But these slight relapses (and, after all, what sort of a relapse is it which gives us not merely the incomparable things referred to, but others hardly less exquisite?) never, in the great writers, serve as anything but retreats before an advance; and certainly, in a sense, the _Idylls of the King_ were an advance, though not, perhaps, in all senses. No total so brilliant, so varied within a certain general unity, so perfectly polished in style, so cunningly adjusted to meet the popular without disappointing the critical ear, had ever come from Tennyson's pen as the first quartet of Idylls, _Enid_, _Vivien_, _Elaine_, and _Guinevere_. No such book of English blank verse, with the doubtful exception of the _Seasons_, had been seen since Milton. Nothing more adroitly selected than the contrast of the four special pieces--a contrast lost to those who only read them in the completed Arthuriad--has been often attempted or ever achieved. It is true that the inner faithful, the sacred band of Tennysonians, old and young, grumbled a little that polish had been almost too much attended to; that there was a certain hardish mannerism, glittering but cold, about the style; that there was noticeable a certain compromise in the appeal, a certain trimming of the sail to the popular breeze. These criticisms were not entirely without foundation, and they were more justified than their authors could know by the later instalments of the poem, which, the latest not published till twenty-seven years afterwards, rounded it off to its present bulk of twelve books, fifteen separate pieces, and over ten thousand lines. Another, more pedantic in appearance, but not entirely destitute of weight, was that which urged that in handling the Arthurian story the author had, so to speak, "bastardised it," and had given neither mediaeval nor modern sentiment or colouring, but a sort of amalgamation of both. Yet the charm of the thing was so great, and the separate passages were so consummate, that even critics were loth to quarrel with such a gift.