Tennyson

Published 1842; among ‘English Idyls’. Written after 1835 (FitzGerald), probably 1837–8, judging by the references to skating and geology (Mem. i 150, 162 – noted by W. C. De Vane). The draft in H.Lpr 53 is watermarked 1838. This frame for Morte d’Arthur (both introduction and conclusion – see p. 163) did not accompany the poem in T.’s trial-edition of 1842 (T.J. Wise, Bibliography of Tennyson, i 77). For Leigh Hunt’s strictures on T.’s framing, see Godiva (II 171). FitzGerald says that it was added to Morte d’Arthur ‘to anticipate or excuse the “faint Homeric echoes”’, and ‘to give a reason for telling an old-world [Fairy-] tale’; he compares the framework of The Day-Dream (p. 168). It hints at T.’s ambitions for an epic on Arthur, though the Morte was to be the last, not the penultimate, book (l. 41). The germ of such an introduction was probably Morte d’Arthur 225, Fitzwilliam MS (p. 161): ‘Before the eyes of ladies thrice as fair/ As those that win the love of modern men.’ T. says: ‘Mrs Browning wanted me to continue this: she has put my answer in Aurora Leigh.

At Francis Allen’s on the Christmas-eve, –

The game of forfeits done – the girls all kissed

Beneath the sacred bush and past away –

The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,

The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl,

Then half-way ebbed: and there we held a talk,

How all the old honour had from Christmas gone,

Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games

In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out

With cutting eights that day upon the pond,

Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,

I bumped the ice into three several stars,

Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard

The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,

Now harping on the church-commissioners,

Now hawking at Geology and schism;

Until I woke, and found him settled down

Upon the general decay of faith

Right through the world, ‘at home was little left,

And none abroad: there was no anchor, none,

To hold by.’ Francis, laughing, clapt his hand

On Everard’s shoulder, with ‘I hold by him.’

‘And I,’ quoth Everard, ‘by the wassail-bowl.’

‘Why yes,’ I said, ‘we knew your gift that way

At college: but another which you had,

I mean of verse (for so we held it then),

What came of that?’ ‘You know,’ said Frank, ‘he burnt

His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books’ –

And then to me demanding why? ‘Oh, sir,

He thought that nothing new was said, or else

Something so said’twas nothing – that a truth

Looks freshest in the fashion of the day:

God knows: he has a mint of reasons: ask.

It pleased me well enough.’ ‘Nay, nay,’ said Hall,

‘Why take the style of those heroic times?

For nature brings not back the Mastodon,

Nor we those times; and why should any man

Remodel models? these twelve books of mine

Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth,

Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt.’ ‘But I,’

Said Francis, ‘picked the eleventh from this hearth

And have it: keep a thing, its use will come.

I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.’

He laughed, and I, though sleepy, like a horse

That hears the corn-bin open, pricked my ears;

For I remembered Everard’s college fame

When we were Freshmen: then at my request

He brought it; and the poet little urged,

But with some prelude of disparagement,

Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes,

Deep-chested music, and to this result.

225 The Epic [Morte d’Arthur]