serious thought and a keen conviction of the truth of what he utters. Tears he invites, and pathos he invokes; but they are subdued and undemonstrative. His sentiment is lofty and his passion is pure. He would have men feel deeply and not with wild excess. He would lead them to nobler sentiments and to hopes that are ideal. The pathos of sympathy and affection, the sentiment of heroic purpose and knightly attainment, and the feeling of trust he would bring to men as ever the need of their lives. It is not philosophy or theology or science the poet can give us, but sentiment and feeling and ideal motives.

"In Memoriam" is a poem for serious and earnest minds, for those who would see the world as it is, and yet who would walk as if in the presence of that majesty of mystery which fills earth and heaven with its subtle presence. Its spirit cleaves to one's thought, and its temper diffuses itself through one's being. There is something about it like a delicate perfume, or like the winds that gently waft themselves forward from unseen regions of far-off freshness.

It is not a book of doctrines or of theological instruction, or even a treatise on the soul's nature and destiny. It is possible that too much has

been made of its teaching, and that men have looked in it too often for confirmation of their own opinions. There is nothing in it of Pope's resolve to reconcile the ways of God to man, or of Young's exposition of the inner counsels of the Almighty. Tennyson is a poet and not a philosopher; and it is as a poet he contemplates the great events and problems of human existence. "In Memoriam" touches the questions of faith only as these appeal to the heart and imagination of the poet, as they come to him along the way of the feelings and sympathies and aspirations of men. Death, and what is beyond it, play on every chord in his soul; and the music which is thus made he sings forth for the reconcilement and encouragement of the world. He sings only because the theme of life and death is itself a deathless song of advancing life and hope.

VI.

TENNYSON has done what several English poets have thought of and purposed to accomplish. He has written a great poem on the legends of King Arthur. This was a favorite theme with Milton; and many poems have been written on the whole body of the legends. Tennyson early read Mallory's prose translation, and from time to time he produced short poems drawn from that source. When at the height of his powers as a poet, he gave to the world four of the legends; and he has since slowly completed the cycle, and welded the parts together into the greatest epic poem of the century. He dealt freely with the legends, using those alike of Welsh and of English origin, refining, purifying, and ennobling them throughout. The coarse and rude he has put aside, remaking the stories in his own artistic manner, and shaping the whole to a high ideal purpose. Largely allegorical in

their nature, these legends easily gave themselves to a free, imaginative treatment.

It cannot be said Tennyson has painted an accurate picture of the time which the legends represent, even though he believes that Arthur was a real person, and that many of the old narratives are based on genuine history. The savage strength of those times, their rough and rude and roistering manhood, blunt in manner and bloody in purpose, are not in these poems, as they come from Tennyson's hand. He has made the characters too fine, and he has given the scenes a quite ideal beauty; though we cannot regret this when we take note of the grace and nobleness, the grandeur of aim and the finewrought joy of high accomplishment, the faithfulness of passion to its own inclinations, and the truthfulness of sin to its own sure calamity, with which the poem abounds.

There was but one way of giving the old legends a genuine poetic beauty in modern dress, and but one consistent with Tennyson's artistic manner; and that was to work in the line of the legends themselves, and to represent Arthur as the ideal knight and hero. Tennyson has made him the type of the heroic struggles of the soul towards

perfect purity. The higher nature in man appears in this poem under the allegorical guise of the King; and his mysterious birth, his struggles and adventures, as well as his mystical passing away, are intended to represent the conflicts of the soul with the corruptions and evils of the world. This allegorical purpose has not been wrought out in that perfect manner we see in the "Pilgrim's Progress" of Bunyan, because we lose sight of the fact that it is an allegory.

It may be that an allegorical aim was not in the original purpose of the series of poems now brought together in one great work; and surely this aim is not distinct and assertive enough to bear the richest fruits which were possible to such a purpose. The successive poems, however, do picture the advancing year in its various stages of growth, from earliest spring to the coming winter. A corresponding moral progress goes on in the poem as a whole, from the coming of Arthur in the nobleness of youth, the gathering together of the goodly fellowship of the knights of the Round Table, on to the gradual encroachments of sin, and the setting of Arthur's life in wintry darkness. This allegorical aim Tennyson has clearly stated in his poetic address "To the