The Lotos-Eaters," and "In Memoriam," and all poems which, by
negation or affirmation, may suggest or enforce a thought regarding the
furnishing of the soul.

In those idyls clustering about King Arthur, Tennyson has patently
purposed painting the figure of a perfect man. How well he has
executed his design depends on himself much, on the beholder much.
Onlookers differ in opinion. Painters have their clientage. Poets are
not omniscient; neither are we, a thing we are prone to forget. For
myself, I confess not to see with those who deride the king, nor yet
with those who think him statuesque, as if shaped, not out of flesh,
but out of marble. He is not incredible, nor is he a shadow, stalking
gaunt and battle-clad across the crags that fringe the Cornish sea.
Not a few among us approximate perfection in character as blameless as
Arthur's. I myself profess to have seen a King Arthur, and to have
held high converse with him through many years. Whiteness of life is
not an episode foreign to biography. There are many lives running
white toward heaven as I have seen a path across the moonlit sea. Not
to be credulous is well; not to be incredulous is better, when heavenly
visions and heavenly incarnations are the theme. This is affirmed,
that King Arthur is not more unreal than others Tennyson delineates.
His art lacks the power to flood his people's veins with blood to
plethora, with such bounding vitality as marks Shakespeare's creations.
They lack, sometimes, color on the cheek and lip and sunlight in the
eyes. His characters are as if seen in mist. Our failing is, we give
credence to fleshly instinct and lust and failure in ideal more readily
than to wise manliness and stalwart and heroic worth. But Enoch Arden
is no dream. Arthur is no myth. I know a man whose heart is as pure,
whose conduct as above reproach, and whose words are as big with
charity, and thoughts as foreign to hypocrisy, as Arthur's were; for
Arthur is not dead. They did not dream who said, "Arthur returns." He
hides his name, lest he become spectacular, a raree-show, for mobs to
follow and shout hoarse about; but he is here. I met him yesterday;
and to-morrow I shall walk with him by the river, where the stream
makes music, and the trees sing in minors, and the shadows darken on
the grass.

What, then, is this Arthur's character? Looking at him as he sits
astride his steed, yonder at Camelot, with his visor up, he is seen
manhood at