It is not, however, by such fragments of legend that Arthur is
best known to English readers. Not Arthur the god, but Arthur
the "blameless king", who founded the Table Round, from which he
sent forth his knights "to ride abroad redressing human wrongs",
1 is the figure which the name conjures up. Nor is it even from
Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur that this conception comes to
most of us, but from Tennyson's Idylls of the King. But Tennyson
has so modernized the ancient tradition that it retains little
of the old Arthur but the name. He tells us himself that his
poem had but very slight relation to but that he merely used the
legend to give a substantial form to his ideal figure of the
perfect English gentleman--a title to which the original Arthur
could scarcely have laid claim. Still less does there remain in
it the least trace of anything that could suggest mythology. As
much as this, however, might be said of [paragraph continues]
Malory's book. We may be fairly certain that the good Sir Thomas
had no