the sword with all his might, but it would not be.

"'Now shall ye essay," said Sir Ector unto Arthur.

"'I will well,' said Arthur, and pulled it out easily.

"And therewithall Sir Ector knelt down to the earth, and Sir
Kay."

And so Arthur was acknowledged king. "And so anon was the
coronation made," Malory goes on to tell us, "and there was
Arthur sworn unto his lords and to the commons for to be a true
king, to stand with true justice from henceforth the days of his
life."

For the rest of all the wonderful stories of King Arthur and his
knights you must go to Morte d'Arthur itself. For the language
is so simple and clear that it is a book that you can easily
read, though there are some parts that you will not understand or
like and which you need not read yet.

But of all the books of which we have spoken this is the first
which you could read in the very words in which it was written
down. I do not mean that you could read it as it was first
printed, for the oldest kind of printing was not unlike the
writing used in manuscripts and so seems hard to read now.
Besides which, although nearly all the words Malory uses are
words we still use, the spelling is a little different, and that
makes it more difficult to read.