to be transcripts of himself; and in so
doing in details, he erred. His philosophy of goodness was erroneous;
for he held to the theory of goodness by environment, fencing knights
and ladies about with his own fine honor and chastity, supposing pure
environment would make them pure, forgetting how God's kingdom is
always within. Environment is not gifted to make men good. Arthur
believed men pure, nor was he wholly wrong. The men about him gave the
lie to his expectation; but these moral ragamuffins did not invalidate
the king's faith. The road taken was not the world. Lancelot and
Guinevere and Gawain and Modred, false? False! Pelleas, seeing
Ettarre lustful and untrue, digging rowels into his steed and crying,
"False! false!" was not wise as Arthur. The optimist is right. Some
were false, 't is true; but others were true as crystal streams, that
all night long give back the heavens star for star. There were and are
true men and women. Our neighborhood, if so be it is foul, is not the
earth. Enid, and Elaine, and Sir Galahad, and Sir Percivale, and
Gareth, and others not designated, were pure. Snows on city streets
are stained with soot and earth; snows on the mountains are as white as
woven of the beams of noon. King Arthur, expecting the better of the
world, in so doing followed the example of his Savior, Christ, who was
most surely optimist. King Arthur, in his midnight hour, when knight
and wife and Lancelot deserted him, when his "vast pity almost made him
die," still kept the lamp of hope aflame and sheltered from the wind,
lest it flame, flare, and die. His fool still loved him and clasped
his feet; and bold Sir Bedivere staid with him through the thunder
shock of that last battle in the west. Not all were false. Some
friends abide. Though his application was not always wise, his
attitude was justified. Having done his part, he had not been
betrayed; for he was still victor. Lancelot and Guinevere were
defeated, ruined, as were Gawain and Ettarre, who, as they wake, find
across their naked throats the bare sword of Pelleas; then Ettarre knew
what knight was knightly. Goodness wins in the long battle, though
supposed defeated in the petty frays, Tennyson makes his ideal man an
optimist. "Maud" is a study in pessimism. The lover's blood is
tainted with insanity. He raves, is suspicious, is at war with all
things and all men; rails at the social system, not from any broad
sympathy with bett