A Meaning of Idyls of the King [pp. 43-54]

i885.] A MEANIArG OF THE "JDYLS OF TKE KJKG." 43
A MEANING OF THE IDYLS OF THE KfNG.
IT would seem that an apology is necessary in presuming to
interpret Lord Tennyson's Idyls in a sense, as far as the writer
knows, hitherto never given to them by their host of admirers.
Yet it seems so evident ti\at they warrant such an interpretation
that it is strange they have never before been so regarded. I
rely solely upon their own intrinsic evidence, by which light is
revealed a unity and depth of meaning far beyond what is com monly supposed to be their only contents. Like a string of
pearls, each of which is individually independent of the other
yet bound together by the same strand, each shedding its own
brilliancy yet blending its lustre with that of its neighbor, to gether they flash out in unison a color and a fire such as would
be wholly lost were they separated. It is true that each dis tinctly possesses its own value and beauty, but this is enhanced a
hundred-fold in the bond of a common unity. What this is we
shall better learn from the poems themselves. For the want of
space we shall take only three of them to illustrate what we
mean. These three shall be the first, the "Coming of Arthur,"
one intermediate, "Gareth and Lynette," and the last of all, the
Passing of Arthur."
Before the coming of Arthur discord reigned in Britain; there
was neither law nor peace; internal strife from within and war
from the heathen without.
"For many a petty king ere Arthur came
Ruled in this isle, and, ever waging war
Each upon other, wasted all the~land;
And still from time to time the heathen
Swarm'd over seas, and harried what was left.
And so there grew great tracts of wilderness,
Wherein the beast was ever more and more,
But man was less and less, till Arthur came."
That central idea to which we just now referred, as we shall
more fully see later on, lies in the moral unity which flows from
Arthur's spiritual nature, by which he overcomes the discord
within, the heathen without, and establishes a kingdom under one
head, to whom all else is subject. Before the coming of the spiri
tual man there was perpetual petty war between the passions of
man and himself as to which should gain dominion. The passions predominated, and so the beast grew stronger in him, while