Page:Tennyson - Walter Irving (1873).djvu/10

 who were understood to exercise a power over the mind of man, to frustrate his designs, and punish his obstinacy. Weak spirits readily sank before a predicted train of coming evils. The children of Holy Church were preserved from all such calamities. To them who believed all these things were as a light to lighten; to them who believed not they were as a power of darkness. Believers came daily; the monks grew fat; and the Church prospered. This was the object of Geoffrey of Monmouth.

But what Mr Tennyson's object is we cannot tell. To ask reasonable beings, living in the nineteenth century, to be delighted and instructed by a mass of falsehoods, impossibilities, and absurdities compared with which the story of Jack the Giant Killer is sober truth, is a demand which we cannot comprehend. How much wiser may any one be said to be, if he knows Arthur slew four hundred and seventy mighty men in one day, the wonders done by the mighty sword Excalibur, all about Sir Launcelot, Elaine, and their spotless boy Sir Galahad, how Galahad and his fellows were fed of the holy Sangreal, all about Sir Gawaine and Sir Ector's visions, and the proud black bulls which represented the sin and wickedness of the Round Table guests, how Sir Launcelot in his madness took a sword and fought with a knight and then leapt into bed, how Sir Percivale met with Sir Ector, and how they fought long, and each had almost slain other, and how, by miracle, they were both made whole, by the coming of the holy vessel of Sangreal? And yet upon this