“Stainless gentleman” has a certain poetic flatness to our ears which it had not for Tennyson and his readers. To-day it is not supposed to be good form to speak about a man being a gentleman at all, and democracy no longer encourages us to think about a man being a gentleman at all. We are all now (at least we all may be) nature’s gentlemen, and much may be said for the doctrine. Tennyson was part of a society where the aristocratic distinction was not merely a reality in fact, but one acknowledged intellectually, and the more we see of the world the less certain can we be that any one stage in social development is demonstrably better than another. “Change is the law of life on earth,” says Mr. Gosse, and each generation may suppose that the change is for the better, though one may to-day, for example, meet very liberal-minded and generous people who can make out a very good case for a return to feudalism. But we can cut the argument short by saying that when Tennyson (or Merlin) spoke of Arthur as being a “stainless gentleman” he was being neither a prig nor a sycophant. He might sing that Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.... but there was also room in his scheme of things for the specific distinction that saved O true and tender! O my liege and king! O selfless man and stainless gentleman.... from being merely tautological. And if it comes to that, Tennyson here was nearer than some of his critics to the spirit of Malory. It is well enough to be of our time in matters of social faith and use the world as we find it. To be doctrinaire in politics is mostly to be futile, but habits of expediency which are bred by trying to make the best of social schemes at the moment should be dropped when we turn to the criticism of poetry.