FOUR hundred years after Malory wrote his book, another English
writer told the tales of Arthur anew. This was the poet Alfred,
Lord Tennyson. He told them in poetry.
Tennyson calls his poems the Idylls of the King. Idyll means a
short poem about some simple and beautiful subject. The king
that Tennyson sings of is the great King Arthur.
Tennyson takes his stories, some from The Mabinogion, some from
Malory, some from other books. He has told them in very
beautiful English, and it is the English such as we speak to-day.
He has smoothed away much that strikes us as rough and coarse in
the old stories, and his poems are as different from the old
stories as a polished diamond is different from the stone newly
brought out of the mine. Yet we miss something of strength and
vigor. The Arthur of the Idylls is not the Arthur of The
Mabinogion nor of Malory. Indeed, Tennyson makes him "almost too
good to be true": he is "Ideal manhood closed in real man,
rather than that gray king" of old.
And now I will give you part of the last of the Arthur poems, The
Passing of Arthur, so that you may read it along with Layamon's
account of the hero's death, and see for yourselves the
difference between the two. The Passing of Arthur is written in
blank verse, that is verse which does not rhyme, and which
depends like the old English verse on the accent. Yet they are
not alike.
"So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's Table, man by man,
Had fall'n in Lyonnesse about their lord,
King Arthur. Then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel by a broken cross,
That stood in a dark strait of barren land:
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full."
Then the King bids Sir Bedivere take his sword Excalibur,
"And fling him far into the middle mere:
Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word."
Sir Bedivere takes the sword, and,
"From the ruin'd shrine he stept
And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down
By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake."
But when Sir Bedivere drew Excalibur and saw the jewels of the
hilt shine in the wintry moonlight, he could not find it in his
heart to cast anything so beautiful and precious from him. So,
hiding it among the reeds by the water's edge, he returned to his
master.
"Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
'Hast thou perform'd my mission which I gave?
What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?'
And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
'I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
And the wild water lapping on the crag.'"
But King Arthur well knew that Sir Bedivere had not obeyed him.
"This is a shameful thing for men to lie," he said, and once more
sent the knight to do his bidding.
Again Sir Bedivere went, but again he could not make up his mind
to cast away the sword. "The King is sick, and knows not what he
does," he said to himself. So a second time he hid the sword and
returned.
"Then spake King Arthur, breathing heavily:
'What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?'
And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
'I heard the water lapping on the crag,
And the long ripple washing in the reeds.'
To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath:
'Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue,
Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me!
Authority forgets a dying king.'"
Then, sorrowful and abashed before the anger of the dying King,
Sir Bedivere turned, and running quickly lest his courage should
fail him, he reached the water's edge and flung the sword far
into the lake.
"But ere he dip the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him
Three times, and drew him under in the mere."
Then Sir Bedivere, in wonder, returned to the King, who, when he
saw him come, cried:-
"'Now see I by thine eyes that this is done.
Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?'"
So Sir Bedivere told the King how truly this time he had cast
away the sword, and how an arm "clothed in white samite, mystic,
wonderful," had caught it and drawn it under the mere. Then at
the King's bidding Sir Bedivere raised Arthur and bore him to the
water's edge.
"Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge,
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern,
Beneath them; and descending they were ware
That all the decks were dense with stately forms,
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream - by these
Three Queens with crowns of gold: and from them rose
A cry that shiver'd to the tingling start,
And, as it were one voice, an agony
Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one comes,
Or hath come, since the making of the world.
Then, murmur'd Arthur, 'Place me in the barge.'
So to the barge they came. There those three Queens
Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept."
Then slowly from the shore the barge moved. And Sir Bedivere, as
he saw his master go, was filled with grief and loneliness, for
he only of all the brave King's knights was left. And so he
cried in mourning:-
"'Ah! my Lord Arthur, wither shall I go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the true old times are dead.
. . . . . .
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds."
Mournfully from the barge Arthur answered and bade him pray, for
"More things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of," and
so he said farewell,
"and the barge with oar and sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan."
Long stood Sir Bedivere thinking of all that had come and gone,
watching the barge as it glided silently away, and listening to
the wailing voices,
"till the hull
Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away."
Sir Bedivere turned then and climbed,
"Ev'n to the highest he could climb, and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bore the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year."
The poem moves along with mournful stately measures, yet it
closes, like Layamon's farewell to Arthur, on a note of hope.
Layamon recalls Merlin's words, "the which were sooth, that an
Arthur should yet come the English to help." The hope of
Tennyson is different, not that the old will return, but that the
new will take its place, for "the old order changeth yielding
place to new, and God fulfils himself in many ways." The old
sorrows vanish "into light," and the new sun ever rises bringing
in the new year.
BOOKS TO READ
Idylls of the King, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, (Macmillan).
Chapter X THE ADVENTURES OF AN OLD ENGLISH BOOK
THE story of Arthur has led us a long way. We have almost
forgotten that it began with the old Cymric stories, the stories
of the people who lived in Britain before the coming of the
Romans. We have followed it before the coming of the Romans. We
have followed it down through many forms: Welsh, in the stories
of The Mabinogion; Latin, in the stories of Geoffrey of Monmouth;
French, in the stories of Wace and Map; Semi-Saxon, in the
stories of Layamon; Middle English, in the stories of Malory; and
at last English as we now speak it, in the stories of Tennyson.
Now we must go back and see why it is that our Literature is
English, and why it is that we speak English, and not Gaelic, or
Cymric, or Latin, or French. And then from its beginnings we
will follow our English Literature through the ages.
Since historical times the land we now call England has been
conquered three times, for we need hardly count the Danish
Invasion. It was conquered by the Romans, it was conquered by
the English, and it was conquered by the Normans. It was only
England that felt the full weight of these conquests. Scotland,
Ireland, and, in part, Wales were left almost untouched. And of
the three it was only the English conquest that had lasting
effects.
In 55 B.C. the Romans landed in Britain, and for nearly four
hundred years after that they kept coming and going. All South
Britain became a Roman province, and the people paid tribute or
taxes to the Roman Emperor. But they did not become Romans.
They still kept their own language, their own customs and
religions.
It will help you to understand the state of Britain in those old
days if you think of India to-day. India forms part of the
British Empire, but the people who live there are not British.
They are still Indians who speak their own languages, and have
their own customs and religions. The rulers only are British.
It was in much the same way that Britain was a Roman province.
And so our literature was never Latin. There was, indeed, a time
when nearly all our books were written in Latin. But that was
later, and not because Latin was the language of the people, but
because it was the language of the learned and of the monks, who
were the chief people who wrote books.
When, then, after nearly four hundred years the Romans went away,
the people of Britain were still British. But soon another
people came. These were the Anglo-Saxons, the English, who came
from over the sea. And little by little they took possession of
Britain. They drove the old dwellers out until it was only in
the north, in Wales and in Cornwall, that they were to be found.
Then Britain became Angleland or England, and the language was no
longer Celtic, but English. And although there are a few words
in our language which can be traced to the old Celtic, these are
very few. It is thus from Anglo-Saxon, and not from Gaelic or
Cymric, that the language we speak to-day comes.
Yet our Celtic forefathers have given something to our literature
which perhaps we could never have had from English alone. The
Celtic literature is full of wonder, it is full of a tender magic
and makes us feel the fairy charm of nature, although it has not
the strength, the downrightness, we might say, of the English.
It has been said that every poet has somewhere in him a Celtic
strain. That is, perhaps, too much to believe. But it is,
perhaps, the Celtic love of beauty, together with the Saxon love
of strength and right, to which we owe much of our great
literature. The Celtic languages are dying out, but they have
left us something which will last so long as our literature
lasts.
And now, having talked in the beginning of this book of the
stories which we owe to our Celtic forefathers, let us see what
the Saxons brought us from over the sea.
Almost the oldest Anglo-Saxon book that we have is called
Beowulf. Wise men tell us that, like the tales of Arthur, like
the tales of Ossian, this book was not at first the work of one
man, but that it has been gradually put together out of many
minstrel songs. That may be so, but what is sure is that these
tales are very old, and that they were sung and told for many
years in the old homes of the English across the sea before they
came to Britain and named it Angleland.
Yet, as with the old Gaelic and Cymric tales, we have no very old
copy of this tale. But unlike these old tales, we do not find
Beowulf told in different ways in different manuscripts. There
is only one copy of Beowulf, and that was probably written in the
tenth or eleventh century, long years after the English were
firmly settled in the land.
As Beowulf is one of our great book treasures, you may like to
hear something of its story.
Long ago, in the time when Queen Elizabeth, James I., and Charles
I. sat upon the throne, there lived a learned gentleman called
Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. He was an antiquary. That is, he loved
old things, and he gathered together old books, coins,
manuscripts and other articles, which are of interest because
they help to make us understand the history of bygone days.
Sir Robert Cotton loved books especially, and like many other
book lovers, he was greedy of them. It was said, indeed, that he
often found it hard to return books which had been lent to him,
and that, among others, he had books which really ought to have
belonged to the King.
Sir Robert's library soon became famous, and many scholars came
to read there, for Sir Robert was very kind in allowing other
people to use his books. But twice his library was taken from
him, because it was said that it contained things which were
dangerous for people to know, and that he allowed the enemies of
the King to use it. That was in the days of Charles I., and
those were troublous times.
The second time that his library was taken from him, Sir Robert
died, but it was given back to his son, and many years later his
great-great-grandson gave it to the nation.
In 1731 the house in which the library was took fire, and more
than a hundred books were burned, some being partly and some
quite destroyed. Among those that were partly destroyed was
Beowulf. But no one cared very much, for no one had read the
book or knew anything about it.
Where Sir Robert found Beowulf, or what he thought about it, we
shall never know. Very likely it had remained in some quiet
monastery library for hundreds of years until Henry VIII.
scattered the monks and their books. Many books were then lost,
but some were saved, and after many adventures found safe
resting-places. Among those was Beowulf.
Some years after the fire the Cotton Library, as it is now
called, was removed to the British Museum, where it now remains.
And there a Danish gentleman who was looking for books about his
own land found Beowulf, and made a copy of it. Its adventures,
however, were not over. Just when the printed copies were ready
to be published, the British bombarded Copenhagen. The house in
which the copies were was set on fire and they were all burned.
The Danish gentleman, however, was not daunted. He set to work
again, and at last Beowulf was published.
Even after it was published in Denmark, no Englishman thought of
making a translation of the book, and it was not until fifty
years more had come and gone that an English translation
appeared.
When the Danish gentleman made his copy of Beowulf, he found the
edges of the book so charred by fire that they broke away with
the slightest touch. No one thought of mending the leaves, and
as years went on they fell to pieces more and more. But at last
some one woke up to the fact that this half-burned book was a
great treasure. Then it was carefully mended, and thus kept from
wasting more.
So now, after all its adventures, having been found, we shall
never know where, by a gentleman in the days of Queen Elizabeth,
having lain on his bookshelves unknown and unread for a hundred
years and more, having been nearly destroyed by fire, having been
still further destroyed by neglect, Beowulf at last came to its
own, and is now carefully treasured in a glass case in the
British Museum, where any one who cared about it may go to look
at it.
And although it is perhaps not much to look at, it is a very
great treasure. For it is not only the oldest epic poem in the
Anglo-Saxon language, it is history too. By that I do not mean
that the story is all true, but that by reading it carefully we
can find out much about the daily lives of our forefathers in
their homes across the seas. And besides this, some of the
people mentioned in the poem are mentioned in history too, and it
is thought that Beowulf, the hero himself, really lived.
And now, having spoken about the book and its adventures, let us
in the next chapter speak about the story. As usual, I will give
part of it in the words of the original, translated, of course,
into modern English. You can always tell what is from the
original by the quotation marks, if by nothing else.