* * * * *

Mr. Tennyson practises largely, and with an extraordinary skill and power, the art of designed and limited repetitions.  They bear a considerable resemblance to those Homeric formulae which have been so usefully remarked by Colonel Mure—­not the formulae of constant recurrence, which tells us who spoke and who answered, but those which are connected with pointing moral effects, and with ulterior purpose.  These repetitions tend at once to give more definite impressions of character, and to make firmer and closer the whole tissue of the poem.  Thus, in the last speech of Guinevere, she echoes back, with other ideas and expressions, the sentiment of Arthur’s affection, which becomes in her mouth sublime:—­

  I must not scorn myself:  he loves me still: 
  Let no one dream but that he loves me still.

She prays admission among the nuns, that she may follow the pious and peaceful tenor of their life (p. 260):—­

  And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer
  The sombre close of that voluptuous day
  Which wrought the ruin of my lord the King.

And it is but a debt of justice to the Guinevere of the romancers to observe, that she loses considerably by the marked transposition which Mr. Tennyson has effected in the order of greatness between Lancelot and Arthur.  With him there is an original error in her estimate, independently of the breach of a positive and sacred obligation.  She prefers the inferior man; and this preference implies a rooted ethical defect in her nature.  In the romance of Sir T. Mallory the preference she gives to Lancelot would have been signally just, had she been free to choose.  For Lancelot is of an indescribable grandeur; but the limit of Arthur’s character is thus shown in certain words that he uses, and that Lancelot never could have spoken.  “Much more I am sorrier for my good knight’s loss than for the loss of my queen; for queens might I have enough, but, such a fellowship of good knights shall never be together in company.”

We began with the exordium of this great work:  we must not withhold the conclusion.  We left her praying admission to the convent—­

  She said.  They took her to themselves; and she,
  Still hoping, fearing, “is it yet too late?”
  Dwelt with them, till in time their Abbess died. 
  Then she, for her good deeds and her pure life,
  And for the power of ministration in her,
  And likewise for the high rank she had borne,
  Was chosen Abbess:  there, an Abbess, lived
  For three brief years; and there, an Abbess, pass’d
  To where beyond these voices there is peace.