BOOKS.

ARTILL1 R AND MERLIN.* IT is a little strange that Mr. Tennyson's "Idyls of the King" have never yet been criticized from the historical point of view. His ad- mirers seem to have surrendered themselves to an influence so strong as to preclude examination, when they enter the fairy world which the wand of the enchanter has conjured up. Yet the very form of the book shows that the poet himself was well aware that he was dealing with materials which_ no skill could make homogeneous. Everard Hall's epic of " King Arthur" has been transformed into a series of distinct scenes, connected with one another by common names and landscapes ; but each as complete in itself as the episodes

• Myrdhinn, on r Enchanteur Merlin : on Histoire, ses CEurra, son Influence. Parse Vicomte llersart de in V illemarque. London: D. Nutt. Kmg Ardour and his Knights of the Round Table. Compiled and arranged by J. T. K. London: Griffiths and Ferran.

of Diomed's valour or of the scoutage of Ulysses in the Iliad. In reality, the English poet had an even harder task before him than Homer. The different legends of Greek tribes which were fused together into the one story of Troy, were pretty certainly composed within some three or four hundred years, and at a time when the

changes. of civilization were slow. But the romances of which Arthur is the centre extend over more than a thousand years, be- ginning,when paganism haunted the forest shades of England, and only dying out m the century of Calvin and Cervantes. They may be briefly arranged in four main divisions: the mythological, in which the interest is that of a fairy tale, as in the "Mabinonion ;" the political, as in "Geoffreyof Monmouth," where Arthur is a king, states- man, and conqueror ; the chivalrous, as in the " Morte d'A rthur" where Arthur is a knight ; and the grotesque, which came in towards the Renaissance, and of which a few stanzas in Ariosto are the only

well-known specimen. Fortunately for Arthurian romance, Boiardo and his compeers were better acquainted with the life of Charle- mape, and spent their graceful wit upon the paladins of Ronces- valles. The two works in which Rabelais coupled Merlin and Arthur with Gargantua and Pantagruel attracted little attention when they appeared, and are now irretrievably buried in their own slime. It need scarcely be said that Mr. Tennyson has shown an ar- tistic skill in quarrying amid the ruins of the past for the stones of his own great work. The mere fact that his incongruities are scarcely suspected, except by scholars, is his best apology. Never- theless, true lovers of the real Arthur of Camelot, whose name quickened the pulses of crusaders, look with very mixed feelings upon the "Idyls of the King." The song is sweet, but it is not the song that charmed us when we were young. In spite of the poet's large knowledge and skill in reproducing minute details, Arthur, and Arthur's life, have changed their character in his hands. The com- mon answer to this is, that lie has risen glorified from the tomb, the sins of his hot blood no longer remembered against him, and the pious knight exalted into the Christ-like man. We doubt whether this argument will bear examination. But even if the moral pur- pose of Arthur's life has been elevated, it has been at the expense of the whole moral conception that underlays the"Morte d'Arthur." Nor, perhaps, can any beauties of execution redeem the essential imper- fections of a work of art whose parts are incongruous. The story of Enid and Geraint belongs to a century of stern barbarism, and no colouring or softening down can adapt it to the times of chivalry. It reflects the manners of men who held that women were made to bear burdens and breed children ; and Geraint, who drives his wife before him and gives her horses to tend, is of quite other ancestry from Galahad and Perceval. The Norman minstrels were so sensible of

this, that, although they retained the story for the charms of its in- cidents, they refined away all the more brutal passages. The dwarf

who strikes at Guinevere's maid with his whip, is described in the old Welsh story as making the blood spirt from her cheek, and Mr. Tennyson, like Chrestien de Troyes before him, has softened the oat- rage into insult. Still, when all had been done, it retained too much savage simplicity to harmonize with the cycle of the Round Table, and Malory followed a wise instinct in rejecting it. Will any man calmly say that Mr. Tennyson's Geraint is worthy the fellowship of Arthur and Lancelot In the second Idyl, Mr. Tennyson inexplicably adopts the lowest or grotesque version of Merlin's death. Even Malory,. who had seen the last knight die on the scaffold, and whose version is cloth of frieze upon cloth of gold, is more merciful to Vivien's fair fame than the Poet Laureate, who gives her the blandishments, the heart- lessness, and the wanton treachery of a Parisian lorette. But Malory, who makes his heroine escape by this desperate remedy from an engrossing fondness which she dreads and loathes, though he is far above the level of the pseudo Beda, whom Mr. Tennyson seems to have followed, has none the less ruined an exquisite episode of mediaeval romance. The short sketch of the "Lady of the Lake," which M. Villemain gave in his lectures, and the more elaborate version which M. de la Villemarque has founded on Robert de Borron's "Merlin," agree in their main features, and are pretty cer- tainly true to the old conception, which Vivien's very name, meaning

" fairy" or "wood-nymph," seems to express. The outline of the story may be briefly traced. Merlin, transformed into a beardless student,

and roaming through the woods of Broceliande in the early spring, meets beside a fountain the young and beautiful Vivien, whose fairy mother has endowed her at birth with three gifts : that she shall inspire love in the wisest man, shall bend him to her will in every- thing, and shall learn all that she wishes to know from him. Merlin, unconscious of the spell, and amused at the naive innocence of the yoting girl, calls up before her a fata morgana of castles and knights and ladies. From that day forward he is inextricably hers ; she has recognized the man assigned her by destiny, and he obeys a power stronger than his own. But his frequent journeys to Arthur's court afflict her; she cannot bear that be should live for the world and

fame, while she lives only for him. Therefore is it that she draws from him the last secrets of his magic book, and throws him into an en- chanted sleep, from which he wakes up in a garden surrounded by an impassable hawthorn hedge. Thenceforth he is only a voice and a great name among men • for a time Arthur's knights come in quest of him, and are suffered to enter the garden; but gradually the know-

ledge of the wizard's home is lost. He, the wise from his cradle, lives on amid the woods of Broceliande with Vivien, who shall be

young till the world dies : he is " lost to life and use, and name and fame;" bat, as he tells Gawain in his last interview, "The madness which comes of love is pardonable, and such is mine." Probably this charming story is based upon the old legend, if it be not history, of

the actual Merlin's madness, and on the classical superstition which believed that the man who saw a wood-nymph was thenceforward bereaved of sense (nympholeptic). But in the hands of the chivalrous romancers it has become the type and eternal embodiment of strong supernatural passion whose divine unreality controls the will without dimming the spiritual vision, and builds itself a fairy home at once within and outside the limits of the visible world. It was a subtle instinct of art that associated these thoughts with Merlin. Rinaldo in Armida's garden—the knight deserting his enterprise—is con- temptible ; no man may look backwards who has set out towards Jerusalem. But throughout Merlin's life, the marvels of his prophetic intellect so far predominate above any moral characteristics or purpose, that he seems to be raised into humanity by the passion to which he sacrifices his career. Anyhow, let Mr. Tennyson's admirers judge for themselves whether the dotard cheated by the harlot is a nobler subject for art than the prophet bidding the world go by and throw- ing himself at the feet of love.

We may pass briefly over " Elaine," an almost exact reproduction of the old story, and no doubt owing something to Mr. Tennyson's delicate workmanship. But the last Idyl, exquisite as a mere piece of poetry, is so strange a departure from the whole spirit of the Ar- thurian romance, as to involve the whole question which of two con- ceptions of art and character is the higher. Mr. Tennyson conceives Arthur as the faultless man, almost perfect in passionless nobility of mind, and erring only because he sometimes forgets the frail woman at his side in his dreams of a better world. To those who accept this ideal, Guinevere's sin appears wanton and inexcusably foul : the whole effect of her penitence is impaired by the picture of her loose thoughts and vacillating will. Evidently the artist has felt the extreme dif- ficulty of drawing Arthur after his own design. We rather feel the king's presence than see him throughout the Idyls till the last scene in which he rides to the convent at Amesbury. And herein lies, we think, the first fault, that of having conceived a knight and states- man from the reflective, rather than from the practical point of view; as a thinker and preacher, rather than a doer in the world. Decker's beautiful praise of our Lord as "the first true gentleman the world e'er knew," is justified by the meekness, the long suffering, the un- wearying protest against wrong that found their final expression on Calvary. But as Jesus Christ's life was the complement and purification of existing society in the Roman world, the very prominence which it gave to the spiritual attributes that had been obscured or forgotten, threw into the shade the more vulgar human qualities of adventure, bravery, and sustained phrpose. Au exclusively Christian view of life, if we limit Christian to the outline of the Gospel narrative, is, therefore, apt to appear feminine and unsubstantial, just as pictures of our Lord, from Thomas of Mutina down to Ary Scheirer, idealize purity and meek- ness to the refining away of power. Here, we think, is Mr. Tennyson's first fault. His description of Arthur is so studiedly Christian, that it challenges comparison with a model which it cannot possibly surpass, which it must fall short of. More than this, Arthur's place in the world as king and knight, demands that he should not only be the best man of his day in the closet, but the best in field and council. It is difficult to close Mr. Tennyson's book without a feeling that Lancelot, though faulty and bad, was more thorough a man than his master, and that Guinevere's frailty had some excuse in the facts of our common nature. Nor is this feeling diminished by the changed character which Mr. Tennyson has given to the last meet- ing at Amesbury. Arthur's speech to his wife, telling her of her great sin, and of the wasted purpose of his life and royalty, is that of a weak, not of a strong man; it is tainted with self-seeking and love of the world's report; it is not even strong feeling, for men who feel strongly do not speak much. It is difficult to resist the impression that here is a garrulous good man, who has got his wife at advantage, and makes the most of it. Surely if Arthur was to meet Guinevere again, his silence would have been more eloquent than words; a look, a pressure of the hand, would have told how deeply he felt and how tenderly be forgave. But Malory's version is really truer to human nature and art. He sends Arthur to the battle which is his last, with his great grief unspoken and his thoughts absorbed in the misery of his kingdom. It is Lancelot, not the king, who comes after his old master's disappearance to the convent at Amesbury, in order ' that he may take her in whom "lie has had his earthly joy" into his own country with him. But Guinevere has been sobered by the shock of public infamy and war. She declares her penitence before the veiled sisters and her waiting-women. "Through this knight and me all these wars were wrought, and the death of the most noble knights of the world; for through our love that we have loved together is my most noble lord slain. Therefore, wit thou well, Sir Lancelot, I am set in such a plight to get my soul's health, and yet I trust through God's grace that after my death for to have the sight of the blessed face of Jesu Christ, and at the dreadful day of doom to sit on his right side. For as sinful creatures as ever was I are saints in heaven.' Surely this is a higher picture of the woman and the man : Arthur dying without a querulous word, and Guinevere telling over his grave how great the hopes were that had perished through her sin.

But it is in the whole conception of Arthur's relations to his knights that Mr.Tennyson has most entirely deviated from the original. Arthur was never thought of in the middle ages as the best man of his court ; his youth had been stained with a foul crime, the adultery of which Modred was the issue; and Galahad is the sinless knight who achieves the SangreaL It is a minor but a great advantage that the life of the ideal gentleman should not be traversed by any vulgar dis- grace ; that sin should not gibe and chatter in the shadow of awful goodness. Disguise it to ourselves as we may, we think the worse

of Arthur for his wife having betrayed him, and the feeling rests °Reid experience, that the man must be somewhat in fault where the woman is depraved. He has either chosen lightly or handled her ilL Again, there is something immoral in the spectacle of heroic greatness and parity when these decline causelessly upon shame and ruin. We want no vulgar success for our hero ; let him die like Galahad when the work he has set himself is done, but let him not have lived alto. gether in vain. Now, in the old romances, Arthur's fate is the exact retribution for his sin. There is an At in his life—the spectre of a dark crime—that pursues him and strikes him down in the full glory of his court. He falls because lie has sinned : he is dishonoured as he dishonoured another : and the instrument of his ruin is the sou of his adulterous bed. The stern justice and the large mercy of God meet in his history. He was brave, and therefore glorious ; generous, and lie gathered friends around him ; giving his blood for his country, and therefore to be honoured through all time ; but he was frail and passionate, and he falls. Is it a higher art that finds the cause of his ruin in a greatness that will not let him understand his fellows, and a purity that cannot conciliate love ?

A good prose summary of Arthur's life would be a great gain to the public. It ought to be a compilation like Malory's,- from the works of old writers, and as much as possible in their words, but it should be shorter and homogeneous. Geoffrey of Monmouth should be used sparingly, and the monstrous because magical loves of Tris- tram and Iseult had better be omitted. A long series of mere adven- tures would be wearisome; and as the Quest of the Sangreal and the Morte d'Arthur should be the basis of the work, it might easily be compressed into a single volume. We opened J. T. K.'s book with the hope that it might supply this want. We regret that we can say nothing in its favour. It is chiefly taken from Geoffrey ; Malory's exquisite style has been tampered with and spoiled ; and an absurd puritanism has led the compiler to omit all notice of Lancelot's rela. tions with Guinevere. This is really too bad, and it is no excuse to say that the book was intended to find a place in boys' libraries. A schoolboy who has read the Bible and Shakspeare, and who construes Ovid and Horace in his class, may surely be trusted to know the bare fact that Guinevere was unfaithful ; the more so as Malory's language, though HomericaUy simple, is never in itself indelicate. The best we can say is, that we wish any book success that familiarizes Englishmen with Arthur's name, and that we heartily hope the present attempt may be the first of many. As a substitute for that morbid psychology of the playground which has lately become fashionable, the worst book of chivalrous romance will be a great positive gain.