Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/41

Rh his knights,' and, indeed, every one of them, he 'binds with so straight vows to his own self' (sic) that it half scares the wits out of them.

The 'old imperfect tale' of Lord Tennyson's 'Idylls' needs no analysis here. 'The war of Soul with Sense' is fought and won and lost in the most charming manner possible all through, and forms the prettiest packet (as Carlyle remarked) of 'superlative lollipops' known in our time. We are never once allowed to approach reality except with a thousand polite precautions: we never face a single fact of life, as life actually presents itself to men and women to-day, or any other day; but everything is glossed over and resolved this way or that in absolute harmony with the old familiar Tennysonian philosophy—so long, at least, as it is humanly possible to do so. Unfortunately, there comes a point in this story, this particular story, where no amount of wriggling can quite save us—except at the cost of a spiritual and artistic cowardice of which even 'the gracious tactician, the Christian artist' is afraid—from facing a fact, a positive and brutal fact. Arthur, therefore, has to face it and we have to face it with him. Guinevere, this paragon of beauty, is an adulteress, and (what is so distressing) an adulteress who is found out. Well, an interview between her and her outraged pousespouse [sic] is clearly inevitable.