression is strikingly shown in such passages as these: "And arms on which the standing muscle sloped "But while the sun yet beat a dewy blade, The effect of three successive dactyles breaking in upon the stately Iambic metre in the last extract, is most striking. Also: "Like a shoal Of darting fish, that on a summer morn Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand." The last line is wonderfully and beautifully expressive. The song of Enid to fortune and her wheel, has been often quoted, and is familiar to all readers. The subject of the second Idyl is perhaps badly chosen, certainly badly treated. It represents Vivien, the fairy of the Lake, where she wins and coaxes from Merlin the charm by which she gains possession of him, body and spirit, and shuts him up in a bush, from which he can never escape. The idea which the old fables give of this transaction is that Merlin, grown to be a doting old man, was too troublesome and exacting for the lightsome fairy, who for the rest had liked him well, but at last took this means, as the only one that offered, of getting rid of his persecutions, yet made some amends by her frequent visits to him. We find her to be a winsome fairy, with the attributes of beauty, gayety, generosity and waywardness, which belong usually to a fairy in a fairy tale. But Mr. Tennyson has metamorphosed her completely, giving her the heart of a Scandinavian wolfwoman, of Lamia or Geraldine. He makes her aim at subduing and controlling Merlin merely to gratify a wicked love of power and mischief. To gain his love, she tries all the wiles, blandishments, and falsehoods that a wicked woman's heart, or Mr. Tennyson's imagination, could supply. The tale contains no incidents, nothing but a description of their interview in the woods to which she had followed Merlin, with abundant selections from their discourse, which of course was principally carried on by Vivien, and that in a most disreputable way. We are relieved, and in a degree consoled, by the steady dignity of Merlin's answers and conduct, and begin to have some curiosity as to what unlucky accident is to place the dangerous power in Vivien's false hands, when the poet, as if tired of the sport, with no other intervention than a violent thunderclap, abruptly dismisses the subject by telling us that at last she succeeded in coaxing over the wizard. The whole tone and feeling of this Idyl, except when relieved by the honor and wisdom which are brought out in Merlin, to be vanquished by a false show of passion, are untrue and bad. There is a resemblance in form and manner to the rest of the book, besides the connecting link of Launcelot's love for Guenever, which we see here again, and more plainly than in the first Idyl. These are enough to maintain connection and apparent homogeneity; but here the likeness ends, and was intended to end. A kind of snake-like fascination is carried with a remarkable power through the whole poem. The style is, as ever, in keeping with the subject. It is richer than that of the first, more florid, more heated, with an unreal glare and dazzle upon it all. Its character is earthly, sensuous, with a trace of diablerie. The reader leaves it with the same sensations with which he may leave the glitter and excitement of the theatre, after some unwholesome melodrama. Mr. Tennyson's unequalled skill and carefulness make him fully responsible for all that he does, and expose him to full condemnation when he abuses his great powers. In the present case his reasons are not difficult to follow. While perhaps he was glad to be free for a time from the careful simplicity of style of his other Idyls, to find scope for his wonderful luxuriance of expression, his bright and dainty word-painting, there was yet a much stronger reason for this change of manner. The first and third Idyls are both tender and touching stories of woman's love, by which the reader's softer and higher sentiments are kept awake throughout, and in the last these feelings are to be aroused with all the poet's power, so that it is necessary to make some break in the series, and relieve the tension of our sympathies, or the effect will be lost at the end. But Mr. Tennyson might have done all this, might have taken this same subject of Vivien, or another, might have treated it as fancifully as he chose, might have relaxed and pleased the reader with a lighter fable, without filling his fairy's mouth with all the prurient gossip of a femme de chambre. We are not afraid of plain speaking when there is occasion for it; but when Mr. Tennyson fills several pages, perfectly unnecessarily, with the Decameron stories of a wanton court, we can but cry out upon him for abuse of his wonderful powers. Here he represents Vivien, full of spleen at the knights of the Round |