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Updated: May 16, 2025
Then, in details, there, on stout oak shelves, were the books on which my father loved to jest his more imaginative brother; there they were, Froissart, Barante, Joinville, the Mort d'Arthur, Amadis of Gaul, Spenser's Faerie Queene, a noble copy of Strutt's Horda, Mallet's Northern Antiquities, Percy's Reliques, Pope's Homer, books on gunnery, archery, hawking, fortification; old chivalry and modern war together, cheek-by-jowl.
But we have not yet spoken much about this kind of book for until now there were no novels in our meaning of the word. There were romances such as Havelok the Dane and Morte d'Arthur, later still tales such as those of Defoe, and the modern novel is the outcome of such tales and romances. But it is usually supposed to be more like real life than a romance.
From a boy he had loved and studied the old English, Scotch and Welsh writers, with the result that all his productions have a mediaeval aroma. The Faerie Queene, Chaucer and his successors the Scottish poets of the 15th and 16th Centuries, The Morte d'Arthur, the authorised version of the Bible and North's Plutarch have always lain at his elbow.
The Noble Histories of King Arthur, La Morte d'Arthur, The Story of the most Noble and Worthy King Arthur, The Most Ancient and Famous History of the Renowned Prince Arthur, The Birth, Life, and Acts of King Arthur call it by whichever name anybody likes of those which various printers and reprinters have given it is one of the great books of the world.
Next to the stories in the Bible, he loved the Maccabees, because of the likeness to the persecuted state of the Church; and he knew the Morte d'Arthur almost by heart, and thought it part of the history of England. Especially he loved the part that tells of the Holy Grail, the Sacred Cup that was guarded by the maimed King Pelles, and only revealed to the pure in heart and life.
When,therefore, she had given him Malory's "LeMorte D'Arthur," it was the first time that the ideals of chivalry had ever flashed their glorious light upon him; for the first time the models of Christian manhood, on which western Europe nourished itself for centuries, displayed themselves to his imagination with the charm of story; he heard of Camelot, of the king, of that company of men who strove with each other in arms, but strove also with each other in grace of life and for the immortal mysteries of the spirit.
Quickly piously ejaculate that the dead Falstaff was "in Arthur's bosom"? Besides, it was proof that the Somersetshire people still remembered King Arthur a point treasured by me for my father, who was a keen student and great lover of the Arthurian legends. It was he who edited for Macmillan the Morte d'Arthur in the Globe series.
Critical appreciation of the volume of 1842 was happily encouraging to the poet; indeed, it was most gratifying, for its many remarkable beauties were now justly and adequately appraised, particularly such fine new themes as the volume contained 'Ulysses, 'Godiva, 'The Two Voices, 'The Talking Oak, 'Oenone, 'Locksley Hall, 'The Vision of Sin, and 'Morte D'Arthur, the germ of the future "Idylls of the King."
Eales's gift of the Morte d'Arthur, which had great fascination for him, though he never knew whether to regard it as truth or fable. He wanted to drive out the memory of what Mrs. Lightfoot had told him about the Henshaw household, where the youngest of the lady's brothers had lately arrived from beyond seas, bringing with him habits of noise and riot, which greatly scandalised the neighbours.
In the "Morte d'Arthur," perhaps the only passage which might have raised a laugh among the early readers of the romance, is that in which King Arthur's fool Dagonet is clad in Sir Mordred's armor, and in that disguise is made to chase before him the coward King Mark. The authors of the romances of chivalry never attempted delineation of character.
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