Critical judgment upon _The Vision of Sir Launfal_ is generally severe
in respect to its structural faults. Mr. Greenslet declares that
"through half a century, nine readers out of ten have mistaken
Lowell's meaning," even the "numerous commentators" have "interpreted
the poem as if the young knight actually adventured the quest and
returned from it at the end of years, broken and old." This, however,
must be regarded as a rather exaggerated estimate of the lack of unity
and consistency in the poem. Stedman says: "I think that _The Vision
of Sir Launfal_ owed its success quite as much to a presentation of
nature as to its misty legend. It really is a landscape poem, of which
the lovely passage, 'And what is so rare as a day in June?' and the
wintry prelude to Part Second, are the specific features." And the
English critic, J. Churton Collins, thinks that "_Sir Launfal_, except
for the beautiful nature pictures, scarcely rises above the level of
an Ingoldsby Legend."

The popular judgment of the poem (which after all is the important
judgment) is fairly stated by Mr. Greenslet: "There is probably no
poem in American literature in which a visionary faculty like that [of
Lowell] is expressed with such a firm command of poetic background and
variety of music as in _Sir Launfal_ ... its structure is far from
perfect; yet for all that it has stood the searching test of time: it
is beloved now by thousands of young American readers, for whom it has
been a first initiation to the beauty of poetic idealism."

While studying _The Vision of Sir Launfal_ the student should be made
familiar with Tennyson's _Sir Galahad_ and _The Holy Grail_, and the
libretto of Wagner's _Parsifal_. Also Henry A. Abbey's magnificent
series of mural paintings in the Boston Public Library, representing
the Quest of the Holy Grail, may be utilized in the _Copley Prints_.