The Sun.
London, England, 1848-03-20 00:00:00

T il_E SUN,

LONDON, MONDAY

LITERATURE.

KING ARTHUR.

Part I. By the Author of" The

Neu) Timon:'
While Paris was convulsed from the heights of
Montmartre to the suburban roads leading towards
Versailles, during the three glorious days of February, •
we can imagine to ourselves the form of the venerable •
Beranger, throned like a prophet on his tripod in the
Acadjmie. We can imagine even his enthusiastic and
republican spirit withdrawing itself from the fascina-
ting din of the hour for the indulgence of a poetic
reverie as to the Hereafter. For the power of ab-
straction is one of the most beautiful prerogatives of
the Poet. It enables him to brood serenely over the
Ideal amidst the convulsions of en empire. His
dreamings, as Addison has finely expressed it, of the
soul, survive " the wreck of matter and the crush of
orlds." Of this we are eo satisfied, that we antici-
pate not only a song in celebration of the recent
movement from the Bard of Napoleon, but one which
shall be a Hymn of Prediction as eloquent as a psalm,
and as exultant as a canticle. Age does not prevent
this expectation ; for we remember that Voltaire
penned a tragedy at eighty. What we would par-
ticularly observe, however, in reference to the poetic
faculty of abstraction—apart from the new illustra-
tion of that faculty which we are predicting in the
instance of Beranger—is, that a brilliant evidence of
its existence has, to our thinking, been afforded by
the author of the present remarkable publication.
Never, perhaps, was the whole heart of Christendom
moved so profoundly to its very core, to the inner-
most core of its core, as it is at this day by events,
by men, and by principles. Hitherto Ambition has
been a sort of royal attribute, the attribute of impe-
rial conquerors. At last, it would seem, that the
Nations have their Ambition, and that the People of
the civilised earth arc themselves aspiring to great-
ness and sovereignty. For the realisation of this
hope a grand and majestic movement has been com-
menced—it has vibrated throughout Europe—it has
developed and confirmed the cantonal liberty of
Switzerland—it has given a constitutional King ,
to the Athenians, and planted a banner of freedom
on the Acropolis, and established a nationality in the
golden city of Attica—it has evoked the genius of
patriotism in Italy, and proclaimed the liberation of
that heroic peninsula from the palace of the Quirinal
and the ruins of Rome—it has startled the despots of
the North in the very bosom of Germany, in the
Council Chambers of Munich, and the Whitehall of
Berlin—it has agitated even the Danes on the Baltic,
and the Dutchmen on the Zuyder-Zee ;it has
awakened not only a novel ardour in Neufchatel and
the Netherlands, but has burst like a thunder-clap
over Paris, and permanently established a Republic
in the empire of the modern Sesostris. At this su-
blime and unparalleled epoch--when the pulse of man-
kind is beating high with the mighty things they
are accomplishing—a man appears in Englard who
has the power of abstraction and the intellectual
daring to emulate the glory of Asiosto and Spenser.
Honour to that man, say we, for his supreme and ad-
mirable audacity--the more so because, as we shall
very speedily explain, his soul can thrill in sym-
pathy with the glorious march of Freedom and
Christianity. His book is a living fulfil-
ment of the noble apophthegm of Dr. John-
son—" Whatever withdraws us from the power

of our senses, whatever makes the past, the dis-
tant, or the future predominate over the pre-
sent, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings."
In the Romantic and Chivalrous Poem, of which the
present volume contains the four opening books, who
shall say that the Past does not predominate over the
Present? KING ARTHUR ! The very name is a
poem—calling up before us the lustrous legends asso-
ciated with that most legendary monarch—the awful
form of Merlin, the Great Magician—the knights of
the round table—Sir Lancelot of the Lake—the
dragon-banner of the Cymry—the gorgeous halls of
Carduel—the mobile and courtly aspect of Gawaine
—the sword of the mere—the shield of Thor—the
destrier, the bassinet, the guardian dove, every one
of the thousand graceful phantasies connected with
the Hero and the heroic age of Wales. The subject
itself is a superb one !—patriotic !—worthy of im-
parting inspiration to a Briton ! Dryden looked
with loving eyes upon it, and dreamed of becoming
' the panegyrist of King Arthur. Tennyson has
sung the sorrows of his doom in his exquisite
but fragmentary Merle d'Artluir. But until this
singular and (we may venture to call it) memorable
volume appeared no great poem on the adventures of
the Cymrian Sovereign had ever been attempted.
The poem is strictly narrative in manner, and several
of the colloquial passages are remarkable for their
dramatic energy. In the opening sentence it is im-
possible for the scholar not to recognise an ambitious,
if not a somewhat affected, tone—a tone equivalent
in its sonorousness to a flourish of trumpets. It
breathes a reminiscence of the Virgilian induction—
" Arms and the man I sing, who, forced by Fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate," &c.
of the Homeric prelude—
" Achilles' wrath to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnuniber'd Heavenly Goddess sing!"
and of the preliminary words of Milton—
,. Of man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree," &c.
Listen to the introductory verses of " King Arthur,"
and say if there be not much of the music, of the
, solemnity, and of the auspicious grandeur which is
observable in the writers of those heroic and celestial
epics—
" Our land's first legends, love, and knightly deeds,
And wondrous Merlin, and his wandering king,
The triple labour and the glorious meeds
WOR from tho world of Fable-land I sing."
In those four lines there is, to our thinking, larger
promise than in the first twenty pages of " The New
Titnon," and we are sanguine (from the impression
produced on our mind from the present instalment)
that that promise will be fulfilled in an equal propor-
tion. Book I. opens with a description of king
Arthur keeping holiday in the Tale of Carduel. It
is spring time, the exquisite month of May in
sooth—

" When, after sparkling showers,
Her starry wreaths the virgin jasmine weaves
When lure the bee wild thyme and sunny bowers;
And light wings rustle thro' the glinting leaves."
The whole description partakes of the freshness of
that delicious season, and the dusty antiquity of the
Welsh legend revives under the breathings of a con-

genial poetry.
" On poet times the month of poets shone—
May decled the world, and Arthur fill') the throne."
Pastimes of all times are resorted to by the courtiers
of Arthur Pendragon (i. e. Arthur, the head of the
Dragon race) ; some are fishing in the rivulets; some
are dancing on the greensward • sonic are " dis-
here and there reclines a
coursing gentle things
" Teuhewr," or harper, " waking the sweet tempest
of melodious strings." In the midst of these royal
pleasures the King is reclining
,in a sort of indolent
rapture, when a weir apparition suddenly starts forth
" in the centre of the silken ring," and summons the
monarch to follow it into the adjoining forest. The
mandate of the spectre excites the wrath of the
courtiers--
" Feet found the earth, and ready hands the sword,
And angry knighthood bristled round its lord."
Arthur, however, follows the Image into the wood-
' lands, to the dismay of his attendants. The war-cry,
"the shrill Bon-lef-her," is raised, and the welkin
in au instant " gleams with starry swords." Even the
brave " beauties" of the court are panio-stricken—
they cluster together, trembling if a bird
" Flutter a bough, or if, without a sound,
Some leaf fall breezeless, eddying to the ground."
An hour elapses before Arthur again emerges from
the forest; and as evening closes in the regal con-
course is dispersed homewards. From the emotion
evinced by the sovereign immediately upon his re-
turn, it is manifest that he had received some august
and even terrible revelation from his visitant. The
light-hearted spectators themselves had been im-
pressed with the conviction for a moment, although
Arthur conquered his agitation by a great effort,
" And, masking trouble with a noble guile,
Soon the proud heart restored the kingly smile."
When, in the seclusion of the palace, the agitation of
the monarch returns with double energy. To calm
his spirits by an unobserved communion with Nature,
he ascends to the battlements of his palace, and
"bares his hot forehead to the freshening air." Then,
while Arthur is gazing into the Night, the poet ex•
claims in a couplet of superb enthusiasm_
4, How Silence, like a god's tranquillity,
Fill'd with delighted peace the conscious sky

rendragon surveys the landscape in a mood of un
utterable dejection, glancing from the roof-tops that
shone in the moonlight to the waters that sparkled as
they hurried seawards, from the vale in which his
courtiers had recently held their carousals to the
" pastures virgin of the lust of !var." His eye is
abruptly arrested by a light—a light glimmering in
a lonely turret —the mi▪ dnight lamp of Merlin.
Arthur resolves to visit the magician, and to obtain
from his wisdom a consolation for his own miseries.
He reaches the turret—passes the threshold of the
chamber—and finds himself in the presence of the
wizard. Here is the pi▪
cture of the prophet and
necromancer :