The Sun.
London, England, 1869-12-14 00:00:00

THE HOLY GRAIL.

The new poem or the Poet-Laureate is published:`;; Its
fall title is "The Holy Grail and other Poems." It is
r ated that the publishers have already to meet orders for
30,000 copies. The work is another contribution to "The
Idylls of the King." There aro four new idyihi in this work
" The Coming of Arthur," "The Quest of the Holy Grail,"
" Pelleas and Ettarre," and " The Passing of
Arthur." They are not arranged in order. Hence-
forth the Idylls must be read as follows : " The Coming
of Arthur ; " The Round Tale —" Geraint and
Enid," "Merlin and Vivien," " Lancelot and Elaine," " The
Holy Grail." "Pelleas and Ettarre," " Guinevere;" "The
Passing of Arthur."
The first piece in this new volume is the shortest—" The
Coming of Arthur." The story therein related may be
thus summed up. Leodogran, the King of Cameliard, and
father) one fair daughter, Guinevere, through divisions
at home and the ravages of the heathen, finds all his land

waste--

Wild dog, and wolf and boar and bear,
Came night and day, and rooted in the fields,
And wallow'd in the Lardens of the King.

In this eistiess, Leodogran hears of Arthur—whom many
affirm not to, be ITther's son, not rightly to possess the
kingdom—ancl, calls him to his relief. Arthur comes ;
Guinevere saes him pass tl:e castle-walls, as ho rides
" a simple knight among hi i knghts," and she marks him
net :

But Arthur, looking downward as he past,
Felt the light of her eyes into his life
Smite on the sudden.

Triumphant over the heathen, he returns ; but still the
great lords and barons clamour that he is not their proper
ruler, for he is no son of Uther ; and when he asks
Guinevere to wife in reward for his services, her father is
checked by the doubt of his lineage. The knights whom
Arthur sends relate the accepted story of his birth; Belli-
cent, the Queen of Orkney, Uther's daughter, coming to
Leodogran's Court, tells all that she knows of her half-
brother—lastly repeating what Bleys, the master of the
famous magician Merlin, had told her on his deathbed.
Himself,

And Merlin ever served about the king,
tither, before he died, and on the night
When Uther in Tintagil past away,
Moaning and wailing for an heir, the two
Left the still king, and passing forth to breathe,
Then from the castle gateway by the chasm
Descending thro' the dismal night—a night
In which the bounds of heaven and earth were lost—
Beheld, so high upon the dreary deeps.
It seeni'd in Heaven, a ship, the shape thereof
A dragon wing'd, and all from stem to stern,
Bright with a shining people on the decks,
And gone as soon as seen. And then the-two
Dropt to the cove, and watch'd the great sea fa?:
Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep,
And full of voices, rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame :
And down the wave and in the flame was borne
A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet,
Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried "The King.
Here is an heir for tither!" And the fringe
Of that great breaker, sweeping up the strand,
Lash'd at the wizard as he snake the word,
And all at once all round him rose in fire,
So that the child and he were clothed in fire.
And presently thereafter follow'd calm,
Free sky and stars.

Convinced by this and by other testimonies—chiefly by a
mystic dream—Leodogran sends back Arthur's envoys
answering yea ; Lancelot escorts Guin-evere to her lover;
and the pair, "by Dubric, the high saint," are married be-
fore the stateliest of Britain's altar-shrines.

"The Quest of the Hely Grail "—the next new Idyll.
The supposed narrator of the story is " Sir Percival the
Pure," who has " passed into the silent life of prayer."
Ambrosina, a monk in the abbey where Sir Percival has
taken refuge, is the listener; and contrasts his own quiet
time with the more stirring life which the knight relates.
The vision of the Grail is thus described as seen by Sir
Percival's sister, a nun of pure heart :
And so she pray'd and fasted, till the sun
Shone, and the wind blew, thro' her, and I thought
She might have risen and floated when I saw her.
For on a day she sent to speak with me.
And when she came to speak, behold her eyes
Beyond my knowing of them, beautiful,
Beyond all knowing of them, wonderful,
Beautiful in the light of holiness.
And " 0 my brother. Percivalc " she said,
" Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail:
For, waking at dead of night, I heard a sound
As of a silver horn from o'er the hills
Blown, and I thought, It is not Arthur's use
To hunt by moonlight ;' and the slender sound
As from a distance beyond distance grew
Coming upon me—O never harp nor horn,
Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand,
Was like that music as it came ; and then
Stream'd thro' my cell a cold and silver beam,
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,
Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,
Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed
With rosy colours leaping on the wall •
And then the music faded, and the Grail
Pass'd, and the beam decay'd, and from the walls
The rosy quiverings died into the night."
When Percivale told his sister's vision, among others, to
Sir Galahad,

His eyes became so like her own, they seem'd
Hers, and himself her brother more than I. . . .
But she, the wan sweet maiden shore away
Clean from her forehead all that wealth of hair
Which made a silken mat-work for her feet;
And out of this she plaited broad and long
A strong sword-belt, and wove with silver thread
And crimson in the belt a strange device,
A crimson grail within a silver beam;
And saw the bright boy-knight, and bound it on him,
Saying, " My knight, my love, my knight of heaven,
O thou, my love, whose love is one with mine,
I, maiden, round thee, maiden, bind my belt.
Go forth, for thou shalt see what I have seen,
And break thro' all, till one will crown thee king
Far in the spiritual city :" and as she spake
She sent the deathless passion in her eyes
Thro' him, and made him hers, and laid her mind
On him, and he believed in her belief.
An animated scene in Arthur's hall is then described.
When Galahad, sitting in Merlin's magic chair, saw the
Holy Grail in " a beam of light seven times more bright
than day," that struck amid thunder, and "a cracking and
a riving of the roofs," into the stately room amid all the
knights ; and when all present simultaneously vowed to set
out on the quest, till they should see what Galahad alone
had seen that day. Then follow some " daring" pictures
of adventures, and descriptions:
The third new story is " relleas and Ettarro." King
Arthur made fresh knights to fill up the gap caused by
the departure of the other knights on the holy Quest. As
the king sat in hall at old Caerlcon,

The high doors
Were softly sundeed, and thro''these a youth,
Pelleas, and the sweet smell of the fields
Past, and the sunshine came along with him.
" Make me thy knight, because I know, Sir King,
All that belongs to knighthood, and I love."
Such was his cry.
For he was fain to win for his lady the golden circlet and
and the golden sword which Arthur had made the prizes
of a tournament. Arthur dubbed him knight; and Pollens
won the circlet and sword for his lady—whom he had
known but a day or two ; having found her and her suite
astray in the Forest of Dean, and guided them on the
road to Camelot, to the jousts. As the lady inquired
the way, Pelleas stood• wrapt in wonder at her beauty,
and

Gazing thought,
" Is Guinevere herself so beautiful ? "

But while he gazed
The beauty of her flesh abash'd the boy,
As tho' it were the beauty of her soul :
For as the base man, julgin,g of the good,
Puts his own baseness in him by default
Of will and nature, so did Pelleas lend
All the young beauty of his own soul to hers,
Believing her ; and when she spake to him,
Stammer'd, and could not make her a reply.
The lady is scornful and a wanton; she humours Pelleas
only till he has won the prize for her, and then, returning
to her castle, causes the portcullis to be thrown down in
his face. He thinks this, and many other indignities
heaped on him, but trials of his love; and gladly ex-
changes arms with the light Sir Gawain, who undertakes
to win the lady for him, by telling her that he has slain
Pelleas, and incessantly sounding the praises of the youth.
Gawain has asked for three days "to melt her fancy," and
has entered the castle. Pollens, meanwhile, is restless, and
wanders about the castle. On the third night, unable any
longer to restrain himself, he walks up to and enters the
castle. The gates are wide open and unguarded. He seeks
his lady-love and Gawain, at first unsuccessfully
Then was he ware that white
pavilions rose,
Three from the bushes, gildpeakt: one,
Red after revel, droned her lurikme knights
Slumbering, and their three white squires across their

feet :
In one, their malice on the placid lip
Froz'n,by sweet sleep, four of her damsels lay :
And in the third, the circlet of the jousts
Bound on her brow, were Gawain and littarre.
Back, as a hand that pushes through the leaf
To find a nest and feels a snake, he drew :
Back, as a coward slinks from what he fears
To cope with, or a traitor proven, or hound
Beaten, did Pelleas in an utter shame
Creep with his shadow thro' the court again,
Fingering at his sword-handle until he steed
There on the castle-bridge once more, and thought,
I will go back, and slay them where they lie."
And so went back, and seeing them yet in sleep,
Said, "Ye, that so dishallow the holy sleep,
" Your sleep is death," and drew the sword and thought,
"What! slay a sleeping knight? the King bath bound
And sworn me to this brotherhood' again,
" Alas that ever a knight should be so false."
Then turn'd, and so retuned, and groaning laid
The naked sword athwart their naked thrcats,
There left it, and them sleeping ; and she lay,
The t it let of the tourney round her brows,
And tile sword of the tourney across her throat.
And forth he past, and mounting on his horse
Stared at her towers that, larger than themselves
In their own darkness, thronmb'd into the moon.
Then crush'd the saddle with his thighs, and ciencled
1111.haikditalaIlaaba'AYfittkiaigg ILLER4l2l9filall

A burst of titter reproaciles and fiery indigration broke
from his lips; and then
He dash'd the rowel into his horse,
And bounded forth and vanish'd thro' the night,
Then she, that felt the cold touch on her throat,
_ _

Awaking knew the sword, and turn'd herself
To Gawain: "Liar, for thou halt not slain
This Pelleas! here he stood and might have slain
Me and thyself." And he that tells the tale
Says that her ever-veering fancy turn'd
To Pelleas, as the one true knight on earth,
And only lover ; and thro' her love her life
Wasted and pined, desiring him in vain.

The outrageous suspicions and frenzied fury of the
embittered Pelleas, in his encounter with Lancelot and
with Guinevere at the close of this Idyll, lead up to the
discovery, the disgrace, the calamity, and anguish, that
give us the climax of " Guinevere.°
The fourth Idyll is the passing of King Arthur. Inc
Idylls are followed by several smaller poems—one or two
of them reprints of the pieces that some time ago appeared in
magazines, as " Lucretius," " The Victim," and " Wages."
Among the new pieces, we find a "Northern Farmer" of
the `• new style"—a sordid, hard calculator, who, in a
dialect hard to read, warns his son against marrying for
love, and drives his counsel home by echoing the jingle of
his horse's fcet,
Proputty, proputty, proputty—that's what I 'cars 'ens

sa,ay,
Proputty,proputty, proputty—Sam, thou's an ass for

thy panins :
Theer's moor sense one o' legs nor in all thy
brazens.

DR. TEMPLE'S FAREWELL TO RUGBY.

A correspondent at Rugby gives an interesting
account or Dr. Temple's farewell to the school on
Sunday. It was the last Sunday of the school year. Such
an occasion naturally draws together a number of old
Rugleinns on their flight homewards for Christmas from
Oxford and Cambridge or more distant parts of the
empire. Sunday was felt to bo not only the end of a
school year, but not improbably the end of a
very noble tradition and work, now more than a
generation old, and the elder men, at least, of those
who gathered there must have felt that it would be
very possibly for the last time, since all that binds them
to the place is now in jeopardy. The chapel was unable
to contain the crowd of old Rugbeians who attended.
Amongst those who were present, both at the morning and
afternoon service, were three sons of Arnold. It was
Communion Sunday, and an old Rugbeian who was
present, and had not been present for a quarter
of a century before, remembered that in his
time generally the sixth form, with one or
two exceptions, and a sprinkling of perhaps from forty to
fifty in the rest of the school, stayed. Tohis astonishment
on Sunday some 230 boys kept their places, and it was
touching to see how all of them tried to get to the end of
the rails at which the doctor was officiating. He, before
commencing the service, standing on the raised altar stop,
upon Arnold's grave, had said, " This is the last time I
shall receive the holy communion with you as head
master of this school. I beg of you all to remember
me in your prayers to-day." The sermon was, as usual, at
the afternoon service, following the hymn for the last
Sunday before the holidays, which ends—
" Let Thy Father-hand be shielding
All who here shall meet no more,
May their seed time past be yielding
Year by year a richer store."
The singing of thii will not be easily forgotten. The
sermon was on Gal. vi. 2, " Bear ye one another's
burthens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." This (said
tho rcacher) new cenananCment of Christ, this
law of lgie, which Paul is hero referring to, our Lord and
the Apostles place above all other commandments. How
is this? The older dispensation Lad placed the fear and

love cf God first, then the love of neighbours. Surely
the highest rule must be to love first God, then truth,
holiness, justice, and after these one another. Has the
Gospel sunk below the Law? No, for under the
Gospel, by the incarnation c f the Son of God the two
loves are united, can no longer be kept apart. There
can be no love of God apart from love of man. Christ
himself has pointed out this love of each other as the
special mode by which He would have us acknowledge

Him. Let us help one another, then, at our Lord's call,
by courage, by patience, by cordial and tender sympathy
in joy and sorrow, by faithful warning, by resignation.

. -
There are no bounds to the help which spirit can give to
spirit in the intercourse cf a ncblo life. When parted
we can still bear one another's burthens by hearty
mutual trust. There is nothing which gives more firm-
ness and constancy to the life of a man than loyal trust in
absent friends. At this point the preacher paused for
some seconds. In the chapel (crowded up to the altar rails
by old Rugbeians, for whom rows of chairs had been
brought in from the vestry) the hush was intense and
painful, until, in tones which strangelybrought back Arnold
to those who had heard him there as boys, the preacher
went on, al nearly as we can recall words which struck
like pistol shots, "The time is come when we must part.
I have seen many go away from this place to other scenes
and other duties, as God ordained. Now I must go my-
self. Twelve years of my life have been spent here on
the work, the lines of which wore laid down by a great
servant of God when I was still a boy, I have now done

my part in building up that noble spiritual temple

which Arnold planted cn this place. I leave you; but,
though parted, wo can still help one another—l you, you
me—by living as ho taught; by the resolute sacrifice of
self to duty; by the preference, at all times and in all
places, of the pure, the good; by earnest search for truth;
by the single eye fixedly on one Master, Christ. This will
bind us close together still. Thus we may yet bear one

another's burthens and so fulfil his law. Let us pray."

And so the teacher, whose loyalty to his Lord
and his brethren men who call themselves Christians
are impugning, left his work to be judged by his
Master, careless, as all true servants should be, of
every other judgment. Let him take courage. The judg-
ment of all who have taken part in or known that work is
with him already; and, if not sooner, yet when his life's
work is over, the cry will go up from a grateful and
sorrowing nation, as it rose over Arnold's early grave,
"Well done, thou good and faithful servant."