Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, April 1885

I cannot at all assent to the criticism passed upon the Idylls by Mr. John Morley, who has indeed, as it appears to me, somewhat imperilled his critical reputation by the observation that they are “such little pictures as might adorn a lady’s school.” When we think of “Guinevere,” “Vivien,” the “Holy Grail,” the “Passing of Arthur,” this dictum seems to lack point and penetration. Indeed, had it proceeded only from some rhyming criticaster, alternating with the feeble puncture of his sting the worrying iteration of his own doleful drone, it might have been passed over as simply an impertinence.2 But while the poem is in part purely a fairy romance tinctured with humanity, Tennyson has certainly intended to treat the subject in part also as a grave spiritual parable. Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Elaine, Galahad, Vivien, are types, gracious or hateful. My own feeling, therefore, would rather be that there is too much human nature in the Idylls, than that there is too little; or at any rate that, while Arthur remains a mighty Shadow, whose coming and going are attended with supernatural portents, a worthy symbol of the Spirit of divine humanity, Vivien, for instance, is a too real and unlovely harlot, too gross and veritably breathing, to be in proportionate harmony with the general design. Lancelot and Guinevere, again, being far fuller of life and color than Arthur, the situation between these three, as invented, or at least as recast from the old legends in his own fashion by the poet, does not seem artistically felicitous, if regarded as a representation of an actual occurrence in human life. But so vivid and human are many of the stories that we can hardly fail so to regard them. And if the common facts of life are made the vehicle of a parable, they must not be distorted. It is chiefly, I think, because Arthur and Merlin are only seen, as it were, through the luminous haze appropriate to romance and myth, that the main motive of the epic, the loves of Lancelot and Guinevere, appears scarcely strong enough to bear the weight of momentous consequence imposed on it, which is no less than the retributive ruin of Arthur’s commonwealth. Now, if Art elects to appeal to ethical instinct, as great, human, undegraded Art continually must, she is even more bound, in pursuance of her own proper end, to satisfy the demand for moral beauty, than to gratify the taste for beauty intellectual or æsthetic. And of course, while you might flatter a poetaster, you would only insult a poet by refusing to consider what he says, and only professing a concern for how he says it. Therefore if the poet choose to lay all the blame of the dissolution and failure of Arthur’s polity upon the illicit loves of Lancelot and Guinevere, it seems to me that he committed a serious error in his invention of the early circumstances of their meeting; nothing of the kind being discoverable either in Mallory, or the old chronicle of Merlin. Great stress, no doubt, is laid by Sir Thomas Mallory on this illicit love as the fruitful source of much calamity; but then Mallory relates that Arthur had met and loved Guinevere long before he asked for her in marriage; whereas, according to Tennyson, he sent Lancelot to meet the betrothed maiden, and she, never having seen Arthur, loved Lancelot, as Lancelot Guinevere, at first sight. That circumstance, gratuitously invented, surely makes the degree of the lovers’ guilt a problem somewhat needlessly difficult to determine, if it was intended to brand their guilt as heinous enough to deserve the ruin of a realm, and the failure of Arthur’s humane life-purpose. Guinevere, seeing Lancelot before Arthur, and recognizing in him (as the sweet and pure Elaine, remember, did after her), the type of all that is noble and knightly in man, loves the messenger, and continues to love him after she has met her destined husband, whom she judges (and the reader of the Idylls can hardly fail to coincide with her judgment) somewhat cold, colorless, and aloof, however impeccable and grave; a kind of moral phantom, or imaginative symbol of the conscience, whom Guinevere, as typifying the human soul, ought indeed to love best (“not Lancelot, nor another”), but whom, as a particular living man, Arthur, one quite fails to see why Guinevere, a living woman with her own idiosyncracies, should be bound to love rather than Lancelot. For if Guinevere, as woman, ought to love “the highest” man “when she sees him,” it does not appear why that obligation should not equally bind all the women of her Court also! If the whole burden of the catastrophe was to be laid upon the conception of a punishment deserved by the great guilt of particular persons, that guilt ought certainly to have been so described as to appear heinous and inexcusable to all beyond question. The story need not have been thus moralized; but the Poet-Laureate chose to emphasize the breach of a definite moral obligation as unpardonable, and pregnant with evil issues. That being so, I submit that the moral sense is left hesitating and bewildered, rather than satisfied and acquiescent, which interferes with a thorough enjoyment of the work even as art. The sacrament of marriage is high and holy; yet we feel disposed to demand whether here it may not be rather the letter and mere convention than the spirit of constant affection and true marriage that is magnified. And if so, though popularity with the English public may be secured by this vindication of their domestic ideal, higher interests are hardly so well subserved. Doubtless the treachery to husband and friend on the part of the lovers was black and detestable. Doubtless their indulged love was far from innocent. But then why invent so complicated a problem, and yet write as if it were perfectly simple and easy of solution? What I complain of is, that this love has a certain air of grievous fatality and excuse about it, while yet the poet treats it as mere unmitigated guilt, fully justifying all the disaster entailed thereby, not only on the sinners themselves, but on the State, and the cause of human welfare. Nor can we feel quite sure, as the subject is here envisaged, that, justice apart, it is quite according to probability for the knowledge of this constant illicit affection to engender a universal infidelity of the Round Table Knights to vows which not only their lips, as in the case of Guinevere, but also their hearts have sworn; infidelity to their own true affection, and disloyalty to their own genuine aspiration after the fulfilment of chivalrous duty in championing the oppressed – all because a rich-natured woman like Guinevere proves faithful to her affection for a rich kindred humanity in Lancelot! How this comes about is at any rate not sufficiently explained in the poet’s narrative; and if so, he must be held to have failed both as artist and as ethical teacher, which in these Idylls he has certainly aspired to be. Then comes the further question, not altogether an easy one to answer, whether it is really true that even widespread sexual excess inevitably entails deterioration in other respects, a lowered standard of integrity and honor? The chivalry of the Middle Ages was sans peur, but seldom sans reproche. History, on being interrogated, gives an answer ambiguous as a Greek oracle. Was England, for instance, less great under the Regency than under Cromwell? But at all events, the old legends make the process of disintegration in Arthur’s kingdom much clearer than it is made by Tennyson. In Mallory, for instance, Arthur is by no means the sinless being depicted by Tennyson. Rightly or wrongly, he is resolved to punish Guinevere for her infidelity by burning, and Lancelot is equally resolved to rescue her, which accordingly he does from the very stake, carrying her off with him to his castle of Joyous Gard. Then Arthur and Sir Gawain make war upon him; and thus, the great knightly heads of the Round Table at variance; the fellowship is inevitably dissolved, for Modred takes advantage of their dissension to seize upon the throne. But in the old legends, who is Modred? The son of Arthur and his sister. According to them, assuredly the origin of the doom or curse upon the kingdom is the unwitting incest, yet deliberate adultery of Arthur, or perhaps the still earlier and deeply-dyed sin of his father, Uther. Yet, Mr. Swinburne’s contention, that Lord Tennyson should have emphasized the sin of Arthur as responsible for the doom that came upon himself and his kingdom, although plausible, appears to me hardly to meet all the exigencies of the case. Mr. Hutton says in reply that then the supernatural elements of the story could have found no place in the poem; no strange portents could have been described as accompanying the birth and death of Arthur. A Greek tragedian, he adds, would never have dreamt of surrounding Œdipus with such portents. But surely the latter remark demonstrates the unsoundness of the former. Has Mr. Hutton forgotten what is perhaps one of the sublimest scenes in any literature, the supernatural passing of this very deeply-dyed sinner Œdipus to his divine repose at Colonos, in the grove of those very ladies of divine vengeance, by whose awful ministry he had been at length assoiled of sin? the mysterious stairs; Antigone and Ismene expectant above; he “shading his eyes before a sight intolerable;” after drinking to the dregs the cup of sin and sorrow, rapt from the world, even he, to be tutelary deity of that land? Neither Elijah nor Moses was a sinless man; yet Moses, after enduring righteous punishment, was not, for God took him, and angels buried him; it was he who led Israel out of Egypt, communed with Jehovah on Sinai; he appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. But I would suggest that the poet might have represented suffering and disappointment, not as penalty apportioned to particular transgressions, rather as integral elements in that mysterious destiny which determines the lot of man in his present condition of defect, moral, physical, and intellectual, involved in his “Hamartia,” or failure to realize that fulness of being which yet ideally belongs to him as divine. Both these ideas – the idea of Doom or destiny, and that of Nemesis on account of voluntary transgression – are alike present in due equipoise in the great conceptions of Greek drama, as Mr. J. A. Symonds has conclusively proved in his brilliant, philosophic and poetic work on the Greek poetry, against the more one-sided contention of Schlegel. I feel throughout Shakspeare this same idea of mystic inevitable destiny dominating the lives of men: you may call it, if you please, the will of God. Yet if it dooms us to error, ignorance, and crime, at all events this will cannot resemble the wills of men as they appear to us now. Othello expiates his foolish credulity, and jealous readiness to suspect her who had given him no cause to doubt her love. But there was the old fool Brabantio, and the devil Iago; there were his race, his temperament, his circumstances in general, and the circumstances of the hour, – all these were toils woven about him by Fate. Now, if the idea of Destiny be the more accentuated (and a tragedian surely should make us feel both this, and the free-will of man), then, as it seems to me, in the interests of Art, which loves life and harmony, not pure pain, loss, discord, or negation, there ought to be a purifying or idealizing process manifest in the ordeal to which the victims are subjected, if not for the protagonists, at all events for some of those concerned in the action. We must at least be permitted to behold the spectacle of constancy and fortitude, or devotion, as we do in Desdemona, Cordelia, Antigone, Iphigenia, Romeo and Juliet. But the ethical element of free-will is almost exclusively accentuated by Tennyson; and in such a case we desire to be fully persuaded that the “poetical justice” dealt out by the poet is really and radically justice, not a mere provincial or conventional semblance thereof.

Yet if you confine your attention to the individual Idylls themselves, they are undoubtedly most beautiful models of sinewy strength, touched to consummate grace. There can be nothing more exquisite than the tender flower-like humanity of dear Elaine, nor more perfect in pathetic dignity than the Idyll of Guinevere. Vivien is very powerful; but, as I said, the courtesan appears to me too coarsely and graphically realized for perfect keeping with the general tone of this faëry epic. The “Holy Grail” is a wonderful creation in the realm of the supernatural; all instinct with high spiritual significance, though some of the invention in this, as in the other Idylls, belongs to Sir Thomas Mallory. The adventures of the knights, notably of Galahad, Percivale, and Lancelot, in their quest for the Grail, are splendidly described. What, again, can be nobler than the parting of Arthur and Guinevere at Almesbury, where the King forgives and blesses her, she grovelling repentant before him, the gleaming “dragon of the great Pendragonship” making a vaporous halo in the night, as Arthur leaves her, “moving ghost-like to his doom?” Here the scenic element blends incorporate with the human, but assuredly does not overpower it, as has been pretended. Then how excellent dramatically are the subordinate figures of the little nun at Almesbury, and the rustic old monk, with whom Percivale converses in the Holy Grail; while, if we were to notice such similes (Homeric in their elaboration, though modern in their minute fidelity to nature) as that in Enid, which concerns the man startling the fish in clear water by holding up “a shining hand against the sun,” or the happy comparison of standing muscle on an arm to a brook “running too vehemently” over a stone “to break upon it,” our task would be interminable. The Arthur Idylls are full too of elevating exemplars for the conduct of life, of such chivalrous traits as courage, generosity, courtesy, forbearance, consecration, devotion of life for loyalty and love, service of the weak and oppressed; abounding also with excellent gnomic sayings inculcating these virtues. What admirable and delightful ladies are Enid, Elaine, Guinevere! Of the Laureate’s longer works, this poem and “In Memoriam” are his greatest, though both of these are composed of many brief song-flights.

It may not be unprofitable to inquire what idea Tennyson probably intended to symbolize by the “Holy Grail,” and the quest for it. Is it that of mere supernatural portent? Certainly not. The whole treatment suggests far more. I used to think it signified the mystical blood of Christ, the spirit of self-devotion, or, as Mallory defines it, “the secret of Jesus.” But it scarcely seems possible that Tennyson means precisely that, for then his ideal man Arthur would not discourage the quest. Does it not rather stand for that secret of the higher life as sought in any form of supernatural religion, involving acts of worship or asceticism, and religious contemplation? Yet Arthur deprecates not the religious life as such – rather that life in so far as it is not the auxiliary of human service. It is while pursuing the quest that Percivale (in the “Holy Grail”) finds all common life, even the most sacred relations of it, as well as the most ordinary and vulgar, turn to dust when he touches them; and to a religious fanatic that is indeed the issue – this life is less than dust to him; he exists for the future and “supernatural” only; his soul is already in another region than this homely work-a-day world of ours; and because it is another, he is only too ready to think it must be higher. What to him are our politics, our bewilderments, our fair humanities, our art and science, or schemes of social amelioration? Less than nothing. What he has to do is to save first his own soul, and then some few souls of others, if he can. But while, as Arthur himself complained, such an one waits for the beatific vision, or follows “wandering fires” of superstition, how often, for men with strength to right the wronged, will “the chance of noble deeds come and go unchallenged!” Arthur even dares to call the Holy Grail “a sign to maim this order which I made.” “Many of you, yea most, return no more.” But, as the Queen laments, “this madness has come on us for our sins.” Percivale turns monk, Galahad passes away to the spiritual city, Sir Bors meets Lancelot riding madly all abroad, and shouting, “Stay me not; I have been the sluggard, and I ride apace, for now there is a lion in the path!” Lancelot rides on the quest in order that, through the vision of the Grail, the sin of which his conscience accuses him may be rooted out of his heart. And so it was partly the sin – the infidelity to their vows – that had crept in amongst the knights, which drove the best of them to expiation, to religious fervors, whereby their sin might be purged, thus completing the disintegration of that holy human brotherhood, which had been welded together by Arthur for activities of righteous and loving endeavor after human welfare. Magnificent is the picture of the terrible, difficult quest of Lancelot, whose ineradicable sin hinders him from full enjoyment of the spiritual vision after which he longs. Nor will Arthur unduly discourage those who have thus in mortal peril half attained. “Blessed are Bors, Lancelot, and Percivale, for these have seen according to their sight.” Into his mouth the poet also puts some beautiful lines on prayer. More indeed may be wrought for the world by the silent spiritual life, by the truth-seeking student, by the beauty-loving artist, than is commonly believed. In worshipping the ideal they bless men. Arthur rebukes Gawain for light infidel profanity, born only of blind contented immersion in the slime of sense; while for the others, there was little indeed of the true religious spirit in their quest. “They followed but the leader’s bell, for one hath seen, and all the blind will see.” With them it is mere fashion, and hollow lip-service, or superstitious fear; a very devil-worship indeed, standing to them too often in the place of justice, mercy, and plain human duty. Nay, what terrible crimes have been committed against humanity in the name of this very religion! Even Percivale only attained to spiritual vision through the vision of Galahad, whose power of strong faith came upon him, for he lacked humility, a heavenly virtue too often lacking in the unco guid, as likewise in those raised above their fellows through any uncommon gifts, whether of body or mind. In the old legends, the sin of Lancelot himself is represented as consisting quite as much in personal ambition, over-self-confidence, and pride on the score of his prowess, as in his adultery with the Queen. Yet the “pure religion and undefiled” of Galahad and St. Agnes had been long since celebrated by our poet in two of his loveliest poems. But these sweet children were not left long to battle for goodness and truth upon the earth; heaven was waiting for them; though, while he remained, Galahad, who saw the vision because he was pure in heart, “rode shattering evil customs everywhere” in the strength of that purity and that vision. Arthur, however, avers he could not himself have joined in the quest, because his mission was to mould and guard his kingdom, although, that done, “let visions come and welcome;” nay, to him the common earth and air are all vision; and yet he knows himself no vision, nor God, nor the divine man. To the spiritual, indeed, all is religious, sacred, sacramental, for they look through the appearance to the reality, half hidden and half revealed under it. This avowal reminds me of Wordsworth’s grand passage in the “Ode on Immortality” concerning “creatures moving about in worlds not realized.” But for men not so far advanced revelations of the Holy Grail, sacramental observances, and stated acts of worship, are indeed of highest import and utility. Yet good, straightforward, modest Sir Bors, who is not over-anxious about the vision, to him it is for a moment vouchsafed, though Lancelot and Percivale attain to it with difficulty, and selfish, superstitious worldlings, with their worse than profitless head-knowledge, bad hearts, hollow worship of Convention and the Dead Letter, get no inkling of it at all. This wholesome conviction I trace through many of the Laureate’s writings. Stylites is not intended to be a flattering, though it is certainly a veracious portrait of the sanctimonious, self-depreciating, yet self-worshipping ascetic. The same feeling runs through “Queen Mary;” and Harold, the honest warrior of unpretending virtue, is well contrasted with the devout, yet un-English and only half-kingly confessor, upon whose piety Stigand passes no very complimentary remarks. So that the recent play which Lord Queensberry objected to surprises me; for in “Despair” it is theological caricature of the divine character which is made responsible for the catastrophe quite as much as Agnosticism, a mere reaction from false belief. Besides, has not Tennyson sung “There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds,” and “Power was with him in the night, which makes the darkness and the light, and dwells not in the light alone”?

Turning now to the philosophical and elegiac poetry of Tennyson, one would pronounce the poet to be in the best sense a religious mystic of deep insight, though fully alive to the claims of activity, culture, science, and art. It would not be easy to find more striking philosophical poetry than the lines on “Will,” the “Higher Pantheism,” “Wages,” “Flower in the Crannied Wall,” the “Two Voices,” and especially “In Memoriam.” As to “Wages,” it is surely true that Virtue, even if she seek no rest (and that is a hard saying), does seek the “wages of going on and still to be.” An able writer in “To-day” objects to this doctrine. And of course an Agnostic may be, often is, a much more human person – larger, kinder, sounder – than a believer. But the truth is, the very feeling that Love and Virtue are noblest and best involves the implicit intuition of their permanence, however the understanding may doubt or deny. Again, I find myself thoroughly at one with the profound teaching of the “Higher Pantheism,” As for “In Memoriam,” where is the elegiac poetry equal to it in our language? Gravely the solemn verse confronts problems which, mournful or ghastly, yet with some far-away light in their eyes, look us men of this generation in the face, visiting us with dread misgiving or pathetic hope. From the conference, from the agony, from the battle, Faith emerges, aged, maimed, and scarred, yet triumphing and serene. Like every greater poet, Tennyson wears the prophet’s mantle, as he wears the singer’s bay. Mourners will ever thank him for such words as, “‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all;” and, “Let love clasp grief, lest both be drowned;” and, “Our wills are ours, we know not how; our wills are ours, to make them Thine;” as for the lines that distinguish Wisdom and Knowledge, commending Wisdom as mistress, and Knowledge but as handmaid. Every mourner has his favorite section or particular chapel of the temple-poem, where he prefers to kneel for worship of the Invisible. Yes, for into the furnace men may be cast bound and come forth free, having found for companion One whose form was like the Son of God. Our poet’s conclusion may be foolish and superstitious, as some would now persuade us; but if he errs, it is in good company, for he errs with him who sang, “In la sua voluntade e nostra pace” and with Him who prayed, “Father, not My will, but Thine.”

The range, then, of this poet in all the achievements of his long life is vast – lyrical, dramatic,3 narrative, allegoric, philosophical. Even strong and barbed satire is not wanting, as in “Sea-Dreams,” the fierce verses to Bulwer, “The Spiteful Letter.” Of the most varied measures he is master, as of the richest and most copious vocabulary. Only in the sonnet form, perhaps, does his genius not move with so royal a port, so assured a superiority over all rivals. I have seen sonnets even by other living English writers that appeared to me more striking; notably, fine sonnets by Mr. J. A. Symonds, Mr. Theodore Watts, Mrs. Pfeiffer, Miss Blind. But surely Tennyson must have written very little indifferent poetry when you think of the fuss made by his detractors over the rather poor verses beginning “I stood on a tower in the wet,” and the somewhat insignificant series entitled “The Window.” For “The Victim” appears to me exceedingly good. Talk of daintiness and prettiness! Yes; but it is the lambent, water-waved damascening on a Saladin’s blade; it is the rich enchasement on a Cœur de Lion’s armor. Amid the soul-subduing spaces, and tall forested piers of that cathedral by Rhine, there are long jewelled flames for window, and embalmed kings lie shrined in gold, with gems all over it like eyes. While Tennyson must loyally be recognized as the Arthur or Lancelot of modern English verse, even by those among us who believe that their own work in poetry cannot fairly be damned as “minor,” while he need fear the enthronement of no younger rival near him, the poetic standard he has established is in all respects so high that poets who love their art must needs glory in such a leader and such an example, though pretenders may verily be shamed into silence, and Marsyas cease henceforward to contend with Apollo. —Contemporary Review.