INTRODUCTION

Will the time come when Hamlet will be a boy's tale?

Since the young readers of King Arthur—and their young readers after them—are of all persons in the world the very oracles who must one day answer this question; and since its curious face will be thrusting itself upon us from all manner of odd corners as we now go on to trace the rise and spread of the stories which Sir Thomas Mallory used in making this beautiful old book: I wished to state it at the beginning, so that it might at once widen and intensify our thoughts as we look upon those changes in language, in life, in the general stature of man's spirit, whereby the great cycle of Arthurian romances which enchanted the grown men of all Europe during the middle ages finds itself arrived, in the nineteenth century, at the form of this present Boy's King Arthur.

...And now,—when four hundred years after Caxton printed this book for "many noble and divers gentleman of this realm of England," you find a later editor re-arranging the old grown-people's story for many noble and divers boys both of England and America,—perhaps the foregoing account may justify you in a certain sense of proud responsibility as you recall the question with which I began this long inquiry.

...I have pointed out the proper relation of this work as a picture of times and manners, and have discussed the old and the modern night. I will therefore add but a brief explanation of the manner in which I have brought forward the old text.

Every word in the book, except those which occur in brackets, is Malory's, unchanged except that the spelling is modernized. Of the bracketed words, there are two sorts, fulfilling different functions: those in italics are always in explanation of the word or phrase immediately before; while those not italicised are the editor's, being connective clauses in which I have a few times found it convenient to preserve the thread of a story which could not be given entire. I have also changed the division into books, from Caxton's wholly unreasonable arrangement of twenty-one, to six, each mainly occupied with adventures turning upon the hero or event which names it.

Into the fine fellowship, then of lordly Sir Launcelot, of generous Sir Tristram, of stainless Sir Galahad, of gentle Sir Percival, of meek Sir Gareth of Orkney, of brilliant Sir Palamides the Saracen, of dolorous Sir Balin and Sir Balan, of persevering Sir la Cote Mal Taile, of hilarious Sir Dinadan, and of a hundred more—as well, alas! as into the ungentle company of cowardly King Mark, of traitorous Sir Mordred, and of wicked Morgan le Fay,—I commit you with feelings so like those with which Caxton closes his prologue that I cannot help applying to the young readers of this work his farewell words to his maturer audience:

"And for to passe the tyme, this book shal be plesaunte to rede in, but for to gyve fayth and byleve that al is trewe that is contained herin, ye be at your lyberte; but al is wryton for our doctryne," and this book is therefore sent forth "to the entente that noblemen may see and lerne the nobel acts of chyvalrye, the jentyl and vertuous dedes, that somme knygtes used in tho days, by whyche they came to honour, and how they that were vycious were punysshed, and often put to shame and rebuke, humbly bysechying al noble lordes and ladyes, wyth al other estates, of what estate or degree they been of, that shal see and rede in this sayd book and werke, that they take good and honest actes in their remembraunce, and to folowe the same."

Sidney Lanier
Baltimore, MD, October, 1880.