Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/301

 Reviews and Notes 295 let," the sonnet of 1832, "There are three things which fill ray heart with sighs," and some passages like this, My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves, ("Song"), still, on the whole he was a better critic of his work than was Wordsworth, as the considerable body of his discarded poems will testify; and of this the generally happy alterations in numerous lines of his retained poems furnish almost as good evidence. While he was a less subtle thinker than Browning, he was a far greater artist. Concerning the allegorical features of the "Idylls" Alden has some sensible remarks. The interpretations of extremists like Conde B. Fallen 8 show what can be done in reading hidden allegorical meanings into these poems. If Tennyson had in mind all the ideas Fallen credits him with, he must have been as subtle as a Schoolman. Still, the Idylls are undoubtedly far too allegorical to be successful in these times. The hopelessness of the effort is most evident in the case of King Arthur himself. As a character in the story the King is a stupendous failure. He is supposed, according to Tennyson's own designation, to represent the soul at war with sense, and ultimately obliged to yield. But he has no war with anybody; his conflicts with the heathen kings have already taken place and are not a part of the Idylls. He is blameless throughout. Alden tries to make him culpable, since after the vampire Vivien has corrupted the court, "even the king can not be called blameless now, since he apparently winks at the foulness by which he is surrounded." But this view is untenable, since Arthur's only fault is his faultlessness High, self-contained, and passionless, ("Guinevere "403). What Alden has to say about the pessimism of the Idylls deserves to be heartily endorsed. The Idylls furnish one more illustration of the great law that we rise on stepping-stones Of [our] dead selves to higher tilings; that we "fall to rise." And this is directly implied in the last line, And the new sun rose, bringing the new year. The next effort will carry the race on a little farther in its mighty effort, a little nearer the goal or would do this were it not for the fact that the next effort is toward a higher goal, as our successive ideals rise higher and higher. 8 "The Meaning of the Idylls of the King," New York, The American Book Company, 1904.