MALORY.
Much the most important novelty in the literature of this period is the
"Morte d'Arthur," finished by the author, Sir Thomas Malory or Maleor,
in 1469, and published in 1485. Malory is believed to have been the
Squire of Newbold Revell in Warwickshire, born about 1400 (?) and a
retainer of that Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who was called
"the Father of Courtesy" by the Emperor Sigismund, and was the cruel
jailer of Jeanne d'Arc at Rouen (1430-1431), where she was burned.
Malory appears to have joined the Lancastrian party in the Wars of the
Roses; he, or a man of his name, was left out of a general amnesty
granted by Edward IV, in 1468; he may have fled to Bruges and there
made the acquaintance of Caxton, and Caxton, in his Preface to the
"Morte," says that the book is printed "after a copy unto me delivered
which Sir Thomas Malory did take out of certain books of French, and
reduced it into English". Malory died in England, and was buried in the
Grey Friars, near Newgate, in 1471.
As we have seen already, the true first sources of the immense body
of Arthurian romance are obscure: the fountain-head is certainly
Celtic, but the affluents are mainly French--without France the legend
would have been but a small thing. Malory constantly refers to "the
French book" for his statements, to what book he does not say, but the
learned industry of Dr. Sommer has detected that, for the youth of
Arthur, Malory used French romances of Merlin the Seer; used French
authorities for the tales of Sir Tristram and Lancelot, and also freely
employed an English metrical romance, "Morte Arthur," attributed to the
mysterious Scot, Huchown. There are other sources, and Malory treats
his authorities with much freedom, omitting, adding, and introducing
confusions. His great romance has a definite beginning; it has a middle
in the fatal revival of Arthurian chivalry in the search for the Holy
Grail; and thence turns towards its end with the falling of Lancelot
to his old sinful love of Guinevere, wife of Arthur, the decadence,
the rebellion of Mordred, the passing of Arthur, and the penitence of
Lancelot and Guinevere.
Malory's book may be called a work of true genius, so simple yet so
noble is the prose style; so fine, loyal and chivalrous the temper,
while even the confusions add to the element of mystery and to the
expectation and curiosity of the reader. Malory purges away the stupid
monkish fables about the birth of Merlin by a machination of a devil:
he does not linger over the long dull fables of Arthur's wars against
the Anglo-Saxon invaders; he gathers the flower of the chivalry of the
fourteenth century, while true love is his theme, with no palliation of
the guilt of sinful love. His Lancelot deserves the Douglas motto of
"tender and true," though
His honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.
Hence comes the inevitable tragedy, the greatest in romance.
"Herein," says Caxton, rising to the height of Malory's own style,
men "shall find many joyous and pleasant histories, and noble and
renowned acts of humanity, gentleness, and chivalry. For herein may
be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardiness,
love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, goodness, and sin. Do after
the good, and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and
renommee."
Many recent critics of Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," which is mainly
derived from Malory, appear to think that Malory's "Morte d'Arthur"
is a violent, brutal, licentious book, and that Tennyson invented the
noble courtesy, chivalry, humanity to suit the middle-class morality
of 1860. This opinion is merely stupid. "The Morte," it has been well
said, "assumes the recognition of a loftier standard of justice, purity
and unselfishness than its own century knew.... The motive forces are
the elemental passions of love and bravery, never greed, or lust, or
cruelty,"--except of course in traitors like Meliagraunce and Mordred.
The knights have the strongest sense of fair play: Sir Lancelot bears
no spite against Sir Palamedes, a pagan knight, who, from ignorance
of the rules, deals a stroke in a tournament which the rules forbade.
Their sense of honour is crystal-clear, and, as in Tennyson's Idylls,
this honour and loyalty make the tragedy; the struggle between
Lancelot's love of Guinevere, and his friendship for and loyalty to
King Arthur. His sin brings its own punishment, he cannot win the
vision of the Grail, that Holy thing: "blessed are the pure in heart
for they shall see God".
Arthur himself, after the wars of his youth, is but faintly drawn: it
is not for the King to seek adventures, but to hear the suits of his
people who come to him for help and justice. A mystery of Fate hangs
over him: he is smitten by the sins of his knights, and passes away,
sorely wounded but alive, as strangely as Œdipus in the tragedy of
Sophocles: perhaps, who knows, to come again. "In Avalon he groweth
old," in the peaceful hidden land of apples and apple-blossom.
The scenes all pass in a world where colours are magically soft and
bright. There is an old song of the fourteenth century which gives the
kind of colour that abounds in Malory.
_Lully, lulley, lully, lulley_
_The fawcon hath borne my mate away!_
_He bare him up, he bare him down,_
_He bare him into an orchard brown._
_In that orchard there was a hall_
_That was hanged with purple and pall._
_And in that hall there was a bed,_
_It was hung with gold so red._
_And in that bed there lieth a knight,_
_His wounds bleeding day and night._
_By that bedside kneeleth a may,_
_And she weepeth both night and day._
This is like a song made on some scene in the Quest for the Grail.
Malory's world is "an unsubstantial fairy place," yet there is no
fairy non-morality. There is the loftiest ideal among the knights
who follow the gleam and fragrance of the Holy Grail. That all do not
attain to their ideal is but the failing of human nature, the ideal is
among them, they aspire to reach "the spiritual City". For Guinevere,
Malory has the chivalrous compassion of Homer for Helen; of Chaucer for
Criseyde, but while Helen wins, with light penance, to her home by the
Eurotas, and her translation to Elysium, the Avalon of Greece, it is
through many years of penance that Guinevere comes to her rest. What
Shelley said of the end of the Iliad may be said of the last chapters
of the "Morte," they die away "in the high and solemn close of the
whole bloody tale in tenderness and inexpiable sorrow".
The prose with all its simplicity has rhythm and charm. Thus,
"Therefore all ye that be lovers call unto your remembrance the month
of May, like as did Queen Guinevere, for whom I make here a little
mention, that while she lived she was a true lover, and therefore had
she a good end". The words spoken by Sir Ector over the dead body of
Lancelot are one of the noblest passages in English prose.
The very titles of the chapters call us into the realm of romance,
like a blast blown on Arthur's horn. "How Sir Lancelot came into the
Chapel Perilous, and gat there of a dead corpse a piece of cloth and a
sword." "How the damsel and Beaumains came to the siege, and came to a
sycamore tree, and there Beaumains blew an horn, and then the Knight of
the Red Lands came to fight him." "How Sir Lancelot, half-sleeping and
half-waking, saw a sick man borne in a litter, and how he was healed
with the Sangreal." Who can read the titles, and not make haste to read
the chapters? The beautiful close of Tennyson's "Morte d'Arthur" is
merely done into verse from the fifth chapter of Malory's twenty-first
book,--the casting of Excalibur into the mere, and the coming of the
barge with the elfin ladies, "many fair ladies, and among them all was
a Queen, and all they had black hoods, and all they wept and shrieked
when they saw King Arthur".
But for Malory, the old Arthurian romances would be known only to a
few of the learned. Malory "made them common coin," his romance was
neglected only in the eighteenth century. It has been the inspiration
of many poets, but none can "recapture the first fine careless
rapture," to which Tennyson comes nearest in the best of his "Idylls of
the King," and in "Sir Galahad," and "The Lady of Shalott".
Next to Chaucer's poems, Malory's romance is the greatest thing in
English literature from "Beowulf" to Spenser. To boys, and to men
who retain the boy, the "Morte" is an inestimable treasure, which
has not to be sought for in the seldom-visited shelves that hold the
publications of learned Societies, but is within the reach of all.[1]
[1] In the Globe edition, edited by Sir Edward Strachey. Macmillan &
Co.