rtainly
unfortunate other presentation of Arthur as a blameless king.

I do not say that the actual creator of the Vulgate Guinevere, whoever
he was, has wrought her into a novel-character of the first class. It
would have been not merely a miracle (for miracles often happen), but
something more, if he had. If you could take Beatrix Esmond at a better
time, Argemone Lavington raised to a higher power, and the spirit of all
that is best and strongest and least purely paradoxical in Meredith's
heroines, and work these three graces into one woman, adding the passion
of Tennyson's own Fatima and the queenliness of Helen herself, it might
be something like the achieved Guinevere who is still left to the
reader's imagination to achieve. But the Unknown has given the hints of
all this; and curiously enough it is only of _English_ novel-heroines
that I can think in comparison and continuation of her. This book, if it
is ever finished, will show, I hope, some knowledge of French ones: I
can remember none possessing any touch of Guineveresque quality. Dante,
if his poetic nature had taken a different bent, and Shakespeare, if he
had only chosen, could have been her portrayers singly; no others that I
can think of, and certainly no Frenchman.

[Sidenote: And the personages.]

But here Guinevere's creator or expounder has done more for her than
merely indicate her charm. Her "fear for name and fame" is not exactly
"crescent"--it is there from the first, and seems to have nothing either
cowardly or merely selfish in it, but only that really "last infirmity
of noble minds," the shame of shame even in doing things shameful or
shameless. I have seldom seen justice done to her magnificent
fearlessness in all her dangers. Her graciousness as a Queen has been
more generally admitted, but, once again, the composition and complexity
of her fits of jealousy have never, I think, been fully rationalised.
Here, once more, we must take into account that difference of age which
is so important. _He_ thinks nothing of it; _she_ never forgets it. And
in almost all the circumstances where this rankling kindles into
wrath--whether with no cause at all, as in most cases, or with cause
more apparent than real, as in the Elaine business--study of particulars
will show how easily they might be wrought out into the great character
scenes of which they already contain the suggestion. _This_ Guinevere
would never have "taken up" (to use purposely a vulgar