about it, while yet the poet treats it as mere unmitigated guilt, fully justifying all the disaster entailed thereby, not only on the sinners themselves, but on the State, and the cause of human welfare. Nor can we feel quite sure, as the subject is here envisaged, that, justice apart, it is quite according to probability for the knowledge of this constant illicit affection to engender a universal infidelity of the Round Table Knights to vows which not only their lips, as in the case of Guinevere, but also their hearts have sworn; infidelity to their own true affection, and disloyalty to their own genuine aspiration after the fulfilment of chivalrous duty in championing the oppressed—all because a rich-natured woman like Guinevere proves faithful to her affection for a rich kindred humanity in Lancelot! How this comes about is at any rate not sufficiently explained in the poet’s narrative; and if so, he must be held to have failed both as artist and as ethical teacher, which in these Idylls he has certainly aspired to be. Then comes the further question, not altogether an easy one to answer, whether it is really true that even widespread sexual excess inevitably entails deterioration in other respects, a lowered standard of integrity and honor? The chivalry of the Middle Ages was _sans peur_, but seldom _sans reproche_. History, on being interrogated, gives an answer ambiguous as a Greek oracle. Was England, for instance, less great under the Regency than under Cromwell? But at all events, the old legends make the process of disintegration in Arthur’s kingdom much clearer than it is made by Tennyson. In Mallory, for instance, Arthur is by no means the sinless being depicted by Tennyson. Rightly or wrongly, he is resolved to punish Guinevere for her infidelity by burning, and Lancelot is equally resolved to rescue her, which accordingly he does from the very stake, carrying her off with him to his castle of Joyous Gard. Then Arthur and Sir Gawain make war upon him; and thus, the great knightly heads of the Round Table at variance; the fellowship is inevitably dissolved, for Modred takes advantage of their dissension to seize upon the throne. But in the old legends, who is Modred? The son of Arthur and his sister. According to them, assuredly the origin of the doom or curse upon the kingdom is the unwitting incest, yet deliberate adultery of Arthur, or perhaps the still earlier and deeply-dyed sin of his father, Uther. Yet, Mr. Swinburne’s contention, that Lord Tennyson should have emphasized the sin of Arthur as responsible for the doom that came upon himself and his kingdom, although plausible, appears to me hardly to meet all the exigencies of the case. Mr. Hutton says in reply that then the supernatural elements of the story could have found no place in the poem; no strange portents could have been described as accompanying the birth and death of Arthur. A Greek tragedian, he adds, would