The Noble and Joyous History of King Arthur [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION. Of Malory and his Morte dJArthur, and the wider field of romance into which the book leads us, so much has been abstrusely written in the last four or five years, that the simple critic, delighting in the thing for its own sake, had needs hesitate where so many of authority have been before him. Since the present writer first wrote on the subject, with more enthusiasm, it may be owned, than science, many contributions have been made to it. The legends embodied by Malory have been learnedly dealt with, in terms of folk-lore, philology, and the like, by Professor Rhys and Mr. Alfred Nutt. Still more to the purpose, last year saw the completion of Dr. Oskar Sommer's monumental edition of the Morte d'Arthur, whose scholarly accomplishment it needs almost a special education to appreciate. To Dr. Sommer's three volumes, those who come to Malory, not for pleasure, but for exact knowledge, must be referred. Those, however, who come to him with the careless instinct of romance, as to a delightful tale-teller, will be differently and more easily satisfied. There is one book for the scholars and doctors of literature; there is another for the whole congregation. At the end of the Morte d'Arthur, Malory tells us that the book was finished in " the ninth year of the reign of King Edward the Fourth." This roughly corresponds, as a note in Dr. Sommer's edition tells us, to the year 1469. The book was published by Caxton in 14S5; and these two