THE HISTORY OF KING ARTHUR AND OF THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE. COMPILED BY SIR THOMAS MALORY, KNT. EDITED FROM THE TEXT OF THE EDITION OF 1634, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., INTRODUCTION. HE origin of the cycle of romances, which have for their subject the adventures of king Arthur and his knights, and which were during many ages so popular throughout nearly all the countries of Europe, appears to be involved in impenetrable mystery, and I will not attempt to discuss it on the present occasion. We first become acquainted with the story which forms the groundwork of them in the pretended History of the Britons, published in the year 1147, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who acknowledges that his materials came from Britany, which country, therefore, we may perhaps safely regard as the cradle of this branch of medieval literature. Geoffrey's history was new to everybody in England; but it excited not only great interest, but apparently great admiration, and it was seized upon by the metrical chroniclers in Anglo-Norman and English, such as Gaimar and Wace, who were contemporary with Geoffrey of Monmouth himself, and a little later the Anglo-Saxon Layamon, who turned it into verse with more or less of variation and am.plification. It is quite evident, nevertheless, from a comparison of these versions with the original, that the various writers had no knowledge of the romantic stories they tell |