which is told to her by the maiden, to her earlier and happier days. These do not confuse the impression of her sorrowful fate and presence. They heighten it by contrast. They bring her whole life into the narrow convent room and lay it at the feet of her pain, and our pity for the woman, and the moral impression of her story, are both deepened.

These episodes are wrought out with great beauty; clearly invented, full of colour, life, and movement, imagined in the air of old Romance, and relieving the pity and sorrow of the piece with the charm of youthful love, and with the gaiety of the elfin world. We see through Guinevere's soft, regretful memory her ride with Lancelot from her father's castle in the sinless Maytime,

under groves that look'd a paradise

Of blossom, over sheets of hyacinth

That seem'd the heavens upbreaking thro' the earth

and we think of Tennyson's earlier poem when as yet nothing but the thoughtless delight of their youth and love engaged his mind. The next moment we are borne from this glad beginning to the tragic end, and the Queen hears the step of Arthur on the stair. The same sharp contrast is made by the story the little maid tells of the elfin rapture of the land and all its throng of life, on the news of Guinevere's marriage with Arthur. This is a lovely tale of fairy gaiety, as youthful, as much enchanted in imagination, as if its writer were only fiveand-twenty. The novice tells what her father saw.

He said

That as he rode, an hour or maybe twain
After the sunset, down the coast, he heard
Strange music, and he paused, and turning-there
All down the lonely coast of Lyonnesse,
Each with a beacon-star upon his head,
And with a wild sea-light about his feet,
He saw them-headland after headland flame

Far on into the rich heart of the west :

And in the light the white mermaiden swam,

And strong man-breasted things stood from the sea,
And sent a deep sea-voice thro' all the land,
To which the little elves of chasm and cleft
Made answer, sounding like a distant horn.

There is so much more, and of equal life and charm and strength; and then, right over against this delightful flashing of fairyland in a conscience-less joy, is set the gloom and sorrow of the present, and the sympathy of Nature with it. The whole of Britain is covered with a pall of mist, the earth is cold and dark beneath it.

The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face
Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still.

Thus, while this happy story is told within, the vapour creeps on without, the symbol of the overwhelming of Arthur's work and life, and of the guilt of Guinevere. As Nature fitted herself to the rapture of the beginning, so she fits herself to the tragic end.

Moreover this is done by the poet in preparation for the next Idyll, for the last dim battle in the west which is to be fought in the death-white vapour beside the moaning sea. Arthur is already folded in that mist;

his work is drowned in it; and he fades away like a gray shadow, no man knowing whether he be dead or alive. Therefore in this Idyll we see the King through Guinevere's eyes make his departure in the mist-a noble picture, exalting the image of the King as warrior and as lord, and vividly drawn, as if by Rembrandt, in the torches at the convent door.

And lo, he sat on horseback at the door!
And near him the sad nuns with each a light
Stood, and he gave them charge about the Queen,
To guard and foster her for evermore.

And while he spake to these his helm was lower'd,
To which for crest the golden dragon clung

Of Britain; so she did not see the face,
Which then was as an angel's, but she saw,
Wet with the mists and stricken by the lights,
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship
Blaze, making all the night a stream of fire.

And even then he turn'd; and more and more

The moony vapour rolling round the King,
Who seem'd the phantom of a giant in it,
Enwound him fold by fold, and made him gray
And grayer, till himself became as mist
Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom.

That doom is told in The Passing of Arthur, but that he is already enwound by its misty pall, and himself a ghost in it, is nobly conceived, and as splendidly expressed.

The Passing of Arthur is set over against The Coming of Arthur, the epilogue over against the prologue. These two are not Idylls in Tennyson's idea. They are the framework in which the Idylls are contained, the

coming and going of the great King whose character and life make the existence of all the other characters in the book; whose fate, from its beginning to its end, makes the unity and the diversity of the book. In every Idyll, save two, Arthur is the master of the action of the piece or the final judge of what has been done; or if not master or judge, the dominant figure to accomplish whose destiny the doings in the Idyll have occurred. Even in Merlin and Vivien and in Pelleas and Ettarre, he broods like a shadow over the events. We are forced to ask in the first what will happen to him and his work when he is deprived of his great councillor, the only one who knew his inmost soul; and Tennyson, with great skill, drives us into asking that question. In Pelleas and Ettarre enough is said of him to force us to realise the dreadful fate which overhangs his work. We see him there, like Abdiel among the rebel host, the only one who still loves the great Virtues and the pursuit of perfect duty in a world which loves vice as he loves virtue, and which worships the material as he worships the ideal life. He scarcely enters into the action of the piece, but he is, nevertheless, vividly present, standing in the background alone, wrapt in his fate as in a cloak.

This dominance of one central figure towards whom converges all the action as well as all the personages of the poem, is that which gives it unity, and supplies it with whatever epic character it has. The Idylls of the King, as a whole, borders on the epic; it is not an epic. Its form forbids us to call it by that name, and I

suppose that Tennyson, feeling that, gave it the name of the Idylls of the King. Nevertheless, the idea of its becoming an epic was originally in his mind, and influenced his later work upon the whole poem. He hovered, that is, between two forms of his art, and this apparent changing, here and there as he wrote, of the class of poetry in which the work was placed, vaguely troubles the reader. That unity of specialised impression which should at once tell a reader to what kind of poetry the poem belongs, is not here.

Again, the proper end of an epic is the moral triumph of the hero over fate, over the attack of time, and over pain. He may be beaten into the dust, all but ruined by life; but his soul is not subdued. He emerges clear, like Arcturus after a night of storm, purified, almost equal in calm to the immortal Gods. Conquered without, he is conqueror within. Even Fate retires, saying: "This man is greater than I." Even the Furies become the Eumenides. In the true epic this is always the position of the hero at the close. It is the position of Adam, it is that of Dante, of Æneas, of Achilles. It is not altogether, only partly, the position of Arthur. He passes away, it is true into the land beyond, tended by the Queens. There is a vague rumour that he will return, but no one knows. Ignorance, doubt, dimly lit at rare times by faith, enshroud his fate. His kingdom, he thinks, will reel back into the beast. This is not the true end, nor

the feeling, of an epic hero.

Arthur's work has failed. Love, friendship, his ideal