But we have reserved our best until last: for surely if it is pleasant to hear our friends grumble, it is most pleasant of all when we are the cause of their grumbling :

The

SIR, No one is a greater admirer of your magazine than myself, but it has lately been striking into a line against which I must protest. Two articles have appeared, one on Country Parsons and one on Colonial Bishops, quite uncalled for, and written certainly with little knowledge of the subject. I have lived all my life in the country, and have no hesitation in saying that the country parsons enumerated have no existence in the present day. writer has either taken the portraits from story books, or has "evolved them from his inner consciousness." Nor did I ever read anything more absurd than his statements "that bishops were perpetually quarrelling with and excommunicating each other," and "that most of them spend the greater part of their time in England." One would imagine from this that our local papers were filled with episcopal abuse.

Moreover, I must be allowed to say that a school magazine is not the place for people to air their theories on such subjects. It seems to me somewhat unseemly for a school boy thus to attack overworked and underpaid men of mature age and responsible position.

Hoping, then, that we may be spared future instalments of what threatens to become a series,

I remain, yours truly,

Φιλαλήθης.

This is really too bad. A Sufferer would obliterate our poetry and anons our prose, so that between the two we should be left desolate. Þaλions need have no fears about a series: the next step would be a paper on English Bishops and Archbishops, and as yet the author of Country Parsons has only audacity enough "to attack overworked and underpaid men."

POLYPHEMUS.

GRIM Polyphemus loved another's love.
For his one eye, as erst he lay above
On breezy heights beside a summer sea,
Saw Galatea loiter laughingly

Below with others. Then upon his soul,
Half brute, half human, silently there stole
New life and impulse, and a long desire,
That glowed within him like an inner fire,

To win her, and the life of soul began-
So first the monster yielded to the man.

For he had known things beautiful, nor known
Their beauty; but insensate and alone

Lived lawless, giantwise, with flocks and herds,
A terror to those others; slow his words,
And slow the thoughts he rolled with rolling eye.
Daily he saw Dawn rise, and daily die,
Grey Titan seeking rosy-bosomed rest,
And Procris fading on her hunter's breast.
Daily he saw the tragedy of day;
The Sun God scale night's citadels to slay
Dragons of darkness, misty coils, and sink
To wed pale Iole by Ocean's brink.

Yes he had seen things beautiful: had seen
Gold Summer, Autumn red, the russet green
Of April oaks; had heard full-throated songs
Of Philomela, pouring forth her wrongs
From moonlight branches: felt the luscious ease
Of Zephyr toying with the flowery leas:
Had seen, heard, felt,-and hated: for the blood
Of the old Titan urged him, and his mood
Was fierce and lawless, breathing of the prime,
And earth-born jealousies and ruined Time.

But all his wooing prospered not: but drove
Her far for though he cooed like dove to dove
With mellow murmurous note, and piped his bass
Into a tremulous treble: though his face,
Shorn of its shaggy manhood, smiling, made
Remembrance shudder: though the matted braid,
Sheared with a captive sickle, bristled straight
To right, to left, and endwise: though his gait,
Pinched in tight swathings of a civic gown,
Did mimic gentle footsteps, as the clown
Treads tiptoe on soft carpets: though he sought
To win her vanity with gifts, and caught
Mild doves and callow eaglets, and the beasts
That roam through field and forest: piled up feasts
Of flesh and fowl, and mountain cheeses, churned
From herds his own; yet all her heart was turned
To loathing, as the flower that loves the lea
Bent landward pales with loathing of the sea.

Then though he knew himself uncouth, and knew Himself no wooer, stalked he forth, and took Young Acis, as he piped beside the brook,

And griped him, bellowing, "Thou shouldst feed me,

thou

Art my choice food; but I will spare thee now
For this end. Woo yon lady with thy song,
And win her for me, I have wooed her long."
And Acis gladly, for his heart was hers,
And Galatea loved him, sang, by furze
And copse and hazlewood and steep hill side,
Until she gave her troth to be a bride,
Not of that other, but himself. But he,
The Cyclops, self-arraigned by jealousy,
Half rued his purpose, followed soft, and heard
The charmful song, the oath, the plighted word,
Unleashed his fury, hurled the fatal stone,
That crushed his hatred and his hopes in one.

N. B.

THE HOLY GRAIL.

Ir would be a study of much interest to trace the relation of the Idylls of the King to the whole mass of Arthurian legends from which Mr. Tennyson has quarried. The Idylls when compared with Malory's Mort Arthur resemble the highly finished pictures of an artist set beside a dim vast arraswork on which a hundred hands have laboured. In the process of elaboration these pictures have lost much of the native grace and subtle charm which distinguish their originals; but they have gained in form, distinctness, and adaptation to modern taste. Thus we fancy there will always be some division of opinion as to the merits of this portion of the Laureate's work. Those who have learned to love the old romance and whose imaginations have been strongly stimulated by its weird and dreamy fancies will be inclined to think that the modern poems have nothing so truly fascinating as the rich and wondrous magic world of the romance to offer. But the vast majority of readers, to whom antiquity is in itself repulsive and who have no leisure for reverie, will doubtless thank the poet for breathing a new life into the dead forms of the past. But for his loving and careful transscripts from the original, the Arthurian cycle would have remained unknown to all except a few students and poets. Whatever, then, may be the shortcomings of his achievement we must be grateful to him. And perhaps in no

case is our gratitude more due than in the case of the Holy Grail for here he has inspired a dim and difficult allegory with meaning that endures for all time. In order to appreciate this poem, let us see what place the Quest of the San Graal took among the incidents recorded in the legends of the Table Round.

To begin with, we must remember that the cycle of Arthurian romance is a complete mirror of medieval knighthood. As such, it presents two distinct conceptions of the chivalrous character-the one joyous and secular, the other pious and ecclesiastical. The stories of Lancelot, Arthur, Tristram, and Gawain exhibit the one ideal: those of Galahad, Percival, and Bors the other. In the one set of tales we hear of tournaments, magical adventures, loves in ladies' bowers, and warfare; in the other of spiritual temptations, supernatural visions, and revelations of mysterious truths. Nor were these two types of chivalry merely fanciful. In the world of fact as in romance they were distinguished. The legends of Lancelot were composed for castled barons, living in luxury: the legends of the San Graal for Knights Templars, following crusades and vowed to chastity. In the middle ages a knight might either be a courtier, a man of the world, a ruler-and in this case his hero of romance was Lancelot, or Gawain, or Arthur: or he might be half a monk,—and in that case his legendary saint was Galahad, or Percival, or good Sir Bors. In the Arthurian romance compiled by Sir Thomas Malory these two ideals of the knightly character are exhibited in some antagonism. Love, liberality and hardihood, are at first the virtues of Arthur's table; until love gives birth to crime, liberality becomes license, and hardihood is changed to wantonness: then a cloud of conscious sin descends upon the goodly company like a twilight of the gods, and the hearts of men anticipate a change. At this point a season of miracles begins: chastity and religious fervour are set forth as the ideal virtues of the knight. Love for God supplants the love of ladies in the breasts of Galahad and Percival; the honourable order of chivalry becomes a priesthood for the service of the Church. The knights turn hermits and die in the odour of sanctity, or pursue the quest of the holy vessel. But after a time things fall again into their old courses: the evil grows from bad to worse; the saintly knights effect no radical regeneration of society, and the whole order ends in the death of Arthur, betrayed by Guinevere, deserted by Lancelot, attacked at fearful odds by Modred.

After this fashion does the old romance set forth the two types of knighthood, seeming in its uncritical way to intimate that the spiritual life of sacerdotal chivalry is an ark of refuge only for the few, not the means of salvation for the many.

The legend of the Holy Grail, on which Mr. Tennyson has founded his poem, was expressly written to glorify the knightly orders, especially that of the Templars, who had celibacy for their rule, the Virgin Mary for their lady, and the Eucharistic Sacrament for their chief mystery. As for the Grail itself, the legend runs that after Christ's death Joseph of Arimathea brought with him to England the Paschal Vessel which our Lord had used at the last supper. This Cup, or Grail, as it was called, remained in a state of mystical seclusion, watched by angels and visionary priests, who bore it from place to place and showed it only to the holiest and purest knights and hermits. To have the vision of the Cup vouchsafed to him, to be fed with the consecrated wafer by its attendant priests, was the earnest desire of all spiritually minded knights. But to none but the spotlessly chaste was this favour accorded. Bors, Galahad and Percival, were the only three who had it they were the three white bulls of Gawain's vision,* who fed among the black and wanton herd of Arthur's court. Sir Bors had one spot on his whiteness, for he had been the father of a son. Percival symbolised pure faith,-"in him the very faith stood most." Galahad crowned all knighthood by his surpassing beauty of soul, virginity and sacred zeal. For him the Perilous Seat of the Round Table, on which durst never man sit, had been ordained. Angels surrounded him, and he was called the "servant of God." Next to these three came Lancelot, who, had he been pure, would assuredly have achieved the vision of the Grail: but by reason of his guilty love for Guinevere he, in the words of the old chronicle, "though he passeth in manhood and prowess all other, yet in these spiritual things he hath many his better." In spite of his imperfections we are made to love Lancelot : his efforts to repent, his mildness and courtesy in humiliation, his passionate desire to see the Grail-all this wins our sympathy for him, away from the spotless Galahad, predestined to be spiritual king. In passing, we may observe that Tennyson has well discerned and sustained

* See Malory's Mort Arthur, vol. iii. ch. 65. The whole Quest is in this vol., chs. 29 to 105.