demanding why he had not printed the "noble history of the Saint Grail
and of the most-renowned Christian King ... Arthur." To please them,
and because he himself loved chivalry, Caxton printed Sir Thomas
Malory's story, in which all that is best in the many Arthurian
romances is woven into one grand narrative.

Since then, in our own days, the story of Arthur and his knights
has been told in beautiful verse by Lord Tennyson; but for the
originals of some of his poems it would be useless to look in
Malory. The story of Geraint and Enid, Tennyson derived from a very
interesting collection of translations of ancient Welsh stories
made by Lady Charlotte Guest, and by her called _Mabinogion_,[1]
although not all Welsh scholars would consider the name quite
accurate.

[Footnote 1: Meaning the apprentices of the bards.]

And now it is time to say something about the stories themselves.
The Arthur of history was engaged in a life-long struggle with an
enemy that threatened to rob his people of home, of country, and of
freedom; in the stories, the king and his knights, like Richard
Coeur-de-Lion, sought adventure for adventure's sake, or, as in the
case of Sir Peredur, took fantastic vows for the love of a lady.
The Knights of the Round Table are sheathed from head to foot in
plate armour, although the real Arthur's warriors probably had only
shirts of mail and shields with which to ward off the blows of the
enemy. They live in moated castles instead of in halls of wood,
and they are more often engaged in tournaments than in struggles
with the heathen. In fact, those who wrote the stories represented
their heroes as living such lives as they themselves led. Just in