Little is known concerning Sir Thomas Malory. He seems to have been a knight and country gentleman of Warwickshire, a member of Parliament in the reign of Henry VI, and later a soldier on the side of Lancaster in the Wars of the Roses. As a result of the victory of the party of York he had to retire from public life when Edward IV came to the throne, and lived quietly at his Warwickshire estate. He was familiar with life at court and with men-at-arms and he knew how popular the stories of King Arthur were becoming in England. So, being a man of education, he set to work to make a collection of the legends, using as his chief sources the French romances.
Malory showed considerable originality in carrying out his plan. He made Arthur the central figure, taking the story of Merlin as an introduction to the birth of Arthur, instead of as a separate legend, and ending his account soon after the death of the king. He omitted a number of the older legends that had little to do with Arthur, many of them good stories, such as that of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He made the England of his Arthur something like the England he knew, and his people became real and living instead of fanciful figures out of a far-distant past. His descriptions are vivid and lively and his style so engaging that his work of the fifteenth century is much read to-day. Three characters stand out from all the rest, Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere, and these three became in all stories and poems subsequent to Malory's time the main figures of the legends.
Matthew Arnold attributed to Homer three great epic traits, swiftness, simplicity, and nobility. It is these three characteristics that have made the _Morte Darthur_ so deservedly famous.
With the printing of Malory's book by the first English printer, William Caxton, in 1485, we come to the end of the Middle Ages in literature. Manuscripts written out laboriously by monks and clerks were now to give way to the printed page. The age of Elizabeth was less than a century away, one of the golden ages of the poets. Yet few of the Elizabethans touched on the story of Arthur. The main exception was Edmund Spenser, who made Prince Arthur the hero of his great poem _The Faerie Queene_, but Spenser's Arthur and his knights and ladies have little in common with the figures in the old romances.
The succeeding centuries, great as they were in English writers of genius, paid little attention to Arthur. Milton and Dryden made little use of the legends. Stories of ancient chivalry lost their vogue, novels were becoming popular and the poets chose themes closer to their own times and point of view. Not until the nineteenth century did Arthur come into his own again. Then the Victorian poets turned to him for inspiration. William Morris wrote _The Defence of Guenevere_, and a host of lesser poets tried their hands on similar themes. Swinburne told the story of _Tristram of Lyonesse_ and the _Tale of Balen_, and James Russell Lowell composed his beautiful poem _The Vision of Sir Launfal_. Matthew Arnold wrote _Tristram and Iseult_. In 1850 Richard Wagner, the great German composer, produced his opera _Lohengrin_, and followed it with _Tristan und Isolde_ and _Parsifal_. These tell the old stories in somewhat new form, and follow the early French romances rather than Malory.
But the true descendant of Chrétien de Troies and Malory was Alfred Tennyson. The great work of this poet's life was his _Idylls of the King_, one of the finest achievements of English literature. He owed his inspiration chiefly to Malory. "The vision of Arthur as I have drawn him," Tennyson said to his son, "had come upon me when, little more than a boy, I first lighted upon Malory." He covered almost the entire field of the legends. The _Idylls of the King_ are _The Coming of Arthur_, _Geraint and Enid_, _Merlin and Vivien_, _Lancelot and Elaine_, _The Holy Grail_, _Pelleas and Ettarre_, _Balin and Balan_, _The Last Tournament_, _Guinevere_, and _The Passing of Arthur_.
Tennyson gives to the stories far more allegory, far more philosophy than the early poets gave them. His age was interested in philosophy and so, as was the case with each of the earlier poets, Tennyson handled the legends after the fashion of his own times. In his pages we see the characters as actual men and women, subtly drawn, concerned with right and wrong far more than with mere knightly adventures. Arthur and Lancelot and Guinevere hold the center of the stage, and it is the fate of these three that provides the great moving motive of the poems.
To Tennyson we owe the most nearly perfect version of the story that dates back to a dim and legendary England. What verse more beautiful than his to tell of chivalry?
"Then, in the boyhood of the year, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere Rode thro' the coverts of the deer, With blissful treble ringing clear. She seem'd a part of joyous Spring: A gown of grass-green silk she wore, Buckled with golden clasps before; A light-green tuft of plumes she bore Closed in a golden ring."
In beauty and dignity and human interest Tennyson gives us the great world of Arthurian legend in its most perfect form.
Malory's _Morte Darthur_ was not Tennyson's only source for the stories of his Idylls. The adventures of Geraint he took from the _Mabinogion_, a collection of mediæval Welsh tales translated with great charm and accuracy by Lady Charlotte Guest, and published in 1838. Also, though to a very limited extent, he drew some of his incidents from the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth and the other early writers of chronicles.
The great panorama of stories that we group together under the title of _King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table_, when they are told in prose, are usually taken from Malory's book, the _Morte Darthur_, condensed in size, for Malory was frequently verbose, and related in more modern English. In this volume we have used as a basis the version prepared by Sir James Knowles, which is an abridgment of Malory's work as it was printed by Caxton, with a few additions from Geoffrey of Monmouth and other sources. To this we have added the story of Sir Gawain and the Maid with the Narrow Sleeves, which comes originally from the poem of _Perceval_ by Chrétien de Troies.
The stories seem naturally to group themselves into four divisions, The Coming of Arthur and the Founding of the Round Table, The Adventures of the Champions of the Round Table, Sir Galahad and the Quest of the Holy Grail, and The Passing of Arthur. Into these come all the great characters of the legends and all the surpassing adventures of the king and his knights.
The story of how a half-barbarous British Chieftain became the greatest king of mediæval chivalry is a romance in itself. To him poets and chroniclers of all lands added one valorous knight after another, one amazing adventure on top of another, until the result was the greatest collection of legends that have gathered about any king in history. The story of the origin and growth of these world-famous legends is told in a most delightful book, _The Arthur of the English Poets_, by Howard Maynadier, and those who wish to get the historical background of King Arthur should turn to its pages.
Those who love brave and knightly deeds, those who love the gorgeous trappings of mediæval romance, come to the story of Arthur and his Round Table, of Lancelot and Perceval and Galahad and Gawain, of Guinevere and Elaine, and of the Quest for the Holy Grail, and there shall be found the glories that you seek. The king and his knights ride out from Camelot. Here shall you join them on their great adventures!
RUPERT S. HOLLAND.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE COMING OF ARTHUR AND THE FOUNDING OF THE ROUND TABLE
I MERLIN FORETELLS THE BIRTH OF ARTHUR
II THE CROWNING OF ARTHUR AND THE SWORD EXCALIBUR
III ARTHUR DRIVES THE SAXONS FROM HIS REALM
IV THE KING'S MANY AND GREAT ADVENTURES
V SIR BALIN FIGHTS WITH HIS BROTHER, SIR BALAN
VI THE MARRIAGE OF ARTHUR AND GUINEVERE AND THE FOUNDING OF THE ROUND TABLE
VII THE ADVENTURE OF ARTHUR AND SIR ACCOLON OF GAUL
VIII ARTHUR IS CROWNED EMPEROR AT ROME
IX SIR GAWAIN AND THE MAID WITH THE NARROW SLEEVES
THE CHAMPIONS OF THE ROUND TABLE
X THE ADVENTURES OF SIR LANCELOT
XI THE ADVENTURES OF SIR BEAUMAINS OR SIR GARETH
XII THE ADVENTURES OF SIR TRISTRAM
SIR GALAHAD AND THE QUEST OF THE HOLY GRAIL
XIII THE KNIGHTS GO TO SEEK THE GRAIL
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR
XIV SIR LANCELOT AND THE FAIR ELAINE
XV THE WAR BETWEEN ARTHUR AND LANCELOT AND THE PASSING OF ARTHUR
KING ARTHUR AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE
THE COMING OF ARTHUR AND THE FOUNDING OF THE ROUND TABLE
I
MERLIN FORETELLS THE BIRTH OF ARTHUR
King Vortigern the usurper sat upon his throne in London, when, suddenly, upon a certain day, ran in a breathless messenger, and cried aloud--
"Arise, Lord King, for the enemy is come; even Ambrosius and Uther, upon whose throne thou sittest--and full twenty thousand with them--and they have sworn by a great oath, Lord, to slay thee, ere this year be done; and even now they march towards thee as the north wind of winter for bitterness and haste."