Malory wrote in prose, but he had ‘the vision and the faculty divine’
of the poet, though ‘wanting the accomplishment of verse’; and, great
as that want is, we may apply Milton’s test of ‘simple, sensuous, and
passionate,’ and we shall find no right to these names more real than
is Malory’s. Every incident, the description of every event, is
‘simple,’ that is to say, complete in itself, while making a part of
the whole story. The story is ‘sensuous,’ like that of Homer, and as
every true poem must be, it is a living succession of concrete images
and pictures, not of abstractions or generalized arguments and
reasonings. These are the characteristics of the book, from its opening
story of Igraine, which ‘befell in the days of Uther Pendragon,’ down
to the death of the last four remaining knights who ‘went into the Holy
Land, there as Jesus Christ was quick and dead,’ and there ‘did many
battles upon the miscreants or Turks, and there they died on a Good
Friday for God’s sake.’ And for ‘passion,’ for that emotion which the
poet first feels in a special manner, and then awakens in his hearers,
though they could not have originated it in themselves, with the
adventures of the Round Table and the San Greal, or the deaths of
Arthur, of Guenever, and of Launcelot, we may compare the wrath of
Achilles, its cause and its consequences, or the leave-taking of Hector
and Andromache. It would, indeed, be hard to find anywhere a pathos
greater than that of Malory’s description of the death or ‘passing’ of
Arthur, the penitence of Guenever, and her parting with Launcelot, or
the lament of Launcelot over the King and Queen, and of Sir Ector over
Launcelot himself. The first is too long to quote, but I may say that
Malory has re-cast the old story, and all the poetry is his own. I give
the two last:—
‘Truly, said Sir Launcelot, I trust I do not displease God, for He
knoweth mine intent, for my sorrow was not, nor is not, for any
rejoicing of sin, but my sorrow may never have end. For when I
remember of her beauty, and of her noblesse, that was both with her
king and with her; so when I saw his corpse and her corpse so lie
together, truly mine heart would not serve to sustain my careful
body. Also when I remember me, how by my default, mine orgule, and
my pride, that they were both laid full low, that were peerless
that ever was living of christian people, wit you well, said Sir
Launcelot, this remembered, of their kindness and mine unkindness,
sank so to my heart, that I might not sustain myself.’