A History of English Literature
A History of English Literature
A History of English Literature
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full health in a later book a knight whom a hundred pages earlier he had<br />
killed and regularly buried; but this need not cause the reader anything<br />
worse than mild amusement. Not Malory but his age, also, is to blame for<br />
his sometimes hazy and puzzled treatment <strong>of</strong> the supernatural element in his<br />
material. In the remote earliest form <strong>of</strong> the stories, as Celtic myths, this<br />
supernatural element was no doubt frank and very large, but Malory's<br />
authorities, the more skeptical French romancers, adapting it to their own<br />
age, had <strong>of</strong>ten more or less fully rationalized it; transforming, for<br />
instance, the black river <strong>of</strong> Death which the original heroes <strong>of</strong>ten had to<br />
cross on journeys to the Celtic Other World into a rude and forbidding moat<br />
about the hostile castle into which the romancers degraded the Other World<br />
itself. Countless magic details, however, still remained recalcitrant to<br />
such treatment; and they evidently troubled Malory, whose devotion to his<br />
story was earnest and sincere. Some <strong>of</strong> them he omits, doubtless as<br />
incredible, but others he retains, <strong>of</strong>ten in a form where the impossible is<br />
merely garbled into the unintelligible. For a single instance, in his<br />
seventh book he does not satisfactorily explain why the valiant Gareth on<br />
his arrival at Arthur's court asks at first only for a year's food and<br />
drink. In the original story, we can see to-day, Gareth must have been<br />
under a witch's spell which compelled him to a season <strong>of</strong> distasteful<br />
servitude; but this motivating bit <strong>of</strong> superstition Malory discards, or<br />
rather, in this case, it had been lost from the story at a much earlier<br />
stage. It results, therefore, that Malory's supernatural incidents are<br />
<strong>of</strong>ten far from clear and satisfactory; yet the reader is little troubled by<br />
this difficulty either in so thoroughly romantic a work.<br />
Other technical faults may easily be pointed out in Malory's book. Thorough<br />
unity, either in the whole or in the separate stories so loosely woven<br />
together, could not be expected; in continual reading the long succession<br />
<strong>of</strong> similar combat after combat and the constant repetition <strong>of</strong> stereotyped<br />
phrases become monotonous for a present-day reader; and it must be<br />
confessed that Malory has little <strong>of</strong> the modern literary craftsman's power<br />
<strong>of</strong> close-knit style or proportion and emphasis in details. But these faults<br />
also may be overlooked, and the work is truly great, partly because it is<br />
an idealist's dream <strong>of</strong> chivalry, as chivalry might have been, a chivalry <strong>of</strong><br />
faithful knights who went about redressing human wrongs and were loyal<br />
lovers and zealous servants <strong>of</strong> Holy Church; great also because Malory's<br />
heart is in his stories, so that he tells them in the main well, and<br />
invests them with a delightful atmosphere <strong>of</strong> romance which can never lose<br />
its fascination.<br />
The style, also, in the narrower sense, is strong and good, and does its<br />
part to make the book, except for the Wiclif Bible, unquestionably the<br />
greatest monument <strong>of</strong> <strong>English</strong> prose <strong>of</strong> the entire period before the<br />
sixteenth century. There is no affectation <strong>of</strong> elegance, but rather knightly<br />
straightforwardness which has power without lack <strong>of</strong> ease. The sentences are<br />
<strong>of</strong>ten long, but always 'loose' and clear; and short ones are <strong>of</strong>ten used<br />
with the instinctive skill <strong>of</strong> sincerity. Everything is picturesque and<br />
dramatic and everywhere there is chivalrous feeling and genuine human<br />
sympathy.<br />
WILLIAM CAXTON AND THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING TO ENGLAND, 1476. Malory's<br />
book is the first great <strong>English</strong> classic which was given to the world in<br />
print instead <strong>of</strong> written manuscript; for it was shortly after Malory's<br />
death that the printing press was brought to England by William Caxton. The<br />
invention <strong>of</strong> printing, perhaps the most important event <strong>of</strong> modern times,<br />
took place in Germany not long after the middle <strong>of</strong> the fifteenth century,<br />
and the development <strong>of</strong> the art was rapid. Caxton, a shrewd and enterprising<br />
Kentishman, was by first pr<strong>of</strong>ession a cloth merchant, and having taken up