The Book of Marvellous Adventures, & other Books of the Morte D'Arthur [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION. i When Malory, pursuing his French originals in romance, arrived in turn at the Quest of the Holy Grail, and added it to the Morte cTArthur, he increased profoundly the total effect of his book. Far from spoiling the main Arthurian fable, as some critics would persuade us, the addition only serves, surely, to intensify it. The " Quest" fills five books of the present volume, beginning with the Book of Sir Galahad, which is the twelfth of Caxton's original division, and thus succeeding admirably to the purely secular marvellous adventures of Sir Tristram and Sir Launcelot. But beyond its own spiritual imaginations, and its individual effect, the episode of the Quest, in Malory's setting at any rate, has its bearing on the whole burden of the Arthurian tragedy. Already, in the opening chapters of the Book of Sir Galahad, an ominous note is sounded for the future ill-fate of the joyous Arthurian company that appeared in the earlier books of Malory. It seems to announce the beginning of the end, in its certain foreboding of the disruption of the Round Table, and the death of Arthur. When at Camelot the Holy Grail, covered with white samite, had been borne through the hall, so that none "might see it, nor who bare it," and when Sir Gawaine had taken the vow of its quest, followed by most of his fellows of the Round Table; then, as we may recall, the premonition of disasters to come suddenly overcame King Arthur.