. . and now I
see and understand that my old sin hindereth and shameth me." He was
human, the Lancelot of Malory, and "fell to his old love again," with
a heavy heart, and with long penance at the end. How such good
knights can be deemed conscienceless and void of courtesy one knows
not, except by a survival of the Puritanism of Ascham. But Tennyson
found in the book what is in the book--honour, conscience, courtesy,
and the hero -
"Whose honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."
Malory's book, which was Tennyson's chief source, ends by being the
tragedy of the conscience of Lancelot. Arthur is dead, or "In Avalon
he groweth old." The Queen and Lancelot might sing, as Lennox
reports that Queen Mary did after Darnley's murder -
"Weel is me
For I am free."
"Why took they not their pastime?" Because conscience forbade, and
Guinevere sends her lover far from her, and both die in religion.
Thus Malory's "fierce lusty epic" is neither so lusty nor so fierce
but that it gives Tennyson his keynote: the sin that breaks the fair
companionship, and is bitterly repented.
"The knights are almost too polite to kill each other," the critic
urges. In Malory they are sometimes quite too polite to kill each
other. Sir Darras has a blood-feud against Sir Tristram, and Sir
Tristram is in his dungeon. Sir Darras said, "Wit ye well that Sir
Darras shall never destroy such a noble knight as thou art in prison,
howbeit that thou hast slain three of my sons, whereby I was greatly
aggrieved.
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