Compared even with the productions of his own genius, Guinevere always seems to me like a statue in the midst of oil-paintings. So lofty is it in conception, so grand in treatment, so fair, so noble, so elevating, and yet so real. As the Californian digger in his “prospect” washes, and sifts, and searches, till from a mass of rubbish and impurities he separates the nugget of virgin ore, so from the lavish confusion of rich material to be found in that collection of early romance called _La Morte d’Arthur_, the Laureate has wrought out a poem precious in its own intrinsic merit as the purest metal that was ever beaten into a crown of gold. One other has been over the same ground before him, the great magician who with a wave of his wand has created for us gleaming blade and glittering hauberk, mail and plate, and managed steeds caparisoned, lances shivered to the grasp, sweet pale faces looking down on the mimic war beneath, and all the pomp, panoply, and _prestige_ of an ideal chivalry, when “The champions, armed in martial sort, Have thronged into the list, And but three knights of Arthur’s court Are from the tourney missed. And still those lovers’ fame survives For faith so constant shown; There were two that loved their neighbours’ wives, And one that loved his own.” Alas! that the very first of these in arms, in courtesy, in personal advantages, and, but for the one foul blot, in honourable fame, should have been Lancelot de Lac, the ornament of chivalry. Alas! that the lady of his guilty love should have been that “Flower of all the west and all the world,” whose rightful place was on the bosom of “the stainless king.” Their fatal passion, that grew so insensibly in those fair May-days long ago, when the pair “Rode under groves that looked a paradise Of blossom, over sheets of hyacinth, That seemed the heavens upbreaking thro’ the earth,” has struck root now, deep, deep in the hearts of both, and spreading like the deadly upas-tree, has blighted every other sentiment and affection beneath its shade. There is no happiness for Lancelot without Guinevere, no sweetness in the breath of evening nor speculation in the stars of night, no gladness in the summer, no glamour in the greenwood, no glory in the day. Her whisper lurks in the hollow of his helmet when he shouts his war-cry, her image rouses his desire for fame, and points his trusty lance. But for the keen, unholy stimulant his arm would be nerveless and his courage dull, while all the time “The great and guilty love he bare the queen, In battle with the love he bare his lord, Hath marred his face, and marked it ere his time.”