And

"Angels have talked with him and showed him thrones."

So much in him is needed to a soul hungry to be fortified for danger,

duty, manliness. Despise not a mystic's brooding, but recall that

brooding is not terminal; that he who broods alone has left life

wearying around him as he found it, while his need was to change the

circumambient air of thought and action into something better than it

was; and for such change he must associate him with the lives he fain

would help. Arthur brooded and dreamed, and saw the Christ, and then

conceived his worthiest service to be to interpret the What he heard

and Whom he saw to men; and in pursuance of such purpose he lived with

knights, ladies, soldiers, and countrymen. Him they saw and knew.

"St. Simeon Stylites" is an application of another side of the same

thought. Heroism is in this pillar saint, but a mistaken heroism. He

stands,

"A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud."

But to what purpose? Hear him call,

"I smote them with the cross,"

and feel assured from such a word that he who spoke, had he been where

the battle raged, had left his stroke on many a shield; for his words

have the crash of a Crusader's ax. What a loss it was to men that St.

Simeon came not down from his pillar, clothed himself, made himself

clean and wholesome, instead of filthy and revolting, and dwelt with

people for whom Christ died. A religious recluse is a religious

ignoramus, since he does not know that the one-syllable word in the

vocabulary of Christ is, "Be of use." The problem of living, as Arthur

saw vividly, was not how to get yourself through the world unhurt, but

how to do the most for some one besides yourself while you are in the

world; and this attitude is otherness, altruism. Nurture strength to

use. Pass your might on. Knighthood was to serve everybody else

first, after the fashion of the Founder of knighthood, even Christ,

"who came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister." King Arthur

served. Play battles stung him not to prowess, but, as Lancelot saw,

in the actual battle, the hero was not Lancelot, but Arthur. May be a

too deep seriousness was in him. I think it probable. He had been

more masterful in wielding men had he been colored more by laughter and

jest. We must not take ourselves, nor yet the world, with too

continuous seriousness. There are intervals between battles when

warriors may rest, and intervals in the stress of deeds and sorrow

where room is given for the caress and wholesome jest. That

arch-jester, Jack Falstaff, had much reason with him. We like him,

despite himself, and despite ourselves, because there was in him such

comradery. Though he was boisterous, yet was he jovial. All

characters, save Christ, have limitations. Arthur had his. Lack of

sprightliness was his mistake and lack. But the work to be done fills

him with might unapproachable, so that,

"Like fire, he meets the foe,

And strikes him dead for thine and thee."

He is no play soldier, and foemen mark his sword as a thing to fear. A

mutilated herdsman, rushing into Caerlaen, and shaking bloody story

from his hideous wounds, which, Arthur hearing, though a tourneyment

would blow its bugles on the plain erelong, forgets the coming joust,

remembering only a wrong to be avenged, and evil-doers to be punished

or destroyed, so they may no longer be a noxious presence in the land,

and goes, and at tourney's close comes back, through the dark night,

wet with rain; but he has cleansed the hostile land of villains on that

day. In human nature is a bias to escape the world, to get out of the

turmoil, to seek cloisters of quiet, which bias "The Holy Grail"

attacks. Arthur was no friend to the pursuit of the grail; not that he

loves not, with a passion white as sun's flame, the good and pure, but

that he has sagacity to see such quest will scatter the round table and

its fellowship, and would dispeople his forces, whose presence makes

for peace and sovereignty in all his realm and compels the sovereignty

of law. Him, their king, these errant knights heeded not, so enticing

and noble seemed the warfare they espoused, and thought their sovereign

cold and calculating, while, in fact, he knew them for visionaries. He

was right. Without them he was bankrupt in strength to compel social

betterment. The visionary, in so far as he is simply visionary, is foe

to progress; for progress comes by battle and by association in

affairs, and he who would be helper to the better life of man must mix

with the currents of his time. Snowdrifts in the mountains and on the

northern slopes that hold snows in their shadows for the summer's use;

and dark mountain meadows, where fogs and rains soak every particle of

sod, and waters percolate through the spongy root and soil to form

bubbling streams; and the pines, whose shadows make a cool retreat

where streams may not be drained dry by the sun; the silver threads of

tributary brooks; the sponge of mountain mosses, which squeezes its cup

of water into a larger laver,--all these seem remote from the broad

river on whose flood merchants' fleets are slumbering, nor seem

participants with these floodgates to the sea; yet are they adjuncts,

though so far removed, and pay their tribute to the flood.

Their service was as pronounced and valuable as if they had been huge

as Orontes. There is an absence which is presence, and there is a

presence which is absence; and what is asked of all men, near or far,

is that they be helpers to the general good. They must not, by intent

or mistake, escape their share of the public burden.

A poet seems apart, and is not, but is to be esteemed a portion of this

world's most turbulent life. To intend to have a share in this world's

business is important. To shun the taking up your load when need is,

is to be coward when your honor bids you be courageous. This means, be

a citizen, neglect no office in that worthy relation; be not wandering

knights, pursuing fire-flies, supposing them to be stars; but be as

Arthur, who found the Holy Grail, and drained its sacramental wine in

truest fashion, in "staying by the stuff;" in being statesman, soldier,

defender of the weak, reformer, liver of a clean life in public place,

builder of a State, negotiator of schemes which make for the diminution

of earth's ills and increase of earth's fairer provinces. Edward the

Confessor was a monk, wearing a king's crown and refusing to discharge

a king's offices, and thought himself a saint by such omission, when

what God and the realm wanted and needed was a man to rule and suffer

for the common weal. Arthur was not a thing "enskied and sainted;"

rather a wholesome man, whose duty lay in working for men. Sir

Percivale became a monk; other knights returned no mote, thus spilling

the best blood of the table round. Meantime the king's enemies

multiplied, and these visionaries decimated the ranks of opposition to

the wrong; but come what would, King Arthur served. An appeal to him

for help found answer, though treasons plotted at his back. As to his

last battle, though his heart was breaking, he marched nor paused,

perceiving, so long as he was king, he must uphold the order of the

State. He was no dilettante. Great service called him, and he thought

he heard the voice of God. Duty is a ponderous word in Arthur's

lexicon. In "Lucretius," Tennyson shows the moral apathy of

materialism by letting us look on at a suicidal death, and hear the

cry, half-rage and half-despair, "What is duty?" and in that fated cry,

atheism has run its course. Here it empties into its dead sea, and

materialism finds its only possible outcome. This materialist of long

ago is the mouthpiece for his fraters in these last days. There is one

speech, and that a speech of dull despair, for those who say there is

no God; and for them who have no God, there is no duty, for duty is

born of hold on God. King Arthur, sure of God, therefore never asking,

"What is duty?" but in its stead urges the nobler query, "Where is

duty?" and so infused himself into the blood of empire; aye, and more,

into the spiritual blood of uncalendared centuries.

And King Arthur was pure. Vice is so often glorified and offers such

chromo tints to the eye as that many superficial folks think virtue

tame and vice exhilarating. Here lies the difficulty. They look on

those parts which are contiguous to vice, but are really not parts of

it. In the self of vice is nothing attractive. Lying, lust, envy,

hate, debauchery,--which of these is not tainted? Penuriousness is

vice unadorned, and who thinks it fair? Like Spenser's "false Duessa,"

it is revolting. Drunkenness, bestiality, spleen,--what roseate views

shall you take of these? Who admires Caliban? And Caliban is vice,

standing in its naked vileness and vulgarity. Man, meant for manhood,

self-reduced to brutehood,--that is drunkenness. In an era when Dumas

by fascinating fictions was making vice ingratiating, Tennyson was

rendering virtue magnificent. Can any person of just judgment rise

from reading "Idyls of the King" without feeling a repugnance toward

vice, like a nausea, and a magnetism in virtue? An admiration for

Arthur becomes intense. The poet draws no moral from his parable:

doing what is better, he puts morals into one's blood. While never

railing at Guinivere, he makes us ashamed of her and for her, and does

the same with Lancelot. He makes virtue eloquent. King Arthur is

neither drunkard nor libertine, therein contradicting the pet theories

of many people's heroes. He loves cleanness and is clean. He demands

in man a purity equal to woman's; setting up one standard of mortals

and not two. The George Fourth style of king, happily, Arthur is not;

for George was a shame to England and to men at large, while Arthur is

a glory, burning on above the cliffs of Wales, like some brave sunrise

whose colors never fade. To men and women, he is one law of virtue and

one law of love. When the years have spent their strength, then vice

shows itself hideous vice. The glamour vanished, no one can love or

plead for wickedness. Virtue is wholly different; for to it the ages

burn incense each year, rendering its loveliness more apparent and

bountiful. Virtue grows in beauty, like some dear face we love.

Heroism is virtue; manliness is virtue; devotion is virtue. Sum up

those remembered deeds of which the centuries speak, and you will find

them noble, virtuous. Seen as it is, and with the light of history on

its face, vice is uncomely as a harlot's painted face. King Arthur is

virile and he is noble, engaging and fascinating us like a romance

written by a master, full of persuasive sweetness and enduring help.

Besides, King Arthur was a religious man. This is the transparent

explanation of his career. He is an attempted incarnation of the

precepts and love of Christ. This long-vanished prince knew that if a

king might but repeat the miracle of Jesus' life in his own history, he

would have achieved kingship indeed. "_Mea vita vota_" was Dempster's

motto,--a sentiment Arthur knew by heart. His life was owed to God,

and right manfully he paid his debt. Arthur exalted God in his heart

and court and on hard-fought field. So intense and vivid his sense of

God, he reminds us of the Puritan; but the Puritan touched to beatific

beauty by the interpretation of love God's Christ came to give.

Tennyson always made much of God, saw Him immanent in every hope of

human betterment, saying, as we remember and can not forget:

"Our little systems have their day--

They have their day and cease to be:

They are but broken lights of thee;

And thou, O Lord, art more than they."

"The Idyls of the King" and "In Memoriam" might felicitously be called

treatises on theology written in verse. St. Augustine and Wesley were

not more certainly theologians than this poet Laureate. The rest and

help that come to men in prayer is burned into the soul in "Enoch

Arden:"

"And there he would have knelt, but that his knees

Were feeble, so that falling prone he dug

His fingers into the wet earth and prayed."