ught and suffered in
the Wars of the Roses then in progress, found some quiet spot in
Warwickshire in which to put together in lasting form the fine old
stories that already in his day were classics.

Malory finished his book in 1470, and its permanence for all time was
assured fifteen years later, when Caxton, after the "symple connynge"
that God had sent him (to use the quaint forms of expression then
common), "under the favour and correctyon of al noble lordes and
gentylmen emprysed to emprynte a book of the noble hystoryes of the
sayd Kynge Arthur and of certeyn of his knyghtes after a copye unto him
delyuerd whyche copye Syr Thomas Malorye dyd take oute of certeyn
bookes of Frensche and reduced it in to Englysche." This hard-headed
business man,--this fifteenth-century publisher,--was rather doubtful
about the Briton king of a thousand years before his day, and to those
urging upon him the venture of printing Malory's book he answered:
"Dyuers men holde oppynyon that there was no suche Arthur and that alle
suche bookes as been maad of hym ben fayned and fables by cause that
somme cronycles make of him no mencyon ne remember him noo thynge ne of
his knyghtes."

But the arguments of those in favour of the undertaking prevailed,
greatly to the advantage of the four centuries that have followed,
during which "Le Morte Darthur" has been a constant source of poetic
inspiration. Generation after generation of readers and of writers
have drawn life from its chapters, and the new delight in Tennyson's
"Idylls of the King," almost of our own time, shows that the fountain
has not yet been drained dry.

Malory's "Morte Darthur" is a long book, and its really great interest
is partly hidden from us by forms of expression that belong only to the
time when it was first written. Besides this, the ideas of what was
right and proper in conduct and speech--moral standards--were far lower
in Malory's day than they are now.

The purpose of this new little volume is to bring the old tales freshly
to the attention of young people of the present time. It keeps, as far
as may be, the exact language and the spirit of the original, chooses
such stories as best represent the whole, and modifies these only in
order to remove what could possibly hide the thought, or be so crude in
taste and morals as to seem unworthy of the really high-minded author
of five hundred years ago. It aims also so to condense the book that,
in this age of h