"
Vivien is modern enough--if any type of character is modern: at all
events there is no such Blanche Amory of a girl in the old legends
and romances. In these Merlin fatigues the lady by his love; she
learns his arts, and gets rid of him as she can. His forebodings in
the Idyll contain a magnificent image:-
"There lay she all her length and kiss'd his feet,
As if in deepest reverence and in love.
A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe
Of samite without price, that more exprest
Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs,
In colour like the satin-shining palm
On sallows in the windy gleams of March:
And while she kiss'd them, crying, 'Trample me,
Dear feet, that I have follow'd thro' the world,
And I will pay you worship; tread me down
And I will kiss you for it'; he was mute:
So dark a forethought roll'd about his brain,
As on a dull day in an Ocean cave
The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall
In silence."
We think of the blinded Cyclops groping round his cave, like "the
blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall."
The richness, the many shining contrasts and immortal lines in
Vivien, seem almost too noble for a subject not easily redeemed, and
the picture of the ideal Court lying in full corruption. Next to
Elaine, Jowett wrote that he "admired Vivien the most (the naughty
one), which seems to me a work of wonderful power and skill. It is
most elegant and fanciful.
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