The hero of “the last tournament” is a very different being. Of all those who have told the story, Tennyson alone seems to have looked upon Tristram as thoroughly base and unworthy. Such a knight as this, so rough, licentious, and wanting in courtesy, could never have been Launcelot’s second; and indeed Tennyson lays no stress whatever on the strong friendship which existed between them—so strong that neither would ever wittingly harm any relation or friend of the other. As Wagner has made the legend a symbol of that strife between man, his passions, and his circumstances, which is the complex motive of our latest tragedy,—as Matthew Arnold has drawn from it the lesson, that quiet and neglected lives often do more to make the world lovely than great and brilliant ones (a lesson which chivalry would never have found there),—so Tennyson has made it a symbol of that degradation of the whole nature, which follows the conscious surrender of the spirit to the flesh, and has drawn from it the lesson that the very happiness of partners in guilt is tainted with bitterness and turns to ashes in their mouths. Nowhere else is there such a sharp contrast implied between Launcelot, the sinner who repented and was given time for repentance, and Tristram, the sinner who repented not and was cut off in the midst of his sin. There is a great gulf between them, across which they do not even join their hands. Iseult stands in much the same relation to Guinevere; she is coarser, more ironical, free from any feeling of remorse; but she surpasses Tristram as Launcelot surpasses Guinevere, in “faith unfaithful,” and one has a strong compassion for her in her lonely home, looking out over the wild sea, with that stealthy spy of a husband, dogging her every footstep. How full of compressed, dramatic force the last lines are! He rose, he turn’d, then, flinging round her neck, Claspt it; and cried “Thine Order, O my Queen!” But while he bow’d to kiss the jewel’d throat, Out of the dark, just as the lips had touch’d, Behind him rose a shadow and a shriek— “Mark’s way,” said Mark, and clove him through the brain.