Lord Tennyson has watched his charge through Mr. Russell’s field-glass, and we follow his view of it, but Gordon has ridden it and takes us with him. Old and miserable, the friend of the man who had ridden this “Last Charger,” offers up the same prayer as the man who had “visioned it in the smoke:”
“Would to God I had died with your master, old man,”
for—
“he was never more happy in life than in death.”
What I find so admirable in Gordon, and in almost all his characters is, that they are men, I mean men as opposed to dreamers or students. His Lancelot is Lancelot, the knight who has lived and loved largely. Tennyson’s is not. I must confess that I really think that “The Rhyme of Joyous Guard” is worth all the other “Idylls of the King,” save “Lancelot and Elaine,” and “The Passing of Arthur,” put together. I mean that I really think it has more real deep true significance. Take this conclusion, the last prayer of Lancelot, old and passed from the world:
“If ever I smote as a man should smite,
if I struck one stroke that seem’d good in Thy sight,
by Thy loving mercy prevailing,
Lord! let her stand in the light of Thy face,
cloth’d with Thy love, and crown’d with Thy grace,