accustom
and practise the mind to recognise and love the beautiful everywhere."

Quoted from Wieland by Goethe in his Autobiography

Introduction

Among the best liked stories of five or six hundred years ago were
those which told of chivalrous deeds--of joust and tourney and knightly
adventure. To be sure, these stories were not set forth in printed
books, for there were no printed books as early as the times of the
first three King Edwards, and few people could have read them if there
had been any. But children and grown people alike were eager to hear
these old-time tales read or recited by the minstrels, and the interest
in them has continued in some measure through all the changing years
and tastes. We now, in the times of the seventh King Edward, still
find them far more worth our while than many modern stories. For us
they have a special interest, because of home setting and Christian
basis, and they may well share in our attention with the legends of
Greece and Rome.

In these early romances of chivalry, Arthur and his knights of the
Round Table are by far the most popular heroes, and the finding of the
Holy Grail is the highest achievement of knightly valour. The material
for the Arthur stories came from many countries and from many different
periods of history. Much of it is wholly fanciful, but the writers
connected all the incidents directly or indirectly with the old Briton
king of the fifth century, who was the model of knighthood, "without
fear and without reproach."

Perhaps there was a real King Arthur, who led the Britons against the
Saxon invaders of their land, who was killed by his traitor nephew, and
who was buried at Glastonbury,--the valley of Avilion of the legends;
perhaps there was a slight historical nucleus around which all the
romantic material was crystallising through the centuries, but the
Arthur of romance came largely from the imagination of the early
writers.

And yet, though our "own ideal knight" may never have trod the soil of
Britain or Roman or Saxon England, his chivalrous character and the
knightly deeds of his followers are real to us, if we read them
rightly, for "the poet's ideal was the truest truth." Though the
sacred vessel--the Holy Grail--of the Christ's last supper with His
disciples has not been borne about the earth in material form, to be
seen only by those of stainless life and character, it is eternally
true that the "pure in heart" are "bles