its prime. A ruddy face, with beard of gold, holding the
sun as harvests do. Tourneys done, the king is turned battleward,
where he is to die; and a man's picture comes to have special value at
his death. When the wounded king is borne by Bedivere across the
echoing crags toward the black funeral barge, we see him again, full in
the face, and remember him always.

King Arthur was a self-made man. His birth was held to be uncertain.
"Is he Uther's son?" was on many a lip. So men yet sometimes hold to
some poor question of ancestry when worth, evident as light, fronts
them. Some there are who live in so narrow a mood as to ask always
"Where?" and never "What?" when the latter is God's unvarying method of
estimation. This quest for ancestry for Arthur is of service to us as
showing he had not empire ready to his hand. His kingdom did not make
him; he made his kingdom; or, to give the entire history, he made
himself and his kingdom. And this is oft-repeated history. When a man
makes a kingdom, he first made himself. He does two things. Might
goes not single, loves not solitude, but makes itself company. Milton
made himself before he made the Bible epic of the world. He wrought
himself and his complex history into his Iliad of heavenly battle.
Souls have, in a true sense, a beaten path to tread. There is a
highway worn to ruts and dust by travel of the great men's feet. And
Arthur had much company, if he knew it not. Such men seem alone,
though if they saw all their companionships they would know they walked
on in a goodly company and great. Greatness has many fellowships, as
stars have; and stars have fellowship of mountains and woods, and
kindred stars, and waters where star-shadows lie, and oceans where
galaxies tumble like defeated angels. All greatness is self-made.
Names are bequeathed us, so much is borrowed. Character and value are
self-made. Gold has intrinsic worth. Man has not, but makes his worth
by the day's labor of his hands.

This provision is God's excellent antidote to dissatisfaction with
one's estate. If worth could be handed down, like name or fortune, one
might as well be a pasture-field, to pass from hand to hand as chattel,
instead of man. Far otherwise God's plan. Each spirit works out, and
must work out, his own destiny. Destinies are not ready-made but
hand-made. King Arthur's fame is not dependent on his ancestry, but on
himself. Ancestry we can not control; self we c