The old lettering looked like this: -

"With that Sir Arthur turned with his knights,
and smote behind and before, and
ever Sir Arthur was in the foremost press
till his horse was slain under him."

That looks difficult. but here it is again in our own
lettering:-

"With that Sir Arthur turned with his knights, and smote
behind and before, and ever Sir Arthur was in the foremost
press till his horse was slain under him."

That is quite easy to read, and there is not a word in it that
you cannot understand. For since printing came our language has
changed very much less than it did before. And when printing
came, the listening time of the world was done and the reading
time had begun. As books increased, less and less did people
gather to hear others read aloud or tell tales, and more and more
people learned to read for themselves, until now there is hardly
a boy or girl in all the land who cannot read a little.

It is perhaps because Morte d'Arthur is easily read that it has
become a storehouse, a treasure-book, to which other writers have
gone and from which they have taken stories and woven them afresh
and given them new life. Since Caxton's time Morte d'Arthur has
been printed many times, and it is through it perhaps, more than
through the earlier books, that the stories of Arthur still live
for us. Yet it is not perfect - it has indeed been called "a