How and why Arthur ever grew to so ideal a height we need not now inquire, it is sufficient here to note the fact, and that Tennyson is archæologically justified thereby in making him the type of the soul on earth, from its mysterious coming to its mysterious and deathless going.
In the “Idylls of the King,” the soul comes first before us as a conqueror in a waste and desert land groaning under mere brute power. Its history before then is dark with doubt and mystery, and the questions about its origin and authority form the main subject of the introductory poem.
Many, themselves the basest, hold it to be base-born, and rage against its rule:
And since his ways are sweet,
And theirs are bestial, hold him less than man;
And there be those who deem him more than man,
And dream he dropt from heaven.
Of those who recognize its claim, some, as the hoary chamberlain, accept it on the word of wizards who have written all about it in a sacred book which, doubtless, some day will become intelligible. Others, as Ulfius, and Brastias, standing for commonplace men with commonplace views, are satisfied to think the soul comes as the body does, or not to think at all about it. Others, again, as Bedivere, with warmer hearts, feel there is mystery, where to the careless all is plain, yet seek among the dark ways of excessive natural passion for the key, and drift towards the scandalous accordingly. Then comes the simple touching tenderness of the woman’s discovery of conscience and its influence given by Queen Bellicent in the story of her childhood; and this, again, is supplemented and contrasted by the doctrine of the wise men and philosophers put into Merlin’s mouth. His “riddling triplets” anger the woman, but are a wonderful summary of the way, part-earnest, part-ironical, and all-pathetic, in which great wit confronts the problem of the soul.
The inscrutableness of its origin being thus signified, we see next the recognition of its supremacy, and its first act of kinghood,—the inspiration of the best and bravest near it with a common enthusiasm for Right. The founding of the Order of the Round Table coincides with the solemn crowning of the soul. Conscience, acknowledged and throned as king, binds at once all the best of human powers together into one brotherhood, and that brotherhood to itself by vows so strait and high,
That when they rose, knighted from kneeling, some
Were pale as at the passing of a ghost,
Some flush’d, and others dazed, as one who wakes
Half-blinded at the coming of a light.
At that supreme coronation-moment, the Spirit is surrounded and cheered on by all the powers and influences which can ever help it—earthly servants and allies and heavenly powers and tokens—the knights, to signify the strength of the body; Merlin, to signify the strength of intellect; the Lady of the Lake, who stands for the Church, and gives the soul its sharpest and most splendid earthly weapon; and, above all, three fair and mystic Queens, “tall, with bright sweet faces,” robed in the living colours sacred to love and faith and hope, which flow upon them from the image of our Lord above. These, surely, stand for those immortal virtues which only will abide “when all that seems shall suffer shock,” and leaning upon which alone, the soul, when all else falls from it, shall go towards the golden gates of the new and brighter morning.
As the first and introductory idyll thus seems to indicate the coming and the recognition of the soul, so the ensuing idylls of the “Round Table” show how its influence fares—waxes or wanes—in the great battle of life. Through all of these we see the body and its passions gain continually greater sway, till in the end the Spirit’s earthly work is thwarted and defeated by the flesh. Its immortality alone remains to it, and, with this, a deathless hope.
From the story of “Geraint and Enid,” where the first gust of poisoning passion bows for a time with base suspicion, yet passes, and leaves pure a great and simple heart, we are led through “Merlin and Vivien,” where, early in the storm, we see great wit and genius succumb,—and through “Lancelot and Elaine,” where the piteous early death of innocence and hope results from it,—to “The Holy Grail,” where we find religion itself under the stress of it, and despite the earnest efforts of the soul, blown into mere fantastic shapes of superstition. It would be difficult to find a nobler and manlier apology for pure and sane and practical religion, fit for mighty men, than the verdict of the King at the end of this wonderful poem.