seemingly impossible one of her marrying a young and handsome knight, who should yield his own will to her wishes. The condition being fulfilled, her youth and beauty are restored to her. So the story closes, leaving the happy knight, after so much tribulation, with

"His herte bathed in a bath of blisse."

She had saved his life: he had raised her from a state more loathsome than the

grave.

I do not know, that in these tales more is meant than meets the ear; but this one has long been to me a beautiful allegory. Many a man and woman, consciously or unconsciously, go searching up and down the world for the solution of some hard problem, some dark mystery, on which depends more than life-on which depend character, success, and growth of soul. And they meet by the wayside the ugly deformity of some great sorrow. Ah, how they shrink back from it! How they try to escape it! How they writhe and groan under it! But it fastens upon them; it will not let them go. Then it begins to speak to them with its soft, sad words. It reasons with them; and its tone is subdued and tender. It woos them gently and kindly. And when they yield to it, lo! in an instant it is transfigured before them. It is more beautiful than light, more beautiful than joy. It lulls them more softly than music, caresses them more tenderly than a mother. They wed it; they bear it on their hearts. They go among their fellows stronger and wiser than others. It lifts them to heights at which before they had only gazed. It opens to them depths of which they had not dreamed. It rounds the sharp angles of life. It diffuses the golden haze of autumn over all the year. Beautiful is the mission of sorrow, and happy is he who receives it submissively, as a teacher and a friend. Like the shadow of night, through its darkness shall come out stars of glory.

Between Chaucer and Spenser, more than two hundred years intervened, though we are liable to think of them as almost contemporary. They are like two

stars nearly in range with the eye, the immeasurable distance between which seems but a few feet. Of the use made of the Arthurian romances by writers during this period, there is not space to speak. A careful examination would show that this literature was by no means forgotten.

Spenser's imagination reveled in the scenes of the "olden minstrelsie." Knights and fair ladies, tournaments and fights with giant and dragon, enchanters and their spells, are ever before his eyes. His patron was as truly a knight as any that graced the Table Round; and, if history has not been partial to him, he might have ventured even to take the Perilous Seat. It was he who defined Chivalry to be "high thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy." Spenser declares him thy of all titles both of learning and chivalrie." And he in turn says of his poet, in sufficiently bad verse, it must be confessed:

66 wor

Of me no lines are loved, no letters are of

price,

Of all which speak our English tongue, but those of thy device."

The fame of Spenser rests on the work which he framed from the legends of Arthur. The Shepherd's Calender, Astrophil, Colin Clout, Mother Hubberd's Tale, and all the rest, are known only because they were written by the author of the Faerie Queene. This poem is too long to be analyzed here. The author says: "The generall end therefore of all the booke is to fashon a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline"; and that, for this purpose, he has chosen "the historye of King Arthure, as most fitte for the excellency of his person.' The plan is told by the author in a single sentence, in a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh. "I devise that the Faerie Queene kept her annual feaste xii. dayes; uppon which xii. severall dayes, the occasions of the xii. severall adventures hapned, which, being undertaken by xii. several knights, are in these x of life Books generally handled and discour dream, but The first book is devoted to the eping activity, tures of the Red Cross Knight-n and attaches ness, who goes forth clo

Aer

some

armor recommended by Paul. His adventures are undertaken at the instance of the fair Una, who accompanies him,—

"The gentle Una of celestial birth." The second book describes the exploits of Sir Guion, who represents Temperance; and so on, each book showing the struggles and triumphs of some personified moral virtue. Many short stories from the old romances are woven in here and there; such as the contest with the giant, when he demanded Arthur's beard, to complete the robe which he was making of those manly appendages. No criticism is necessary. It is the greatest poem which the old romances have yet inspired. It is enough in respect to it to call to mind the fact that Milton, Gray, Thompson, Beattie, and others, read the Faerie Queene as a preparation to write, because of its exquisite melody and perfection in rhythm.

Perhaps Michael Drayton's verse, celebrating Arthur's feat at Mount Badon, ought to be mentioned.

"They sung how he himself at Badon bore, that day,

When at the glorious goal his British scepter lay;

Two daies together how the battle stronglie stood;

Pendragon's worthie son, who waded there in blood,

Three hundred Saxons slew with his own valiant hand."

Shakspeare drew little from this source, although two of his great dramas are taken from the same old works in which these romances first appear. In the second part of Henry Fourth, act ii. sc. 4, Falstaff enters singing the ballad of Sir Launcelot of the Lake:

"When Arthur first in court began, And was a worthy king." The ballad describes the contest between Sir Launcelot and Sir Turquine, when they "hurtled together like two wild bulls, rashing and lashing with their swords and shields, so that sometimes "oly fell, as it were, headlong. Thus rewarught two hours and more, till the nd in where they fought was all bepurlove otblood." And in the second elvé

but shird act of King Lear, the

Fool adds to his prophecy, "This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time."

Among the plays sometimes ascribed to Shakspeare, is one entitled "The Birth of Merlin; or, the Child hath found his Father." The title-page of the edition published in 1662, contains the words, "written by William Shakspeare and William Rowley;" and the German crities, Horn and Tieck, have tried to show that Shakspeare, without doubt, had some part in its composition. But, we believe, very few concur in this opinion. It is quite unworthy of the least touch of his pen. It is childishly extravagant in plan, and no better in execution. A single passage, in which the mythological origin of Stonehenge is given, may be worthy of quotation. Merlin shuts up the devil, his father, in a rock, for some offence of his sooty majesty against his mother. He then proposes to her to retire to a solitary place which he has prepared for her,

"To weep away the flesh you have offended with;

And, when you die, I will erect a monument
Upon the verdant plains of Salisbury,—
No king shall have so high a sepulchre,-
With pendulous stones, that I will hang by art,
Where neither lime nor mortar shall be used,—
A dark enigma to the memory;
For none shall have the power to number them;
A place that I will hallow for your rest,
Where no night-hag shall walk, nor were
wolf tread,

Where Merlin's mother shall be sepulchred."

Milton found the subject of none of his works in the old romances; but that he read and admired them is well known. And when he was reflecting on the choice of a subject which should adorn his native tongue, and which posterity should not willingly let die, he turned toward these, among other things, and doubted "what king or knight, before the Conquest, might be chosen, in whom to lay the pattern of a Christian hero." He refers to Arthur in Paradise Lost and in one of his Latin poems; and, in his L'Allegro, he characterizes Chaucer by a tale of this kind, when he wishes to

"Call up him who left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold."

Contemporary with Milton, and equally remarkable for his immense learning, but an antipode in religion, politics, and modes of thought, lived the author of Hudibras. This poem, which takes its name from Sir Hugh de Bras, like Cervantes's great work, could not have existed in its present form, had not the institution of Chivalry preceded it. And, perhaps, this is all that need be said about it. It draws none of its subject-matter from the chilvalric romances.

Blackmore, an author now almost unknown, but who gained some reputation in his day, wrote two endless epics, one twenty books long, on Prince Arthur and King Arthur. Dryden wastes a squib on him, and Pope has his shot in the Dunciad; but Addison's kind heart dropped a few commendatory words in the Spectator. He died in 1729.

Robert Hinkley Messenger, in a poem having the mellowness and richness of old wine, entitled, "Give me the Old: Old Wine to Drink, Old Wood to Burn, Old Books to Read, Old Friends to Converse with," places the Round Table romances in such honorable company, that we must quote one stanza:

"Old books to read!
Ay, bring those nodes of wit,
The brazen-clasped, the vellum-writ,
Time-honored tomes!

The same my sire scanned before,
The same my grandsire thumbed o'er,
The same his sire from college bore:
The well-earned meed

Of Oxford's domes,
Old Homer blind,

Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by
Old Tully, Plautus, Terence lie;
Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie,
Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay!
And Gervase Markham's Venerie;
Nor leave behind

The Holye Book by which we live and die."

Much space ought to be given to Scott, since many of his works partake so largely of the spirit of this old literature. No man loved more, or could better describe, the glittering armor of knights, the sweet influence raining upon them from ladies' eyes, the dancing plume, the streaming scarf, the spear in rest, the rush, the shock,

of the tournament. We think that Ivanhoe contains the best prose description of a tournament ever written. And the warm light of the old romantic literature lies upon all his works. The only one, however, in which he has drawn directly from the legends of the Round Table, is his Bridal of Triermain. The poem tells two stories-one a pretended (or real) account of his own love, courtship, and marriage; the other, a true tale of chivalry,

"Of Britain's isle, and Arthur's days," which, at intervals, he relates to his bride. The hand of Arthur's daughter-" a slip of wildness"-is made, according to a promise before her birth, the prize for which the knights of his court contend. The dropping of her scepter is to conclude the contest, and declare the victor. Blood flows in streams, and death whitens many a countenance; and still the obstinate beauty will not lower her hand. At length, Merlin, fearing that none will be left of all the famous band, rewards the maiden for her cruelty by throwing the mantle of sleep upon her, and bearing her away to an enchanted castle, where she can never be awakened but by the kiss of some daring knight. After "many a hundred year," Sir De Vaux forces his way through opposition of every kind to the place, where,

"Deep slumbering in the fatal chair,
He saw King Arthur's child."

The kiss is given, and with a crash the whole castle vanishes; but

"Safe the princess lay-
Safe and free from magic power,
Blushing like the rose's flower,
Opening to the day."

Some passages in this poem are very fine; but, as a whole, it is much inferior to Scott's more popular works. The few lines which describe the maiden's effort to resist Merlin's spell of sleep paint an exquisite picture; and what follows, when she yields to its influence, and

oder Lo some

It would be impossible to convey anything like a correct idea of Wordsworth's romance of the Water-Lily, without reading some portion of the poem. Though walking but once in this field, he moves with the sure step of a master, as he does in the field of classic mythology in Laodamia The daughter of the Egyptian king, on her way to Arthur's court to become the bride of one of his knights, is drowned in a storm by the very shore of Britain. She is borne by two swans through the air to the court at Caerleon, and the burial service is just about to begin, when Merlin discovers, by his glass, that some good will result by first determining who would have been her husband. And he tells King Arthur, that,

"approaching one by one, Thy knights must touch the cold hand of the virgin;

So, for the favored one, the flower may bloom

Once more: but, if unchangeable her doom, If life departed be forever gone,

Deep was the awe, the rapture high, Of love emboldened, hope with dread entwining,

When to the mouth relenting Death
Allowed a soft and flower-like breath,
Precursor to a timid sigh,

To lifted eyelids, and a doubtful shining.
"In silence did King Arthur gaze
Upon the signs that pass away or tarry;
In silence watched the gentle strife
Of Nature leading back to life;
Then eased his soul at length by praise
Of God, and Heaven's pure Queen,-the
blissful Mary.

"Then said he, 'Take her to thy heart, Sir Galahad! a treasure that God giveth, Bound by indissoluble ties to thee

Through mortal change and immortality; Be happy and unenvied, thou who art A goodly Knight that hath no peer that liv

eth!'"

The nuptials are immediately performed, and a chorus of invisible angels break forth in a beautiful carol above their heads.

ing,

May teach him to bewail his loss,
Not with a grief that, like a vapor, rises
And melts, but grief devout that shall en-
dure,

And a perpetual growth secure

Of purposes which no false thought shall

cross,

A harvest of high hopes and noble enterprises."

The trial was made, but no responding sign was perceived, until Sir Galahad stepped forth.

"He touched with hesitating hand,— And lo! those birds, far-famed through Love's dominions,

The swans, in triumph clap their wings; And their necks play, involved in rings, Like sinless snakes in Eden's happy land. 'Mine is she,' cried the Knight;-again they clapped their pinions.

"Mine was she-mine she is, though dead,

And to her name my soul shall cleave in sorrow.'

S.Whereat, a tender twilight streak "ol olor dawned upon the Damsel's cheek; rewarcher lips, quickening with uncertain nd in

each other a faint warmth to

elve but she

words. Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal is an apple of gold in a picture of silver. We need not give the plan of a poem which is so familiar to all. It is founded on the romance which relates the search for the Holy Grail, and teaches what is true charity-that

"The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,
In whatso we share with another's need,-
Not that which we give, but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare."

The two descriptions of summer and winter, which appear in the preludes, are among the finest in the language. Take this for a June day:

"And what is so rare as a day in June

Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,

And over it softly her warm ear lays." And not even Chaucer, whose pages are so full of beautiful things about the birds

for a sparrow's song would fill his heart to overflowing at any time-has excelled this:

"The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun

With the deluge of summer it receives

In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?"

We mention but one more author, Alfred Tennyson, who has drawn more largely from the romance literature than any other poet of the present day. Our words will be very few; for, to discuss at all satisfactorily those only of his works which are founded on the old romances, would require, not a paragraph, but an entire paper. What must at best be left so incomplete, may as well be passed with slight notice.

The Lady of Shalott and the fragment on Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, are examples of a wonderful perfection in finish and rhythm; but not better than Sir Galahad, one of the most exquisite of Tennyson's poems. Indeed, the whole material in which his muse works takes on a finish like Carrara marble. The Mort D'Arthur is a poem by which one may test his love of poetry. If he fails to appreciate it, he may safely conclude that something is wanting. It follows closely the original story, frequently preserving even the words. If the prelude to it is anything more than a pleasant fiction, the poem is the eleventh part of a great epic, the first ten parts of which were destroyed by the author, as unwor

A KNIGHT THERE are few subjects of deeper interest to us, and few that present greater difficulties, than the precise relation in which man stands to that creation, which was assigned him by the Creator as his domain, and which "groaneth and travaileth in pain together" with him in a common cause and a common hope of redemption. When little was known about the lower creatures, judgment was easy; but as information increased and wonder after wonder was reported concerning the rare powers and strange sagacity of many animals, increased interest led to deeper research, and finally skill, instinet, and even reason were assigned to certain VOL. IX.-14.

thy of the subject. And if they possessed anything of the merit of the part which he has given us, we have much to regret in their loss. That they did not, is by no means certain; for, notoriously, authors are incapable of judging of the relative merit of their own works.

The Idylls of the King is the last and longest of Tennyson's poems drawn from this source. The stories are told with his usual finish and felicity of expression. Although the name of Arthur is scarcely mentioned, it is evidently intended to represent in him an ideal of a perfect ruler and gentleman, or, to use his own verse, "A selfless man and stainless gentleman." It is the same sentiment which is met constantly among the early collections of these romances. We found somewhere this sentence: "And in short, God has not made, since Adam was, the man more perfect than Arthur."

The romances themselves-for, surely, a single word ought to be said in reference to them-though somewhat monotonous, cannot fail to interest one who has kept still in his breast a fresh child's heart, uncontaminated by the wise follies of the world-who still loves to read fairy stories, and all such precious, good-fornothing stuff-whose heart, like our autumn woods, even in sunless days, has a sunshine of its own. We hail such an one as a brother, and wish him joy.