noble and renowned acts of humanity, gentleness, and chivalry. For
herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness,
love, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good
and leave the evil."

In reaction against the bold-faced heroines and sensual amours of
some of the old French romances, an ideal of exaggerated asceticism,
of stainless chastity, notoriously pervades the portion of Malory's
work which deals with the Holy Grail. Lancelot is distraught when he
finds that, by dint of enchantment, he has been made false to
Guinevere (Book XI. chap. viii.) After his dreaming vision of the
Holy Grail, with the reproachful Voice, Sir Lancelot said, "My sin
and my wickedness have brought me great dishonour, . . . and now I
see and understand that my old sin hindereth and shameth me." He was
human, the Lancelot of Malory, and "fell to his old love again," with
a heavy heart, and with long penance at the end. How such good
knights can be deemed conscienceless and void of courtesy one knows
not, except by a survival of the Puritanism of Ascham. But Tennyson
found in the book what is in the book--honour, conscience, courtesy,
and the hero -


"Whose honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."


Malory's book, which was Tennyson's chief source, ends by being the
tragedy of the conscience of Lancelot. Arthur is dead, or "In Avalon
he groweth old." The Queen and Lancelot might sing, as Lennox
reports that Queen Mary did after Darnley's murder -