"Yet Milton's sacred feet have lingered there,
His lips have made august the fabulous air,
His hands have touched and left the wild weeds fair."
But his duties as Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth diverted him from poetry for many years, and when the Restoration gave him leisure once more to court the Muse, he had come to doubt the existence of the Celtic hero-king; for in 'Paradise Lost' (Book i., line 579) he refers to
"what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son;"
and in his 'History of Britain' (1670 A.D.) he says explicitly:--"For who Arthur was, and whether ever any such reign'd in Britan, hath bin doubted heertofore, and may again with good reason."
Dryden, who composed the words of an opera on King Arthur, meditated, according to Sir Walter Scott, a larger treatment of the theme:--
"And Dryden in immortal strain
Had raised the Table Round again,
But that a ribald King and Court
Bade him toil on to make them sport."
Sir Walter himself edited the old metrical romance of 'Sir Tristram,' and where the manuscript was defective, composed a portion after the manner of the original, the portion in which occur the lines,
"Mi schip do thou take,
With godes that bethe new;
Two seyles do thou make,
Beth different in hewe:
"Ysoude of Britanye,
With the white honde,
The schip she can se,
Seyling to londe;
The white seyl tho marked sche.
"Fairer ladye ere
Did Britannye never spye,
Swiche murning chere,
Making on heighe;
On Tristremes bere,
Doun con she lye;
Rise ogayn did sche nere,
But thare con sche dye
For woe;
Swiche lovers als thei
Never schal be moe."
Of the poets of the present generation, Tennyson has treated the Arthurian poetic heritage as a whole. Phases of the Arthurian theme have been presented also by his contemporaries and successors at home and abroad,--by William Wordsworth, Lord Lytton, Robert Stephen Hawker, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, Algernon Charles Swinburne, in England; Edgar Quinet in France; Wilhelm Hertz, L. Schneegans, F. Roeber, in Germany; Richard Hovey in America. There have been many other approved variations on Arthurian themes, such as James Russell Lowell's 'Vision of Sir Launfal,' and Richard Wagner's operas, 'Lohengrin,' 'Tristan and Isolde,' and 'Parsifal.' Of still later versions, we may mention the 'King Arthur' of J. Comyns Carr, which has been presented on the stage by Sir Henry Irving; and 'Under King Constantine,' by Katrina Trask, whose hero is the king whom tradition names as the successor of the heroic Arthur, "Imperator, Dux Bellorum."
This poetic material is manifestly a living force in the literature of the present day. And we may well remind ourselves of the rule which should govern our verdict in regard to the new treatments of the theme as they appear. This century-old 'Dichterstoff,' this poetic treasure-store through which speaks the voice of the race, this great body of accumulated poetic material, is a heritage; and it is evident that whoever attempts any phase of this theme may not treat such subject-matter capriciously, nor otherwise than in harmony with its inherent nature and spirit. It is recognized that the stuff whereof great poetry is made is not the arbitrary creation of the poet, and cannot be manufactured to order. "Genuine poetic material," it has been said, "is handed down in the imagination of man from generation to generation, changing its spirit according to the spirit of each age, and reaching its full development only when in the course of time the favorable conditions coincide." Inasmuch as the subject-matter of the Arthurian legends is not the creation of a single poet, nor even of many poets, but is in fact the creation of the people,--indeed, of many peoples widely separated in time and space, and is thus in a sense the voice of the race,--it resembles in this respect the Faust legends, which are the basis of Goethe's world-poem; or the mediæval visions of a future state, which found their supreme and final expression in Dante's 'Divina Commedia,' which sums up within itself the art, the religion, the politics, the philosophy, and the view of life of the Middle Ages.