The richness, the many shining contrasts and immortal lines in _Vivien_, seem almost too noble for a subject not easily redeemed, and the picture of the ideal Court lying in full corruption. Next to _Elaine_, Jowett wrote that he “admired _Vivien_ the most (the naughty one), which seems to me a work of wonderful power and skill. It is most elegant and fanciful. I am not surprised at your Delilah beguiling the wise man; she is quite equal to it.” The dramatic versatility of Tennyson’s genius, his power of creating the most various characters, is nowhere better displayed than in the contrast between the _Vivien_ and the _Elaine_. Vivien is a type, her adventure is of a nature, which he has not elsewhere handled. Thackeray, who admired the Idylls so enthusiastically, might have recognised in Vivien a character not unlike some of his own, as dark as Becky Sharp, more terrible in her selfishness than that Beatrix Esmond who is still a paragon, and, in her creator’s despite, a queen of hearts. In Elaine, on the other hand, Tennyson has drawn a girl so innocently passionate, and told a tale of love that never found his earthly close, so delicately beautiful, that we may perhaps place this Idyll the highest of his poems on love, and reckon it the gem of the Idylls, the central diamond in the diamond crown. Reading _Elaine_ once more, after an interval of years, one is captivated by its grace, its pathos, its nobility. The poet had touched on some unidentified form of the story, long before, in _The Lady of Shalott_. That poem had the mystery of romance, but, in human interest, could not compete with _Elaine_, if indeed any poem of Tennyson’s can be ranked with this matchless Idyll. The mere invention, and, as we may say, _charpentage_, are of the first order. The materials in Malory, though beautiful, are simple, and left a field for the poet’s invention. {139}