UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
name to be classed with the names, whether forged or genuine, of the rancorous and reptile crew of poeticules who decompose into criticasters; I do not remember to have ever as yet been driven by despair or hunger or malevolence to take up the trade of throwing dirt in the dark; nor am I conscious, at sight of my superiors, of an instant impulse to revile them. My first instinct, in such a case, is not the instinct of backbiting; I have even felt at such times some moderate sense of delight and admiration, and some slight pleasure in the attempt to express it loyally by such modest thanksgiving as I might. I hold myself therefore free to say what I think on this matter without fear of being taxed with the motives of a currish malignant. It seems to me that the moral tone of the Arthurian story has been on the whole lowered and degraded by Mr. Tennyson's mode of treatment. Wishing to make his central figure the noble and perfect symbol of an ideal man, he has removed not merely the excuse but the explanation of the fatal and tragic loves of Launcelot and Guenevere. The hinge of the whole legend of the Round Table, from its first glory to its final fall, is the incestuous birth of Mordred from the connexion of Arthur with his half-sister, unknowing and unknown; as surely as the hinge of the Oresteia from first to last is the sacrifice at Aulis. From the immolation of Iphigenia springs the wrath of Clytæmnestra,
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