e, worth more than all the ancestries of
buried kings. More: Tennyson was as much self-made as King Arthur. He
made a house which rose to the sound of poet's lute, rehearsing, in our
days, the story of Orpheus in the remote yesterdays. So myths come to
be history. And who would not rather be author of "The Lotos-Eaters,"
and "Oenone," and "Ulysses," and "Enoch Arden," and "In Memoriam" than
to have been possessed, with Sir Aylmer Aylmer, of

"Spacious hall,
Hung with a hundred shields, the family tree
Sprung from the midriff of a prostrate king?"

King Arthur's knights were _novi viri_. Whence came Lancelot and
Geraint and Sir Percivale? And how came they, save as

"Rising on their dead selves
To higher things?"

Arthur, at whose back march all the legions of Tennyson's poetry
celebrative of manhood,--Arthur asserts the nobleness of manhood,
irrespective of the accidents of wealth or birth. Many scenes in
Tennyson are taken from the cottage. "The May Queen," "The Gardener's
Daughter," "The Grandmother," "Rizpah," and, above all, "Enoch Arden,"
are poems showing how poetry dwells in the hearts of common folks. The
verse of books they may not know; the verse of sentiment they are at
home with. Birth is not a term in the proportion of worth; and I hold
Arthur one of the strongest voices of our century assertive of the
sufficiency of manhood. Self-made and greatly made was this king at
Camelot.

King Arthur was optimist. He expected good in men, was not suspicious.
"Interpreting others by his own pure heart," you interject, "He was
duped." The harlot Vivien called him fool, and despised him; but she
was fallen, shameful, treacherous, and, what was worse, so fallen as
not to see the beauty in untarnished manhood, which is the last sign of
turpitude. Many bad men have still left an honest admiration for a
goodness themselves are alien to. Vivien was so lost as that goodness,
manhood, knightliness, sweet and tall as mountain pines, made no appeal
to her. Filth is dearer to some than mountain air. She was such. A
fallen woman, given over to her fall, is horrible in depravity. Merlin
saw that her estimate of Arthur was the measure of herself. Beatrix
Esmond did not appreciate Henry Esmond; for the Pretender was her
measure of soul. Though to her praise be it said that, in her old age,
Esmond dead, she thought of him as women think of Christ. Arthur
believed in men, supposing them