or affectation of the books of chivalry. The form of The Lady of Shalott or Sir Galahad would be quite unfit for this story. It can be treated in the fullest dramatic way; Geraint and Enid are modern characters, in every age that takes any thought about them, in the nineteenth century with Tennyson as in the twelfth with Chrestien de Troyes.
Tennyson perhaps never wrote any story with better success. The form of the dramatic monologue much more than the narrative Idyll gave Tennyson what he wanted; for him as for Browning the dramatic monologue served better than either narrative or regular drama. His various imaginative studies are turned to more profit in this way than in any other—not only in Oenone, Ulysses, Tithonus, and Lucretius, but in St Simeon Stylites, and the Northern Farmer, and many more, where Tennyson plays something like Browning's game, the humorous sophistry of different characters making out a case for themselves. It is in the dramatic Idylls that the intellectual strength of Tennyson is proved,
