901. Not easily, etc. The view here taken of Arthur's character, and of the reason why he did not join the Quest, is one of Tennyson's happiest improvements on the romances. The romance of the Grail, having grown up at first apart from the Arthurian cycle, naturally did not make Arthur its hero, and it is evident that he was not qualified to take the place occupied by Percivale or Galahad in the later developments of the story. It was necessary therefore to make him abstain from the Quest, and he does so, reproaching Gawain for his vow, and expressing sorrow at the breaking up of that company of knights which he had been wont to have about him :-'For I have had an old custom to have them in my fellowship,' Morte Darthur, 13, 8. The reason alleged by Tennyson's Arthur for this abstinence is his strong. sense that the claims of daily duty must be ranked before any visionary ideal, though when the daily duty was done, the visions might have their place; and this representation of Arthur as one not less but more interpenetrated than others with high moral and spiritual ideals, while at the same time he feels above all the importance of doing daily duty in the allotted sphere, shews him as a stronger and saner character than the visionary enthusiasts or the repentant sinners for whom the Quest of the Grail had so strong a fascination, precisely because it was something outside the allotted sphere. It supplies also the necessary correction to the narrow and one-sided view of Arthur taken by Guinevere, who regards him as one who walks in a world of unattainable ideals,

'Rapt in this fancy of the Table Round,
And swearing men to vows impossible,
To make them like himself.'

Lancelot and Elaine, 179 ff.

902. hind, 'peasant,' from old English 'hine,' a servant (the d is excrescent) (Skeat, Etym. Dict.).

906. Let visions etc. He is not a despiser of visions, nay he is disposed sometimes to feel that all is vision save his own spiritual existence and that of God, and the relation between the two established by 'that One who rose again,' on which rests the fact of daily duty.

It should be observed that Arthur's visions do not affect those things which for him are supremely important, God, the Saviour, and himself; these he knows are no vision, and these include all that he requires for his guidance. He is not like those who stake their all on the appearance of such a sign from heaven as the Grail. What he knows is enough for him, and ought to be enough for others, of whom it might fairly be said, If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.'

F

913. himself, that is, his true spiritual self, apart from body. As an illustration of the state which is here spoken of a passage may be quoted from a letter written by Tennyson to a friend about certain experiences of his own. He says that from boyhood he has frequently had a kind of waking trance, when he has been all alone. 'This,' he continues, has often come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently, till, all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life.' This state is described poetically in The Ancient Sage :

'for more than once, when I
Sat all alone, revolving in myself
The word that is the symbol of myself,
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,

And past into the Nameless, as a cloud

Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs
Were strange not mine-and yet no shade of doubt,
But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self

The gain of such large life as match'd with ours
Were Sun to spark.'

914. Nor the high God etc., i.e. 'knows that God is not a vision to him.'

that One etc. Jesus Christ, regarded as Mediator between God and man.