And this new Madam Cie, of Regent Street, has such a duck of a bonnet, just come from Paris. She wanted to make me one from it; but I told her I would have none but the pattern bonnetand she knows very well she can't pass a copy off on me. Let me drive you up there; and you can see mine, and order one if you like it.'

'Oh, thank you; let me just run and speak to my husband first.'

Staines was writing for the bare life, and a number of German books about him, slaving to make a few pounds, when in comes the buoyant figure and beaming face his soul delighted in.

He laid down his work, to enjoy the sunbeam of love.

'Oh, darling, I've only come in for a minute. We are going to a flower-show on the 13th; everybody will be so beautifully dressed -especially that Mrs. Vivian. I have got ten yards of beautiful blue silk in my wardrobe, but that is not enough to make a whole dress. Everything takes so much stuff now. Madame Cie does not care to make up dresses unless she finds the silk, but Miss Lucas says she thinks, to oblige a friend of hers, she would do it for once in a way. You know, dear, it would only take a few yards more, and it would last as a dinnerdress for ever so long.'

Then she clasped him round the neck, and leaned her head upon his shoulder, and looked lovingly up in his face. 'I know you would like your Rosa to look as well as Mrs. Vivian.'

'No one ever looks as well-in my eyes as my Rosa. There, the dress will add nothing to your beauty; but go and get it, to please yourself: it is very considerate of you to have chosen something of which you have ten yards already.

See, dear, I'm to receive twenty pounds for this article; if research was paid, it ought to be a hundred. I shall add it all to your allowance for dresses this year. So no debt, mind; but come to me for everything.'

The two ladies drove off to Madame Cie's, a pretty shop lined with dark velvet and lace draperies.

In the back room they were packing a lovely bridal dress, going off, the following Saturday, to New York.

'What, send from America to London ?'

'Oh dear yes!' exclaimed Madame Cie. The American ladies are excellent customers. They buy everything of the best, and the most expensive.'

'I have brought a new customer,' said Miss Lucas, and I want you to do a great favour, and that is to match a blue silk, and make her a pretty dress for the flowershow on the 13th.'

Madame Cie produced a white muslin polonaise, which she was just going to send home to the Princess to be worn " mauve.

over

'Oh, how pretty and simple!' exclaimed Miss Lucas.

'I have some lace exactly like that,' said Mrs. Staines.

'Then, why don't you have a polonaise? The lace is the only expensive part, the muslin is a mere nothing; and it is such a useful dress, it can be worn over any silk.'

It was agreed Madame Cie was to send for the blue silk and the lace, and the dresses were to be tried on on Thursday.

On Thursday, as Rosa went gaily into Madame Cie's back room to have the dresses tried on, Madame Cie said, 'You have a beautiful lace shawl, but it wants arranging-in five minutes I could

astonish you with what I could do to that shawl.'

'Oh, pray do,' said Mrs. Staines. The dressmaker kept her word. By the time the blue dress was tried on, Madame Cie had, with the aid of a few pins, plaits, and a bow of blue ribbon, transformed the halflace shawl into one of the smartest and most distingué things imaginable; but when the bill came in at Christmas, for that five minutes' labour and distingué touch, she charged one pound eight.

the

Madame Cie then told ladies, in an artfully confidential tone, she had a quantity of black silk coming home, which she had purchased considerably below cost price; and that she should like to make them each a dress-not for her own sake, but theirs-as she knew they would never meet such a bargain again. 'You know, Miss Lucas,' she continued, 'we don't want our money, when we know our customers. Christmas is soon enough for us.'

'Christmas is a long time off,' thought the young wife, 'nearly ten months. I think I'll have a black silk, Madame Cie; but I must not say anything to the Doctor about it just yet, or he might think me extravagant.'

'No one can ever think a lady extravagant for buying a black silk; it's such a useful dress; lasts for ever-almost.'

Days, weeks, and months rolled on, and with them an ever-rolling tide of flower-shows, dinners, athomes, balls, operas, lawn-parties, concerts, and theatres.

Strange that in one house there should be two people who loved each other, yet their lives ran so far apart, except while they were asleep: the man all industry, self-denial, patience; the woman all frivolity, self-indulgence, and

VOL. XXIII.-NO. CXXXIII.

amusement; both chained to an oar, only one in a working boat, the other in a painted galley.

The woman got tired first, and her charming colour waned sadly. She came to him for medicine to set her up. I feel so languid.'

'No, no,' said he; 'no medicine can do the work of wholesome food, and rational repose. You lack the season of all natures, sleep. Dine at home three days running, and go to bed at ten.'

On this the Doctor's wife went to a chemist for advice. He gave her a pink stimulant; and, as stimulants have two effects, viz., first, to stimulate, and then to weaken, this did her no lasting good. Doctor Staines cursed the London season, and threatened to migrate to Liverpool.

But there was worse behind.

Returning one day to his dressing-room, just after Rosa had come down stairs, he caught sight of a red stain in a washhand-basin. He examined it; it was arterial blood.

He went to her directly, and expressed his anxiety.

Oh, it is nothing,' said she. 'Nothing! Pray how often has it occurred?'

'Once or twice. I must take your advice, and be quiet, that is all.'

Staines examined the housemaid; she lied instinctively at first, seeing he was alarmed; but, being urged to tell the truth, said she had seen it repeatedly, and had told the cook.

He went down stairs again, and sat down, looking wretched.

'Oh dear!' said Rosa. 'What is the matter now?'

Rosa,' said he, very gravely, 'there are two people a woman is mad to deceive-her husband and her physician. You have deceived both.'

C

sider that at which it aims. It is as wrong to criticise what is only intended to be mediocre, on the assumption that it aims at excellence, as it is to compare that which is intended to be first-class with any other than a first-class standard. In judging of a prime minister, it is no palliation of his shortcomings to say that he would have made a good under-secretary. Similarly, in determining the merit of a literary work, we cannot forget the degree of excellence which is claimed for it.

Mr. Tennyson's admirers have always claimed for him a place in the first rank of English poets. He has been compared by them with the greatest of past generations, and the comparison has been declared not unfavourable to him. He has always seemed to aim at a very high ideal. In an age when the income obtainable by literature is greater than it ever has been, Mr. Tennyson has shown not the slightest inclination to yield to the temptation to prefer a lucrative to an admirable career. He has only to put his pen to paper to make a considerable sum. He can get more for a short lyric than was given for 'Paradise Lost;' yet he can never be accused of writing too much. His works are produced slowly, and at intervals. Far from pouring forth volume after volume with a lavishness which would undoubtedly result in the realisation of large wealth, not necessarily at the expense of fame, he has been almost stingy of his sweetness, and has seemed to aim at elaborate perfection, rather than at easy and abounding brilliance.

Whether or not posterity will accord to him the high place which his admirers now claim for him is a question into which I do not wish to enter. It suffices that the fact of their claim makes it necessary to judge whatever he produces by an exceedingly high standard. His poems ought to be not only free from positive faults, but of exalted artistic merit. In all, therefore, that I may say in this paper as to his last work, I would wish it borne in mind that I am comparing it with a very lofty ideal. And if I am forced to ascribe to it a deterioration, as compared with what Mr. Tennyson has already produced, or what he is considered able to produce, I do not for a moment wish to deny that it has, very undoubtedly, great excellence.

From a preface to the 'Holy Grail' we learn that 'The Passing of Arthur,' called in the earlier edition 'Mort d'Arthur' (a title manifestly inferior to that chosen later), was connected with the rest, in accordance with an early project of the author's. We have a glimpse of this project in the original introduction to 'Mort d'Arthur:'

"You know," said Frank, "he burnt His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books."

And later:

"These twelve books of mine Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing worth,

Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt." "But I,"

Said Francis, "pick'd the eleventh from this hearth."

From this it would seem as if Mr. Tennyson contemplated, from the first, the possibility, at least, of an epic in twelve books on the

Arthurian legends. This idea has been gradually carried out, and at present we have ten consecutive books, The Coming of Arthur,' 'Gareth and Lynette,' 'Geraint and Enid,''Merlin and Vivien,' 'Lancelot and Elaine,' 'The Holy Grail,'' Pelleas and Etarre,' 'The Last Tournament,' 'Guinevere,' and 'The Passing of Arthur.' The latter has been described as the eleventh book, from which we might infer that a twelfth is to be added, and a complementary book inserted among the earlier poems of the series. Whether this plan will be effected or not must be a mere conjecture; as must the subject of the final poem, though we have a hint of a possible subject in the concluding verses 'Elaine,' where

of

'So groaned Sir Lancelot in remorseful pain,

Not knowing he should die a holy man.'

And Guinevere' and 'The Passing of Arthur' suggest others; but, even if the whole work were left as it now is, it would by no means lack completeness.

As compared with the earlier books of the epic, both 'Gareth and Lynette' and 'The Last Tournament' are much wanting in artistic grace. In the latter, not only has the high purity which is the motive of the poem failed, not only has the sin of Guinevere brought pollution in Arthur's court-so that

'All courtesy is dead. The glory of our Round Table is no more;'

but the purity and sweetness of the manner in which the story is told has given way to coarseness, which, however characteristic of the subject matter, is not artistic. Take the following passage in The Last Tournament :'

Is there not a grossness of language and imagery (in the last passage almost revolting) which cannot be excused on the ground that it is emblematic of the grossness of the age which it describes? It is, of course, true that evil should be made abhorrent, but this effect should not be produced by the heaping together of epithets, similes, and descriptions better adapted to a modern Billingsgate than the court of Arthur. The scene, too, in 'The Last Tournament' between Tristrem and Isolț is repulsive. It may, indeed, be fairly argued c 2

that guilty love should never be made attractive, but to mix up the insolence and coarseness of Tristrem with any feeling even called love is an error. To read The Last Tournament' after 'The Passing of Arthur,''Elaine,' or 'Guinevere,' makes one ask how Gainsborough I would have succeeded if he had adopted the style of Hogarth. So, also, in 'Gareth and Lynette,' the petulance of Lynette takes such perpetual refuge in allusions to carrion and foulness that one is inclined to follow her example, and

'Nip one's nose

With petulant finger, shrilling, "Hence Avoid, thou smellest all of kitchengrease."

There is an entire absence of the wondrous beauty of word and measure which graces 'The Passing of Arthur' and 'Guinevere.' An unrefined and eminently unpoetical materialism has taken the place of the pure idealism of the earlier books. It may, indeed, be contended that this is intentional. If it be so, I am inclined to think that a poem which displays such incongruities, and which lays so much stress on the bad side of the scenes and characters which it describes, can never bear the high reputation which Mr. Tennyson's admirers have claimed for his treatment of the Arthurian legend.

'Gareth and Lynette,' the last published of all the books before us, deals with an early period of the history of the Table Round. But it is impossible to help thinking that the critic of after times will need no external evidence to satisfy him that it was one of the last written. Glimpses we have, here and there, of Mr. Tennyson's wondrous power, and tastes of his exquisite sweetness; but the powerful is marred by the weak, and the sweet by the bitter. The matter of the poem is less attractive

than that of its predecessors, and the manner in which it is laid before us is even more open to objection. And first of the matter.

It is a common fault in criticism to assign to an author much that he never intended to convey. But, in saying that Tennyson's poems, and especially his Arthurian epic, are allegorical, I do not think that a critic is open to be accused of this fault. In narrating certain mythical actions, Mr. Tennyson appears to aim at representing more than the mere course of knightly prowess. If this be a true judgment, and if the work is not to have a conclusion, which is yet wanting, I am more than ever inclined to lament the utter collapse of the Table Round. It seemed, from the earlier books, that, even if the optimist views of Arthur's court, to which one would cling most gladly, could not be maintained, they would at least not yield to pessimism. But the breakdown of all that is good is so thorough, as we see the end as yet, that one regrets that so fair an edifice was built only to be torn into so ghastly a ruin. I repeat that I am only judging of what is before us. Guinevere's repentance is an accomplished fact. That of Lancelot is, as we have seen, hinted at. And it may be that at Avilion may be gathered together after the apotheosis, if I may call it so, of Arthur, a transcendental table round of those who have conquered all their enemies, even death. But the salient point of the poem, as we have it, is the utter failure of virtue to oust vice, and the complete triumph of evil over good.

'Gareth and Lynette' is, if any of the books are, allegorical. It occupies, as we have seen, an early place in the legend, and as yet the defeat of virtue is not matured, indeed is scarcely begun. Gareth,