If we dismiss these petty difficulties of manner, we shall find that in their main construction the _Idylls_ present a life which is very unlike that which is suggested by their detractors. The anæmic and Gilbertian curates and schoolmarms who are supposed to people the poems in a pleasant Sunday afternoon atmosphere have no being at all when we come to examine the poems themselves. Taking Tennyson by himself, without reference to Malory or any other source, we may surmise that the men of the poems, the very Galahad and Lancelot and Bedivere and Geraint of Tennyson’s creation, that is to say, would have displayed a decision of character and a strength of arm that would shake some of the long-eared critics out of their complacency and perhaps afford them a little wholesome exercise. And if any one thinks that he could behave by any but the strict rules of chivalry in the presence of Tennyson’s Guinevere there is something amiss with his schooling. If no better evidence can be advanced for Victorian effeminacy and prudery and coxcombry than the _Idylls of the King_ the charge must go by the board. Finally, in this respect we need hardly defend Tennyson because he sometimes chooses to point a moral as well as to adorn a tale, as when in the middle of the Enid story he breaks off with O purblind race of miserable men, How many among us at this very hour Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves, By taking true for false, or false for true; Here, thro’ the feeble twilight of this world Groping, how many, until we pass and reach That other, where we see as we are seen.... This practice has always been and will always remain a prerogative of poetry and it is not purism but frivolity of intellect that objects to it. The actual poetic achievement of the _Idylls_ is very great. That as a group they have no architectural unity is true, but they have never professed such unity. As separate stories they are graphically, and often very poignantly told, with innumerable touches of great felicity. They are pervaded by Tennyson’s descriptive gift and yet it is always closely woven into the imaginative texture and hardly ever indulged (as it was often by even so great a poet as Swinburne, for example) for its own sake. When Geraint comes to the town of the sparrow-hawk where In a long valley, on one side of which, White from the mason’s hand, a fortress rose; And on one side a castle in decay, Beyond a bridge that spann’d a dry ravine: And out of town and valley came a noise As of a broad brook o’er a shingly bed Brawling, or like a clamour of the rooks At distance, ere they settle for the night.... the fortress is not merely an effective piece of decoration in the poem but part of its essential life, just as in the shoal Of darting fish, that on a summer morn Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot Come slipping o’er their shadows on the sand.... and when Geraint rides