King--The Enmity of Sir Gawain--The Usurpation of Sir Modred--The Queen
retires to a Nunnery--Sir Lancelot goes on Pilgrimage--The Battle of
Barham Downs--Sir Bedivere and the Sword Excalibur--The Death of King
Arthur




ILLUSTRATOR'S NOTE


Of scenes from the Legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round
Table many lovely pictures have been painted, showing much diversity of
figures and surroundings, some being definitely sixth-century British or
Saxon, as in Blair Leighton's fine painting of the dead Elaine;
others--for example, Watts' Sir Galahad--show knight and charger in
fifteenth-century armour; while the warriors of Burne Jones wear strangely
impracticable armour of some mystic period. Each of these painters was
free to follow his own conception, putting the figures into whatever
period most appealed to his imagination; for he was not illustrating the
actual tales written by Sir Thomas Malory, otherwise he would have found
himself face to face with a difficulty.

King Arthur and his knights fought, endured, and toiled in the sixth
century, when the Saxons were overrunning Britain; but their achievements
were not chronicled by Sir Thomas Malory until late in the fifteenth
century.

Sir Thomas, as Froissart has done before him, described the habits of
life, the dresses, weapons, and armour that his own eyes looked upon in