Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

INTRODUCTION.

THE idyll of The Holy Grail stands now eighth in order among the twelve divisions of the poem to which it belongs, but artistically it may be considered to be the central point of interest. If like a regularly constructed Epic the Idylls of the King may be supposed to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, it is to this poem that we must look for the middle. Here is the crisis, the ! turning-point upon which the issue depends. Evil has been growing in strength, the foundations of the edifice erected by Arthur and his great Order are being secretly sapped can the ruin be averted by a great movement of enthusiasm for spiritual things? Surely in this direction, if in any, salvation is to be sought. The King indeed mistrusts it, but that is perhaps partly because he does not realise the extent of the corruption. It is a fair issue: let it be fairly fought out, and let the catastrophe of the whole depend upon the result.

It is in this sense that the idyll of The Holy Grail may be regarded as the culminating point of Tennyson's great poem. The publication of the volume which contained it (The Holy Grail and Other Poems) in 1869 supplied for the first time the key to the plan of the Idylls, of which

ix

up to that time had appeared only the fragment called Morte d'Arthur, published in 1842 and afterwards incorporated in The Passing of Arthur, and the four idylls called Enid, Vivien, Elaine, and Guinevere, published in 1859. This new volume contained, besides The Holy Grail, three other idylls-The Coming of Arthur, Pelleas and Ettarre, and The Passing of Arthur-supplying thus at once the beginning, middle, and end of the poem, and leaving nothing except details to be filled in. This was done by the addition of Gareth and Lynette and The Last Tournament in 1872, as the first and the last idylls of The Round Table, and finally of Balin and Balan in 1885, as an introduction to Merlin and Vivien. At the same time Enid was divided into two, The Marriage of Geraint and Geraint and Enid, so that the completed poem consists of twelve idylls.

I.

The

The word 'idyll' originally means 'little picture,' and thence came to designate a short picturesque poem, generally of a pastoral kind. Of this class of poem a beautiful example is given by Tennyson himself in the 'small sweet idyl' which occurs in The Princess, 'Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height.' meaning of the term has however been extended by Tennyson, so as apparently to include all picturesque narrative poems of moderate length, whatever their subject; and its use in the title of Idylls of the King serves chiefly to express the fact that in this work the subject is dealt with in a series of poems, each complete in itself, and generally without direct transition of the narrative from one to another. At the same time the

« PreviousContinue »