Mary Baldwin College - Bluestocking Yearbook (Staunton, VA)

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The Augusta Seminary Annual. 3 Ages, for in them were pictured the strong who defended the weak and oppressed, the women who were loved with a faithful and unswerving devotion and men who led pure lives and served conscience and king. In the instances of sin — and there were those even in these mythical stories — evil is shown in its true light and its debasing effect on the character is revealed. As to the influence on literature, we find other stories, whose heroes are possessed of the same virtues attributed to Arthur, showing how his character — the highest ideal of chivalric times — had permeated the minds of the people. In 1 147 the legends were collected, revised and enlarged upon by a Welsh priest nam- ed Geoffrey of Monmouth. He traced the history of England from the landing of Brut, the grand-son Aeneas, through the history of King Arthur and his knights down to to Cadwallo who died in 689. It is probable that Geoffrey simply collected and cleverly put together the legends of his country, though he pretended to have revised some Welsh manuscripts that had been given him. His Chronicles or Historia Britonum as they were called found many delighted readers, but the historians of that time were very angry and said that he had lied shamelessly and saucily throughout. In the ninth j ear of Edward IV., Sir Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte d ' Arthur. This book has been called the work of a man of genius. Its popularity is shown by the fact that it was among the first books printed by Caxton a few years later, Caxton himself being one of those who loved noble acts of chivalry. Dryden, Milton and others thought of writing an epic based on the Arthurian legends, but did not carry out their intentions ; so we find the greates t example of the influence of the legends in Tennyson ' s Idyls, which, it is prophe- sied will retain their popularity in future ages, and, being ranked with Paradise Lost and the Fairy Queen, will be considered one of the greates epics in the English language. Anne Riddle.

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2 ' The Azigiisia Seminary Animal. to his aid in fighting the Picts and Scots, Hengist, a leader of the Saxons. The latter conquered not only the Picts and Scots but the Celts themselves, and a line of Saxon kings was established, from whom Queen Victoria can trace her descent. But the Celts could not bring themselves to admit their humiliation, and in their stories and songs substituted for real history the prophecies of Myrdhinn concerning Arthur. The bard himself retained an important position in the story as the wizard, Merlin — the lyatin- ized form of the name Myrdhinn as these legends grew into a fiction, if not stranger at least more agreeable than truth, the character of the real Arthur was made more beautiful and noble by being invested with the virtues of various other Welsh heroes. He was surrounded by Knights who were to imitate his virtues, to honor King and conscience, to lead pure lives, to redress wrong and to love faithfully one maiden only. Some of the Britons emigrating to Armorica or Brittany in north-western France, carried these stories with them and the po- etic and imaginative Armoricans were much delighted by them. They became popular at once and were related from house to house by story-tellers, who supplied in France the place of the minstrels or gleemen in England and the rhapsodists of the an- cient Greeks. The people having ceased to believe in the stories concerning Charlemagne, these British legends were substituted and had become so popular at the time of the Norman invasion of England in 1066, that they were carried by them back into that country. Marie, daughter of Louis VII. and Elinor, and Count- ess of Champagne, when living in England at the court of Henry II., employed Chrestien de Troyes to compile and revise these legends. This he did, surrounding Arthur with knights and chivalric barons. His most successful poems were Eancelot, Tristan, and Perceval, and the story of the latter ' s search for the Holy Graal was introduced into the series by de Troyes. His whole poem which was partially completed after his death by two minor poets, consisted of sixty-three thousand lines. The real importance of his work lies in the fact that it represents the so- cial, moral and political ideal of his time and that it exercised a great influence on the life of that and the following age, as well as on all succeeding literature. Back to these romances we can trace some of the noblest of the aims and ideals of the Middle

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Mi El The Augusta Seminary Amuial. 11. ' ' Not of the howling dervishes of song, Who craze the brain with their delirious song, Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart. Therefore to thee, the laurel leaves belong, To thee our love and our allegiance. For thy allegiance to the poet ' s art. ENNYSON is by emminence the representative poet of J the recent era. Not, like one or another of his com- peers, representative of the melody, wisdom, passion, or other partial phase of the era, but of the time itself, with its diverse elements in harmonious conjunction. By the weight of his thought and the richness of his poetic expression, he has given delight to the reading world of his day and has won our gratitude as a purifier and guardian of the language. He has gleaned from all nature and all history what was most lofty and aim- iable. Not unfrequently he rises to the Shakespearian level in the beauty and picturesqueness of his expression, but he does not possess that wild forest-like freedom which so charcterizes the great master. Tennyson ' s command of English is wonderful. He com- bined old words into new epithets, he daringly mingled all col- ors to bring out tints that never were on sea or shore. His words gleam like pearls and opals, like rubies and emeralds. The stern vocables of the English language under the power of his imagination became gracefully brilliant as the leopards of Bacchus soft and glowing as the Cytherean doves. No finer group of songs has heen produced in this centurj ' than the melodies, Sweet and Eow. The splendor falls on castle walls, and Ask me no more. Not one of the blank verse songs, in his Arthurian epic, equals in structure or depth of feeling, Tears, idle tears, and O swallow, swallow, flying, flying south! What witchery of landscape and action; what fair women and brave men! The distinctive character of In Memoriam is deter- mined b} its having been composed, not within the compass of a few weeks, expressly in honor of a deceased friend, like Mil- ton ' s Lycidas and Shelley ' s Adonais, but during a number of years and apparently without being designed as a single poem.