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Chivalry in English literature
Chaucer, Malory, Spenser and Shakespeare
William Henry Schofield. 1912
MALORY
WE now leave the domain of chivalry in life for that of chivalry in romance. Passing thus from reality to unreality, we pass, strangely enough, from a poet to a soldier, and from verse to prose. Turning from Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century to Sir Thomas Malory in the fifteenth, we take a step backward instead of forward, and occupy ourselves with literature of a type almost outworn, animated by exclusive aristocratic sentiment
Apart from the language, and in so far as it is only what it purports to be, a narrative of knightly ad venture, the Morte d'Arthur might almost as well have been written seventy years before Chaucer's birth as seventy years after his death. Yet inquiry shows that "this noble and joyous book "is more than a simple "reduction" of early French romance, as is generally believed. "Notwithstanding it treateth of the birth, life, and acts of King Arthur, of his noble knights of the Round Table, their marvellous quests and adventures, the achieving of the Sangreal, and in the end the dolorous death and departing out of this world of them all," it was evidently called forth by the author's anxiety regarding conditions in England in his own day, and was intended to be influential for good and not merely entertaining then.
Malory makes no effort to conceal the fact that he wrote primarily for the gentle-born. "I pray you all, gentlemen and gentlewomen, that read this book of Arthur and his knights from the beginning to the ending" thus he addresses his friends when about to lay down his pen. Throughout his work he had taken no thought of any other audience, and he finally appeals only to gentlemen and gentlewomen for their prayers after he is dead. Caxton, moreover, states with emphasis who "came and demanded" him to print the book "many noble and divers gentlemen of this realm of England." He hints, to be sure, that the narrative might appeal to other estates and be pleasant for them to read in; but he insists on the station of those to whom he humbly submits the finished volume. "This said book," he says, "I direct unto all noble princes, lords and ladies, gentlemen or gentlewomen." "This said book" is one of the first ever dedicated in England to Gentle Readers, and Caxton's words have a literal significance that soon became attenuated in frequent use.
In many ways the Morte d'Arthur must have interested Malory's contemporaries more than it does us. All of the fifteenth century would recognize in it much more clearly than we a true guide for gentlemen's careers; they could understand better the mode of battle and tourney, whereby heroes still won renown; they could hardly fail to be aroused by seem ing parallels in the Arthurian past to the events of their own present, which have concerned men little since. On the other hand, we are no doubt attracted to the work by a certain quaintness of style that only the passing of years could produce; and the charm of "far-off, bygone things" in romance, picturing a life which we have now no duty to mend, draws us with unalloyed winsomeness as it could not possibly have done those who felt bound to consider the results of that life when actually devoid of inspiration and vitality. Above all, we see the book in a better perspective from the point of view of art.
The art of Malory's work an injudicious reader, even to-day, is apt to overlook. The writing seems all so natural and simple, so lacking in rhetorical ornament, that one who is unobservant may readily be deluded into thinking that little praise is due the author. But let him compare the Morte d'Arthur with any other work of the same kind, ancient or modern, let him attempt to improve on any good passage that attracts him, and he will surely discover that here is art that conceals art, here is distinction that, forgetting itself, evades remark.
Malory's book has been reproached with lack of unity, not altogether without cause. Whoever reads it as a whole, is certain to be bewildered by the complexities of certain stories, and by the way the numerous adventures in a single tale sometimes follow one another in strange confusion. He will discover also curious inconsistencies in the presentation of character, and contradictions of tone and sentiment. These faults, however, inhered, and were much more manifest, in the sources of the book, and no one can study Malory's methods of composition in connection with those of his predecessors with out great admiration for the skill with which he has welded together, and stamped with a peculiar personal impress, the vast, incongruous body of material which he undertook to mould.
The Morte d'Arthur is the fountain-head of Arthurian fiction, so far as most Englishmen of today are aware; for the many French and Middle-English documents concerning knights of the Round Table which were current in mediaeval times are now familiar to none but the scholarly few. Malory, more than anyone else, deserves the credit of making modern Englishmen feel that Arthur and his comrades were national heroes. No doubt this had been the tend ency of English writers of the alliterative school from the poet Layamon at the beginning of the thirteenth century on; but the great majority among us have never heard mention of these writers of the rural west, let alone attempted to read their artless lines. Save the Morte d'Arthur, there was no English book on the same theme widely read until Tennyson produced his Idylls of the King; and had it not been for Malory, Tennyson would never have thought of composing these. To English poets, in fact, the Morte d'Arthur has ever seemed a palace of manifold dreams. From it one after another of them has emerged greatly enamoured of old romance, eager to perpetuate the aspirations that it reveals and evokes. After Malory,
The mightiest chiefs of English song
Scorned not such legends to prolong.
It was a prejudiced pedant, Roger Ascham, who in the sixteenth century uttered strong condemna tion of the Morte d'Arthur, which, he asserted, was "received into the prince's chamber," when "God's Bible was banished the court." "The whole pleasure of [it]," he said, "standeth in open manslaughter and bold bawdry in which book those be counted the noblest knights that do kill most men without any quarrel, and commit the foulest adulteries by subtlest shifts." Ascham far overshot the mark at which he aimed. To be like him a hater of papistry did not really necessitate, he seemed to think, hatred of everything mediaeval certainly not of chivalry and the "matter of Britain," the chief if not the whole pleasure of which really consists in its potent stimulus to idealistic endeavour. Milton, though a Puritan, had better judgement, along with finer poetic vision. How willingly his imagination played about the scenes of Malory's, as well as of Spenser's, work! We did not need to have him tell us "whither [his] younger feet wandered;" but still we are glad to have had him frankly state: "I betook me among those lofty fables and romances, which recounted in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from thence had in renown over all Christendom;" and while we may be far from thinking him unwise to have chosen a "higher argument" for his mature pen, we cannot but long for that wonderful poem which we should now possess if he had fulfilled his first desire and sung "the great-hearted heroes of the unvanquished Table in their bonds of fellowship." But an epic of Arthur, Milton in the end did not see fit to write; and the Morte d'Arthur remains still, probably will always remain, that English work which most nearly merits so lofty a name.
IT is only a few years since the author of the Morte d'Arthur was identified with reasonable certainty. Century after century had passed, and his work had been continuously enjoyed; but fortune reserved for an American, Professor Kittredge, the pleasure of discovering who the actual Sir Thomas Malory was. Now all seem agreed that he was a knight of ancient family, resident at Newbold lie veil (or Fenny Newbold) in Warwickshire. His father, Sir John Malory, appears to have died in 1434, when Sir Thomas succeeded to the ancestral estates. In 1445 Sir Thomas represented his county in Parliament. He fought on the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses, and apparently very conspicuously, for he was excluded, along with certain others, from the operation of a pardon issued by Edward IV in 1468. He died soon after, on March 14, 1471, probably over seventy years of age, and was buried, with the superscription valens miles, in the chapel of St. Francis at Grey Friars, in the suburbs of London. He left a widow, Elizabeth Malory, who lived until 1480, and a grandson, Nicholas, about four years of age. The Morte d'Arthur was finished by Caxton on the last day of July, 1485.
Apart from one important fact, this is all that we know definitely of our author's biography. But we can safely surmise a good deal with regard to his occupations in youth, and conjecture as to some of his doings later.
Sir John Malory was "sheriff of Leicestershire, Escheator, Knight of the Shire in the Parliament of 1413, and held other offices of trust." By him Thomas Malory's thoughts were likely to be directed to the grave problems then troubling the nation. The many unhappy events which darkened Eng land in the early years of the fifteenth century had abundantly justified Froissart's anxious foreboding. There had been serious wars and rumours of wars in the the land. But at last, in 1413, Henry V ascended throne, and straightway began to rule with vigour. Led by personal ambition, he presently renewed Edward's claim to the throne of France, and crossed the water with his troops. The great unexpected victory of Agincourt in 1415, so terrible a misfortune to the French nobility, delighted the English nation, and made Henry secure in his English, if not in his French, throne.
It is now that Thomas Malory himself first appears on the scene in history a youth, we presume, of some twenty years, in the military retinue of the famous Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. This is the important fact in his biography to which refer ence has already been made. In 1415 Warwick indented to serve the king as Captain of Calais, and "to have with him in time of truce or peace, for the safeguard thereof, thirty men-at-arms, himself and three knights accounted as part of that number; thirty archers on horseback, two hundred archers, all of his own retinue . . . and in time of war, he to have one hundred and fifty men on horseback." Thomas Malory, in his retinue, had one lance and two archers, receiving for his lance and one archer twenty pounds per annum and their diet, and for the other archer ten marks and no diet.
"The service of Malory with Richard of Warwick is peculiarly significant in view of the well-known character of the Earl. No better school for the future author of the Morte d'Arthur can be imagined than a personal acquaintance with that Englishman whom all Europe recognized as embodying the knightly ideal of the age. The Emperor Sigismund, we are informed on excellent authority, said to Henry V 'that no prince Christian, for wisdom, nurture and manhood, had such another knight as he had of the Earl Warwick;' adding thereto that if all courtesy were lost, yet might it be found again in him; and so ever after, by the emperor's authority, he was called the Father of Courtesy."
In an almost contemporary history of Warwick's life, from which the emperor's remark is taken, Warwick is presented very much as a knight of the Round Table, and has romantic adventures which make him seem akin to Sir Gareth, one of Malory's favourite heroes. On a certain occasion, when he was Captain of Calais, "casting in his mind to do some new point of chivalry," he appeared at a great tourney on three successive days, unknown, in different armour, and, showing great prowess each time, won much honour. On the third day, we read, the earl "came in face open . . . and said like as he had in his own person performed the two days before, so with God's grace he would the third. Then ran he to the chevalier named Sir Colard Fymes, and every stroke he bare him backward to his horse's back. And then the Frenchman said he was bound to his saddle, where fore he alighted down from his horse, and forthwith stepped up into his saddle again, and so with wor ship rode to his pavilion, and sent to Sir Colard a good courser, and feasted all the people, . . . and rode to Calais with great worship."
This adventure appears to have taken place in 1417, when Thomas Malory, so far as we know, was still in Warwick's retinue; but we cannot tell exactly how long he continued a follower of this brilliant knight, who died in 1439. Probably he was with him at the famous siege of Rouen in 1419, and at the marriage of Henry V with Catherine of France the year after. Whether or no he accompanied Warwick long on the Continent, he must have heard with special interest of the earl's spectacular achievements in Italy and the Holy Land. Since he followed a knightly career, Malory doubtless participated in the closing events of the Hundred Years' War. In 1429 Orleans was relieved by Joan of Arc. It would be interesting to know what so upright a man thought of that chivalrous maid and of the manner of her death.
Malory's life embraced the whole turbulent period of Henry VI's career. The reign of this weak monarch is one of the most unhappy in English history, not only because of disasters and disgraces abroad, but more perhaps because of the ceaseless turmoil of the nobility at home and the lack of any superior power to keep them in control. What part Malory played in these sorry conflicts we are not in a position to say, and inquiry is futile. Apart from war fare, however, there are many questions we should like to ask especially about the author's friends.
Was he personally acquainted with Prince Charles d'Orteans, a prisoner in London for twenty-five years after the battle of Agincourt, writing in captivity his refined but fragile lyric verse? Or with that other royal captive, King James I of Scotland, so long in the Tower, whiling away his time by the composition of the charming Kings Quair, apendant to the Knight's Tale of Chaucer, his master in poetic art? Did he associate with that eminent Lancastrian, Sir John Fortescue, who, devotedly loyal to his party until he saw their cause was hopelessly lost, finally recanted his political opinions, and lived to write, among other things, an important work on the Governance of England, in which he revealed ardent patriotism and an eager desire to help to heal the wounds of his afflicted nation? Was he familiar with the works of Alain Chartier, Christine de Pisan,the Chevalier de la Tour Landry, Antoine de la Sale, or the chivalrous writers of the court of Burgundy? In January, 1430, the Order of the Golden Fleece was founded by Philip the Good, and dedicated to the Virgin and St. Andrew. It was composed of twenty-four members (not including the sovereign), who were expected to be gentilshommes de nom et darmes et sans reproche. Did Malory enjoy intercourse with any of these nobles, who were solemnly pledged to protect Holy Church and uphold virtue throughout life? There is nothing but silence in answer to such questionings!
Professor Kittredge remarked that Malory may have been relieved from the sentence of Edward IV in 1468 by a special pardon, or by the general amnesty of 1469, "since on his death soon after, there seems to have been no question as to the inheritance of his estate." This, however, was only a conjecture, and others have suggested that his burial in Grey Friars may indicate that he died a prisoner in Newgate, near by. At all events, we have good reason to believe that he was actually in prison when he wrote his book, and that when he prayed at the end for "good deliver ance alive" he was in danger of death by sickness of the flesh. In support of this view, the following passage, introduced by Malory in the course of his narrative, is significant: "So Sir Tristram endured there great pain, for sickness had undertaken him, and that is the greatest pain a prisoner may have. For all the while a prisoner may have his health of body, he may endure under the mercy of God, and in hope of good deliver ance; but when sickness toucheth a prisoner's body, then may a prisoner say all wealth is him bereft, and then he hath cause to wail and weep."
Thomas a Kempis died in the same year as Sir Thomas Malory. The Imitation of Christ was widely known in England during the latter's lifetime. If Malory read it, he did so, we may be sure, with full understanding and sympathy. He subscribes himself at the close of his work, "a servant of Jesu by day and night." In the Imitation and the Morte d'Arthur we view the departing splender of the Middle Ages - a magnificent afterglow.
For though the day be never so long,
At last the bell ringeth to evensong.
II
WHEN one considers the circumstances of Malory's life his aristocratic lineage and profession of arms, his training as a gentleman and a soldier, his experience of foreign and civil war, the vicissitudes of his own fortunes, and finally, the fact that he wrote late in life, probably suffering in prison, approaching death one understands better why the Morte d'Arthur is what it is: a work of retrospect, tinged with sadness for the passing of the good old days; a work of idealism, troubled with knowledge of miserable facts daily divulged; a work of patriotism, written when the land was being wasted by civil strife; a work of encouragement to the right-minded, and of warning to the evil-minded, among men of that class in which the author lived and moved.
Malory wrote no preface to his book. Only incidentally does he himself reveal its serious aim, though now and then he becomes frankly hortatory; but the worthy Caxton plainly states what decided him to perpetuate the narrative in type. "Under the favour and correction of all noble lords and gentlemen," he emprised to imprint "the book, "to the intent that noble men may see and learn the noble acts of chivalry, the gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in those days, by which they came to honour, and how they that were vicious were punished and oft put to shame and rebuke; humbly beseeching all noble lords and ladies, with all other estates, of what estate or degree they be of, that shall see and read in this said book and work, that they take the good and honest acts in their remembrance and to follow the same. Wherein they 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 virtue, and sin. Do after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you good fame and renown. And for to pass the time, this book shall be pleasant to read in, but for to give faith and belief that all is true that is contained therein, ye be at your liberty; but all is written for our doctrine, and for to beware that we fall not to vice and sin, but to exercise and follow virtue, by the which we may come and attain to good fame and renown in this life, and after this short and transitory life to come unto everlasting bliss in Heaven: the which He grant us that reigneth in Heaven, the blessed Trinity, Amen!"
The Morte d'Arthur, Caxton makes clear, was in his opinion a book of moral edification, as well as one of entertainment, primarily appealing to the aristocracy of the "noble realm" in which he lived. He further exalts the work as patriotic in effect. English men, he declares, were to be reproached because foreigners knew more than they of King Arthur," which ought most to be remembered amongst us English men, considering that he was a man from within this realm and king and emperor of the same," "the most renowned Christian king, first and chief of the three best Christians and worthy" a king "to whom none earthly prince may compare," who in his time had "the flower of chivalry of the world with him" rex quondam, rexque futurus.
Many scholars have concerned themselves with the mythical conception of Arthur as a resident of the Otherworld, some time to return to liberate his British folk; but few, if any, have observed that Malory's presentation of this ideal monarch was planned to arouse definite contemporaneous interest by the subtle enforcing of similitude between past and present happenings.
"It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned" these, Malory's opening words, are notable for their definite contradiction of the facts of romance on behalf of the romance of facts. "It befell," like the "once upon a time" of a fairy tale, immediately transports us into the realm of remoteness and fable, and "the days of Uther Pendragon" prepares us to hear tales of the mighty Celtic warriors whom Geoffrey of Monmouth created in glorification of ancient Britain. Yet soon we discover that it is with a king of England we have to do. Malory begins his book as if he were writing about a monarch of the House of Lancaster, whose right to the throne was not quite clear a king "the which had great war in his days for to get all England into his hand." "All the batles that were done in Arthur's days," from the one at St. Albans, have a striking resemblance to those of fifteenth-century England. The first under takings of the monarch are to defeat his enemies and establish his kingdom; he has a private counsellor; he appeals to the Archbishop of Canterbury; he consults his lords and commons; he holds parliaments; his object is the dignity of the nation. Malory strongly emphasized the idea that Arthur was an English king; and we see him make alliances, use strategy, prepare for and carry on war, in the same spirit, and often in the same places, as the English of his day. "All men of worship said it was merry to be under such a chieftain that would put his person in adventure as other poor knights did."
One example from near the close of the story must suffice at this time to illustrate the situation.
The king and his followers are off waging a fierce war against the French, "burning and wasting all that they might overrun," for, though we should never have dreamed it before, we are suddenly advised by Malory in his twentieth book, that " to say the sooth Sir Launcelot and his brethren were lords of all France," and it is stated how the various provinces were divided among them. Arthur has left Modred as governor of the kingdom in his absence; but this traitor has taken advantage of his position, cajoled the people, and usurped the throne. He tries to win Guinevere to his wife, but she escapes to the Tower of London, and there defends herself, even against the "cannons" he fires at the walls. Arthur speedily returns, and a great conflict is imminent, when he and Modred compromise on the question of the throne. Arthur is to reign as long as he lives, but Modred is to succeed him.
No one in Malory's time could overlook the similarity of this course of events to contemporary history. Here, however, the author departs from his habitual reserve to make a comparison. "Lo, ye, all Englishmen!" he exclaims; "see ye not what a mischief here was, for he that was the most king and knight of the world, and most loved the fellowship of noble knights, and by him they were all upholden. Now might not these Englishmen hold us [them] content with him, Lo! thus was the old custom and usage of this land. And also men say that we of this land have not yet lost or forgotten that custom and usage. Alas! this is a great default of all Englishmen, for there may no thing please us no term. And so fared the people at that time; they were better pleased with Sir Modred than they were with King Arthur, and much people drew unto Sir Modred, and said that they would abide with him for better and for worse. And so Sir Modred drew with a great host to Dover, for there he heard say that Sir Arthur would arrive, and so he thought to beat his own father from his lands. And the most party of all England held with Sir Modred, the people were so newfangle."
A little later, when preparations are being made for the last great battle, Malory states: " Then Sir Modred araised much people about London, for they of Kent, Sussex and Surrey, Essex and Suffolk and of Norfolk, held the most party with Sir Modred." It is worth consideration that these were the counties from which Edward of York largely recruited his followers.
Malory persistently identifies romantic places with English localities. "The city of Camelot," he notes, "is called in English, Westminster." We read of "a town called Astolat, that is now in English Guildford;" of "a castle that is called Magouns and now it is called Arundel, in Sussex;" and of Joyous Card, where Launcelot lived with Guinevere, "some men say it was Alnwick and some say it was Bamborough."But the assertion that "the country of Logres" is "the country of England "gives us his chief guiding thread. In writing of Arthur and his wars with his nobles, Malory's thoughts were not far from his own land in his own days. " Alas ! " we can hear him say like Sir Launcelot: "Alas! that ever I should live to hear that most noble king [Arthur or Henry VI], that made me knight, thus to be overset with his subjects in his own realm." Yet "it is an old said saw, there is hard battle there as kin and friends do battle either against other; there may be no mercy but mortal war." More than once Malory recorded a truth which the world, despite so much experience, never seems to learn: "Better is peace than ever war."
Here he is at one with his sympathetic contempo rary, Occleve, who near the close of his De Regimine Prindpum makes a strong statement of the woes of "inward war" in England and France in his days, and pleads with touching earnestness for "the gift of peace, that precious jewel." To make war on the miscreants and bring them to the true faith might be meritorious, but "the great dissension, the piteous harm, the hateful discord" between the Christian lands, England and France, was a grievous offence to "the author of concord, the Lord of all realms." This was particularly sad in his eyes because the "style of worthiness" of these lands "is rung throughout the world in all the provinces." Wherefore he urged: "Give them example; ye be their mirrors; they follow you." Mutatis mutandis, there is something terribly modern in the situation; and perhaps the cause of our own twentieth-century anxieties is the same as thatin Occleve's time. "Ambition and covetousness, fire all this debate." "The kiss of Judas is now widespread." In the reign of Henry IV, Occleve wrote:
To seek stories old
No need is, since this day sharp war and hard
Is at the door, as men may behold.
He therefore spoke plainly; but Malory was led to composition somewhat later, under other circum stances, in a different mood. By good fortune he saw fit to seek old stories, the better to attract his land to sober thought.
III
NEVER has England had an aristocracy more proud and privileged, nor, it would seem, more corrupt, than in the fifteenth century. Unless all contemporary records deceive, some of the most conspicuous nobles then were reckless, dishonest, sensual, and brutal, to a degree that we nowadays find hard to Believe. Unbridled selfishness and insolence had a natural issue in riot and disorder. Robbery and rape, sacrilege, murder every sort of foul crime by so called gentlemen is openly chronicled. Suspicion and uncertainty afflicted the nation.
To be sure, Commines, a contemporary historian, pays England this tribute: "Now, in my opinion, among all the kingdoms of the world with which I am acquainted, that one where public affairs are best treated, where the people suffer least violence, is England; and there ill-luck and misfortune fall on those who make war. "England was certainly no worse than France at the same time. In England, however, as Commines observed with his usual acuteness, the nobles who made war were those to suffer from it, not only in life and fortune, but also which is more important for us now in moral strength.
Even as, in his account of Arthurs wars, Malory endeavoured to establish pride in united England, and to show the calamity of wavering truth and allgiance, so also, in the portrayal of good and bad knights, he tried to promote the virtue of individual aristocrats, by whose example society might be improved.
King Arthur he pictures as straightforward and frank, with a great eager heart ready, to put his own body into jeopardy when need railed, bountiful in gifts, generous in praise, forgiving of offence, whom "never yet man could prove untrue in his promise." He had liefer to die with honour than to live with shame."
Here is the code of honour which the king required of his knights; "Never to do outrage, or murder and always to flee treason, also by no means to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy; and also to do to ladies, damsels and gentle women succour upon pain of death also, that no man take no battles in a wrongful quarrel for no law, nor for the world's goods." "For ever," said Arthur, "it is a worshipful knight's deed to help another worshipful knight when he seeth him in a great danger, for ever a worshipful man will be loth to see a worshipful shamed, and he that is of no worship, and fareth with cowardice, never shall he show gentleness, nor no manner of goodness, where he seeth a man in any danger, for then ever will a coward show no mercy, and always a good man will do ever to another man as he would be done to him self. . . . He that was courteous, true, and faithful to his friend, was that time cherished." "All men of worship hate an envious man and will show him no favour. And he that is courteous, kind and gentle, hath favour in every place."
King Mark of Cornwall is portrayed as Arthur's absolute opposite. Mark is repeatedly spoken of as the most villainous knight (or king) in the world, whose fellowship all good knights eschewed. He is mean, wily, and ill-conditioned, a vile recreant, "a fair speaker and false thereunder," a liar, a traitor, and a murderer. All knights deem him "the most horrible coward that ever bestrode a horse."
Though Arthur's presence is always felt in the background, when he is not conspicuously in the fore ground, of the scenes pictured by Malory, the Morte d'Arthur is chiefly occupied with the exploits of other members of the Round Table brotherhood, especially of Sir Tristram and Sir Launcelot. Malory did not invent any new episodes, and the exploits of his leading heroes have in general a great sameness, as they had in Old French prose romance. Through conventional feats of arms, the various knights reveal one after another whether they are worthy or unworthy of the high standards of their order; and what those standards were, we have already seen.
Malory discloses the principles of knighthood in cidentally, in the course of engaging narrative, but if one prefers to have them compendiously stated in didactic form, one may read the French Book of the Order of Chivalry of which Caxton issued a trans lation about a year before the Morte d'Arthur, "at the request of a gentle and noble squire." " Which book," says the printer, "is not requisite for every common man to have, but to noble gentlemen that by their virtue intend to come and enter into the noble order of chivalry, the which in these late days hath been used according to this book heretofore written, but forgotten, and the exercises of chivalry not used, honoured, nor exercised as it hath been in ancient time." One cannot but be stirred by this, the translator's, earnest appeal: "O ye knights of England, where is the custom and usage of noble chivalry that was used in those days [of King Arthur]? What do ye now but go to the baynes [baths], and play at dice? And some not well advised, use not honest and good rule, against all order of knighthood. Leave this, leave it and read the noble volumes of Saint Graal, of Launcelot, of Galahad, of Tristram, of Perseforest, of Perceval, of Gawain, and many more. There shall ye see manhood, courtesy and gentleness. And look in latter days of the noble acts since the Conquest, in King Richard's days Coeur de Lyon, Edward the first and the third and his noble sons; Sir Walter Manny; read Voissart; and also be hold that victorious and noble King Harry the fifth, and the captains under him, his noble brethren, the Earls of Salisbury, Montagu, and many others whose names shine gloriously by their virtuous noblesse and acts that they did in the honour of the order of chivalry. Alas! what do ye but sleep and take ease, and are all disordered from chivalry?"
If knights in the fifteenth century were unfaithful to the avowed principles of their order, who then kept these principles alive? Where was the sanctuary of that greatest of chivalric virtues, Truth? A short poem of the time explains:
A man that should of Truth tell,
With great lords he may not dwell.
In true story, as clerks tell,
Truth is put in low degree.
In ladies 1 chambers cometh he not,
There dare Truth get no foot!
Though he would, he may not
Come among the high meiny.
"In England," as Sir Walter Scott observed, "it was fortunately not so much the crown as the commons who rose on the ruins of feudal chivalry." In England men of low degree have often illustrated chivalric character when great lords have acted like churls. The reading of Malory shows that if nowadays English-speaking people, high and low alike, respond instantly to the call of fair play, this is merely a part of their chivalric inheritance. Frequently it is emphasized in the Morte d'Arthur that there is "no worship" in taking an opponent at a disadvantage. We find Sir Lamorak interrupting an unequal struggle, because, he said, "it was shame, four against one." "Fie for shame," Sir Breuse is rebuked; "strike never a knight when he is on the earth." "Though this knight be never so false," said Pelleas about Gawain, "I will never slay him sleeping; for I will never destroy the high order of knighthood." Sir Launcelot, observing a fight, undertook "to help the weaker party [the under dog, as it were] in in creasing of his chivalry." But there are deeper truths in the knightly ideal, which Malory and chivalric writers in general also help us to grasp. Sir Balin said: "Worthiness and good qualities and good deeds are not all only in arrayment, but manhood and wor ship is hid within man's person." "Humility and pa tience," a hermit explained to Gawain, "those be the things that be always green and quick; for [to the end that] man may no time overcome humility and patience, therefore was the Round Table founded, I and chivalry hath been at all times."
IV
ACCORDING to the Old French Order, "God and chivalry concord together." In that work, however, nothing is said of the courtly love which is essential in the matter of Britain. Malory shows no special fondness for this courtly love, but he could not write a Morte d'Arthur and leave it out. Though he necessarily dwells on the amours of his chief heroines, he betrays no quickening enthusiasm for the theme. It would have been difficult, we must admit, so to humanize the ordinary account of Guinevere's intrigue with Launcelot as to fill anyone with tremors of excitement. Even Chretien deTroyes in the beginning was unable to make it seem other than artificial, and it lost any real life it ever had when elongated in tedious prose. But the same cannot be said of the passion of Tristram and Ysolt. We are thrilled to this hour by the early poems on their unconquer able love. If Malory did not give us something similarly exquisite and moving, it was primarily, of course, because the works of such men as Thomas and Beroul were inaccessible to him, yet also we can but think, because of his own serious nature and his moral aim in the composition of his book.
We are indeed informed that "to tell the joy there was between La Belle Isoud and Sir Tristram, there is no tongue can tell it, nor heart think it, nor pen write it;" but Malory made no effort to display the turbulent emotions of either hero or heroine. The chief reason, in his opinion, why Tristram de served praise, appears in the following passage, which has peculiar interest as exhibiting the training of young English noblemen in his time. Tristram is first sent for seven years into France, "to learn the language and nurture, and deeds of arms." "And after as he growed in might and strength he laboured ever in hunting and hawking, so that never gentleman more that ever we heard tell of. And the book saith, he began good measure of blowing of beasts of venery, of hawking and hunting. And therefore the book of venery, of hawking and hunting, is called the book of Sir Tristram. Wherefore, as me seemeth, all gentlemen who bear old arms ought of right to honour Sir Tristram for the goodly terms that gentlemen have and use, and shall to the day of doom, that thereby in a manner all men of worship may dissever a gentleman from a yeoman, and from a yeoman a villain. For he that is gentle will draw unto him gentle taches [qualities], and follow the customs of noble gentlemen."
"Now," says the author on another occasion, "turn we unto Sir Tristram and La Belle Isoud, how they make great joy daily together with all manner of mirths that they could devise." But without adding more on this theme, over which the brilliant Anglo-Norman Thomas lingered with such satisfaction, he immediately continues: "And every day Sir Tristram would ride a-hunting, for Sir Tristram was that time called the best chaser in the world, and the noblest blower of an horn of all man ner of measures. For, as books report, of him came all the good terms of venery and hunting, and all the sizes and measures of blowing of an horn; and of him we had first all the terms of hawking, and which were beasts of chase, and beasts of venery, and which were vermins; and all the blasts that be long to all manner of games; first to the uncoup ling, to the seeking, to the rechate, to the flight, to the death, and to strake; and many other blasts and terms, that all manner of gentlemen have cause to the world's end to praise Sir Tristram and to pray for his soul." There can be little question that Malory himself loved hunting and thought it preeminently a gentleman's pursuit. So it has remained in England to our day.
On Sir Launcelot Malory lavishes more superlatives than on any other knight. He is the biggest and the best breathed, the worshipfullest, the marvellousest, the courtliest, the noblest, the most honoured of high and low and this "in all the world." He is the flower of knights, a man of might matchless, peerless of courtesy. Yet, notwithstanding, he also appears in the Morte d'Arthur, as in every romance where he is represented as the father of Galahad, and made to participate in the Quest of the Holy Grail, in the role of a sad and sorry sinner, because he "trusted more in his harness than in his Maker," but above all because he had done all his great deeds less in honour of God than in adoration of Guinevere. "For, as the book saith, had not Sir Launcelot been in his privy thoughts and in his mind so set inwardly to the queen, as he was in seeming outward to God, there had been no knights passed him in the quest of the Sangreal."
When one reviews the relations of Launcelot and Guinevere, as presented by Malory, it is plain that Launcelot reveals himself in word and deed as much the nobler of the two. Guinevere is altogether lack ing in humility, patience, or other Christian virtue. When she heard of her lover's conduct with Elaine, "she writhed and weltered as a mad woman." When she saw him bear in a tourney the sleeve of the Maid of Astolat, "she was well nigh out of her mind for wrath." On this occasion, she at first refused to see Launcelot or to let him explain; then finally, when the facts of his great loyalty were revealed, she still rebuked him, but now for too little "bounty and gentleness" to her rival who is dead! "This is not the first time," said Sir Launcelot, "that ye have been displeased with me causeless; but, madam, ever I must suffer you, but what sorrow I endure I take no force." It is Guinevere who, when Launcelot would spare her captor, Meliagraunce, gives him a sign to fight to a finish and revenge by death the insult to her. Launcelot is impelled to take every sort of risk for her sake. He recks not for himself; but he is loth to see her dishonoured. His chivalry is in reality only personal idealism, which benefits him morally more than it does the lady he serves.
Launcelot loved but one, and that, according to Malory, by reason of right. " For to take my plea sure with paramours," the hero declares, "that will I refuse, in principal for dread of God, for knights that be adulterous or wanton shall not be happy or fortunate, and who that so useth shall be unhappy and all thing is unhappy that is about them." Yet, despite its perfect fidelity, Malory presents his paragon's love for Guinevere as a grievous offence. It superinduced the great catastrophe of the fall of the Round Table fellowship and the death of the king. After her "most noble lord " departed this life, Guinevere re tired to Amesbury, "and there she let make herself a nun . . . and great penance she took, as ever did sin ful lady in this land." She finally renounced Launcelot's love, which he came again to proffer her there, lest she should endanger her "soul's health," trusting after her death "to have a sight of the blessed face of Christ, . . . for as sinful as ever I was are saints in Heaven." These are her last words to her lover: "Therefore,Sir Launcelot,go to thy realm, and there take thee a wife, and live with her with joy and bliss, and I pray thee heartily, pray for me to Our Lord, that I may amend my mis-living." But, as she "took herself to perfection," so thereupon did Launcelot too; the rest of his days he lived in penance and hardship, attaining through deep contrition to such great holiness that at last "the gates of Heaven opened against him."
Dante seems to have been as much impressed as Malory by Launcelot's pious manner of ending his days. Long before, in the Convivio, he thus moralized the tale: "O, wretched and vile, who with hoisted sails rush into this port [of natural death], and where ye ought to rest shatter yourselves in the full strength of the wind and lose yourselves in the very place to which ye have made so long a voyage. Verily the knight Launcelot would not enter there with hoisted sails; nor our most noble Latin Guido of Montefeltro. In truth, these noble ones lowered the sails of the activities of the world; for in their advanced age they gave themselves to religious orders, putting aside every mundane delight and activity." Malory expresses his personal feeling frankly and finely in the following words: "For like as winter rasure doth always arase and deface green summer, so fareth it by unstable love in man and woman. For in many persons there is no stability, for we may see all day, for a little blast of winter's rasure, anon we shall deface and lay apart true love for little or naught, that cost much thing. This is no wisdom nor stability, but it is feebleness of nature and great disworship whosoever useth this. Therefore, like as May month flowereth and flourisheth in many gardens, so in likewise let every man of worship flourish his heart in this world, first unto God and next unto the joy of them he promised his faith unto, for there never was worshipful man nor worshipful woman, but they loved one better than another: and worship in arms may never be foiled, but first reserve the honour to God, and secondly the quarrel must come of thy lady: and such call I virtuous love. But nowadays men cannot love seven night but they must have all their desires, that love may not endure by reason; for where they be soon accorded, and hasty heat, soon it cooleth. Right so fareth love nowa days; soon hot, soon cold. This is no stability, but the old love was not so. Men and women could love together seven years, and no wanton lusts were be tween them, and then was love truth and faithfulness. And lo, in like wise was used love in King Arthurs days.
Guinevere was captious and unreasonable to her lover, as well as unfaithful to her husband; Morgain la Fee afflicted Ascolon by her "false lusts;" Vivien deceived Merlin, who was "assotted"upon her; and Ettard brought on herself the scorn of all ladies and gentlewomen because of the pride she manifested towards King Pelleas, who "chose her for his sovereign lady, and never to love other but her." But, on the other hand, there are many beautiful ladies in the Morte d'Arthur who seem the incarnation of gentle ness, devotion, and truth. Balin bitterly laments that he interfered with the true love of Lanceor and his lady Colombe: by accident he slew "two hearts in one body," for the lady "slew herself with her lover's sword for dole and sorrow" at his death. "I have given," avows Elaine, " the greatest riches and fair est flower that ever I had, and that is my maiden love and faith." She desired Launcelot's presence "liefer than all the gold that is above the earth;" she died of her "fervent love." "Now blessed be God, said the fair Maid of Astolat, that that knight sped so well, for he is the man in the world that I first loved, and truly he shall be the last that ever I shall love."
Throughout Malory's book, true love is exalted as a noble inspiration to valour. " Well I wot that love is a great mistress," spoke his chief hero concerning the fate of Palamides, a mighty warrior, who loved Isolt long and faithfully without guerdon. "She hath been the cause of my worship," declared Palamides, "and else I had been the most simplest knight in the world. For by her and because of her, I have won the worship that I have." "I proffered her no dishonour I offended never as to her person." "I shall love her to the uttermost days of my life."
"Madam, said Sir Launcelot[to the Queen], love not to be constrained to love; for love must arise of the heart and not by no constraint. That is truth, said the king, and many knights: love is free in him self, and never will be bounden; for when he is bounden he loseth himself." These words carry us back to the memorable passage in Chaucer's Frank lin's Tale, with which they are fully in accord:
Love wol nat ben constreyned by maistrye;
Whan maistrie cometh, the god of love anon
Beteth his winges, and farewel! he is gon!
Love is a thing as any spirit free.
They carry us forward also to Spenser's transformation of Chaucer's lines:
All loss is less and less the infamy,
Than loss of love to him that loves but one:
Ne may love be compelled by mastery:
For soon as mastery comes sweet love anon
Taketh his nimble wings and soon away is gone.
No English poet, however, has exhibited chivalric love, based on truth and faithfulness, more charm ingly than Malory's unknown contemporary, the author of the Nut Brown Maid.
Though it be sung
Of old and young
That I should be to blame,
Theirs be the charge
That speak so large
In hurting of my name:
For I will prove
That faithful love
It is devoid of shame.
In your distress
And heaviness
To part with you the same,
To show all to
That do not so
True lovers are they none;
For in my mind,
Of all mankind,
I love but you alone.
In an epoch when such a lyric as the Nut Brown Maid could be composed, neither true poetry nor true love was dead.
Sidney, who praised Edward IV above all kings of England, only for this worthy knight durst prove To lose his crown rather than fail his love, and who attributed his own success in "martial sports" to his adored lady
Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race
was later to write of purity in love:
If that be sin which doth the manners frame,
Well stayed with truth in word, and faith of deed,
Ready of wit and fearing naught but shame;
If that be sin which infixed hearts doth breed
A loathing of all loose unchastity:
Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.
Finally, in this connection, it deserves note that almost the only instance of happy wedded love in the entire Morte d'Arthur is that of the wife of King Meliodas, the mother of Sir Tristram; she was "a full meek lady and well she loved her lord, and he her again, and the time came that she should bear a child, so there was great joy betwixt them." Malory, we may well believe, favoured wedded love as much as Chaucer, but his material gave him little chance to make that clear.
V
CHAUCER spoke of the Book of Launcelot as one that "women hold in full great reverence;" he knew Launcelot as a pattern of courtliness; but there was another Arthurian hero for whom he had greater enthusiasm "Gawayne with his olde curteisye." Anyone who knows Gawain only from the Morte d'Arthur has contempt for him, since (with some exceptions, relics of the older presentation) he is there pictured as envious, revengeful, merciless, a troth-: breaker, and light of love. Never was so great calumny put upon a noble warrior. We can understand it in Malory; but it seems nearly inexcusable that Tennyson also should have vilified Gawain's name; and certainly this will be more and more counted against him as a matter of serious reproach.
There exists in old English a considerable cycle of poems in which Gawain is exalted, and always consistently, as a knight of peculiar charm and nobility. Of these we can here examine but one Gawain and the Green Knight The unknown fourteenth-century author of this delightful work displays narrative art of rare excellence. Gaston Paris called the poem a jewel in our literature; but perhaps it will always be best understood by Englishmen, so subtly does it gratify their taste. The poet shows keen sensitiveness to nature in all its English moods, the dreary as well as the glad; he describes English landscapes of different sorts with striking vividness; his festival and hunting scenes are surrounded with the national atmosphere of mirth. Above all, we sympathize with his conception of the hero's character: Gawain is here pictured as strong and vigorous, ready to travel solitary paths without fear or wavering, gracious in speech and courteous in manner, loyal in allegiance and sensitive to honour, beloved of all and envied of none. In contrast with him, Launcelot is too conventional, too artificial, too mondain for robust Englishmen, who have always preferred an outdoor to a social knight. It is noteworthy that Malory makes Gawain as Shakespeare makes Hotspur suspicious of a smooth talker. "Make thou no more language, said Sir Gawain [to Sir Launce lot], but deliver the queen from thee, and pike thee lightly out of this court." "Then Sir Gawain said: 'Sir Launcelot, and thou darest do battle, leave thy babbling and come off, and let us ease our hearts.' "It is Gawain who arouses Arthur to say to his enemy: "Fie upon thy fair language."
In the fifteenth century, the English had also heroes of the forests in whom they took delight, ballad-heroes, like Robin Hood. We cannot be too grateful that the ballads of Robin Hood were con ceived in the age of chivalry, for in them Robin seems almost as courteous and loveable as Gawain himself. Shakespeare thought of the noble outlaw when describing the care-free life of the gentle duke, father of Rosalind.
In summer, when the shaws be sheen,
And leaves be large and long:
It is full merry in fair forest
To hear the foules song:
To see the deer draw to the dale,
And leave the hilles hee
And shadow them in the leaves green,
Under the greenwood tree.
With what joy we repeat these words. They themselves are "full merry." The author of Gawain and the Green Knight describes a scene at merry Christ mas in merry England. The word "merry" is like wise ever on Malory's lips. It is English to the core. "Gay" to us savours of the salon; "merry" has the perfume of new-mown hay in the fields the fair fields of a happy land. In England it is believed that God made the country, and man made the town. To the French France is douce or belle,but to us England is "old" or "merry; "and long vistas of national difference disclose themselves in these characteristic adjectives of praise.
Like a true Englishman, Malory loved "the merry month of May." In a charming little chapter, in which he likens true love to summer, he sings a paean to "that lusty month," which "giveth unto all lovers courage;" "for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart, that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. . . . For then all herbs and trees renew a man and woman, and in likewise lovers call again to their mind old gentleness and old service, and many kind deeds that were forgotten by negligence."
Numerous English stories of old gentleness and old service have been forgotten by negligence, on our own part or that of our ancestors. Some of great interest have been preserved by Malory alone. One of these relates how, at a high feast of Pentecost in Carlisle, Sir Launcelot healed the wounds of Sir Urry, a knight of Hungary, which had been inflicted by enchantment. He was unwilling to try the cure after all his fellows had failed, for fear of the appearance of presumption. But his sovereign insisted, and, when Launcelot had success, "then King Arthur and all the kings and knights knelt down, and gave thanks and lovings unto God and to His blessed mother, and ever Sir Launcelot wept as a child that had been beaten." In this scene Launcelot has probably usurped the place of another hero, but whoever acted as he did is a knight unto whom, in Malory's phrase, "our hearts give greatly." He had the meekness of true chivalry.
The most original part of the Morte d'Arthur, however, is that which sets forth the enfances of Sir Gareth, of whom mention has already been made. It is improbable that this story ever passed through the hydraulic press of late French prose, for it is not sapped of delightful freshness. Malory's words are here specially full of vigour, and his phrases more tinged with homely realism than anywhere else. We gladly applaud young Gareth, because, while bewilderingly successful in arms, he is ever modest, and because, though "he had great labour for his love," he yet so persevered, with astonishing self-restraint, that his love's labour was not lost. "I would fain be of good fame and knighthood," he says; and he conquers every obstacle set in his path moral obstacles of unfair scorn and undeserved recrimination, as well as the physical impediments of dreary ways, and opponents without mercy and pity. For the sake of his honour and Arthur's, he engages in a fierce succession of fights, and then in a great tournament "paineth himself and enforceth himself to do great deeds" so as to show himself best beloved with his lady. "This Sir Gareth was a noble knight and a well ruled and a fair languaged" so ends the story of his brilliant career. Certainly, not only by reputation, but also by his conduct in instances recorded, he appears in Malory's book as Launcelot describes him in maturity "a gentle knight, courteous, true and bounteous, meek and mild, and in him is no manner of mal-engine, but plain, faithful and true."
The words "meek and mild" applied here to Gareth, as elsewhere to Launcelot, remind us of the persistent union of the phraseology as well as the principles of chivalry and religion. One of the most favoured hymns now sung in English churches opens with the words "Gentle Jesu, meek and mild." There is evidently something of mysticism in Malory's book. Often while reading it, we seem to be within a solemn Gothic cathedral, where processions pass and organ notes resound; incense rises and chants die away; but a great sense of mystery remains. In an atmosphere remote from that of the world, unreal for the body, the soul seems to be lifted up, to perceive the higher verities of life. "By the Round Table," Malory tells us, " is the whole world signified by right."
VI
THE question of lineage as allied to gentleness continued in the reactionary age after Chaucer to occupy the public thought. "It is contrary to the laws of nature," said the Scot Henryson, "for a gentle man to be degenerate, not following of his primogeniture the worthy rule."
The nobleness and great magnificence
Of prince or lord, who lists to magnify,
His great ancestry and lineal descents
Should first extol, and his genealogy,
So that his heart he might incline thereby
The more to virtue and to worthiness,
Hearing rehearse his elders' gentleness.
In the fifteenth century the difference between nobiles and ignobiles, between gentlemen and others, was made more manifest than before by the privilege, strictly denied all but the former, to use coat-armour. In 1415, when Henry V was preparing for his French campaign, he issued a proclamation that no man should bear arms without proving by what ancestral right or by whose gift he bore them, and claims were to be submitted to officers appointed for the purpose. Infringements on the rights of gentlemen or disputes that concerned them as such disputes of honour were dealt with by the so-called Court of Chivalry. This court was a very powerful body in Malory's time. By its authority, a knight mignt be "degraded" for unbecoming conduct, and his coat-of-arms reversed, after which he was considered as dead in chivalry; or he might have blots put on his 'scutcheon "abatements, "they were called for all sorts of "ungentle" acts,
Malory nowhere gives a hint that there might be any sort of gentleman in the land but one of station. To him the gentleman is exactly the French gentilhomme. The commons, or commonalty, are mentioned only a few times in his book, and never with consideration. That he did not leave them out simply because they had little to do with knightly story is evident from the fact that he included certain incidents and reflections, which he might have omitted if he had desired, but with the tone of which he seems, on the contrary, to have been in full sympathy.
After telling, for example, of the way that the noble knight Hermance, noted for "his goodness and gentleness," was deceived and slain by two false knights, not of his own blood, to whom he had entrusted his affairs, Malory writes: "It is an old saw, Give a churl rule, and thereby he will not be sufficed; for what soever he be that is ruled by a villain born, and the lord of the soil to be a gentleman born, the same villain shall destroy all the gentlemen about him; therefore all estates and lords beware whom ye take about you."
One day, on the occasion of the king's marriage, Aries, a cowherd, brings to Arthur a youth, Tor, whom he supposes to be his own son, and asks that he be knighted. Tor, he declares, is very unlike him and his other sons in interests and qualities, and the boy shows this difference in visage and behaviour. All marvel how it could be that a cowherd's son had gentle traits. Merlin must needs explain that he is really the son of King Pellinore, begotten by that stern knight on the "fair house-wife" before her marriage to Aries, "when she was a maid and went to milk kine." Sir Tor succeeds in his first quest of arms, and Pellinore then proposes him for admission to the Round Table. Arthur observes with gratification that " he saith little, and he doth much more," and agrees to receive him; but he does not withhold this significant remark: "I know none in all this court, and he were as well born on his mother's side as he is on your side, that is like him of prowess and might."
Sir Gareth also came to Arthur's court an unknown young man, and at first asked Arthur for nothing but to give him meat and drink for a twelve month. "My fair son," said Arthur, "ask better, I counsel thee, for this is but a simple asking, for my heart giveth me to thee greatly that thou art come of men of worship. Arthur could evidently tell a gentleman when he saw him; but Kay, the crabbed steward, into whose charge the youth was given, believed him a "villain born" and set him menial tasks. "And so he endured all that twelvemonth and never displeased man nor child, but always he was meek and mild." Soon afterwards he started on a mission, to succour a lady in distress, accompanied by a damsel-messenger, who reproached him all the way for his low birth; but Gareth acted towards her with such unfailing courtesy that finally she was constrained to say: "O mercy, marvel have I, . . . what manner of man ye be, for it may never be otherwise but that ye be come of a noble blood, for so foully and shamefully did never woman rule a knight as I have done you, and ever courteously ye have suffered me, and that came never but of gentle blood."
In the Book of St. Albans (printed in 1486, a year after the Morte d'Arthur) we read that "all gentleness comes of God of Heaven," and we at first think that this is exactly the sentiment ofChaucer: "Gentilesse cometh from God alone; " but we are deceived: the St. Albans writer is merely endeavour ing to show that heraldry began above. Admitting that "all were created in Heaven in gentle nature," he emphasizes the fact that Lucifer "with millions out of Heaven fell into hell and other places and be holden there in bondage." Then, having in mind Wat Tyler's cry, he remarks: "A bondman or a churl will say all we be come of Adam. So Lucifer with his company may say all we be come of Heaven" surely a sufficient retort!
Naively, or perhaps subtly, the writer continues: "Now for to divide gentlemen from churls, in haste it shall be proved. There was never gentleman nor churl ordained by kind but he had father and mother. Adam and Eve had neither father nor mother, and in the sons of Adam and Eve was found both gentleman and churl. By the sons of Adam and Eve, Seth, Abel, and Cain, divided was the royal blood from the ungentle. A brother to slay his brother contrary to the law, where might be more ungentleness? By that did Cain become a churl and all his offspring after him, by the cursing of God and his own father Adam. And Seth was made a gentleman through his father's and mother's blessing. And of the offspring of Seth Noah came, a gentleman by kind. Noah had three sons begotten by kind. By the mother two were named Ham and Shem, and by the father the third was named Japhet. Yet in these three sons gentleness and ungentleness was found. In Ham ungentleness was found to his own father done to discover his privities and laugh his father to scorn. Japhet was the youngest and reproved his brother. Then let a gentleman take mind of Ham, for ungentleness he was become a churl and had the cursing of God and his father Noah." "Of the offspring of the gentleman Japhet came Abraham, Moses, Aaron, and the prophets, and also the kings of the right line of Mary, of whom that gentleman Jesus was born, very God and very man: after his manhood King of the land of Judea and of Jews, gentleman by his mother Mary, Prince of cotearmure."
Similar ingenious ideas affected some versions of the legend of the Holy Grail, and concerning Gala had, a descendant of the "gentle knight," Joseph of Arimathea, we read in the Morte d'Artkur of all parties come of the best knights in the world, and of the highest lineage; for Sir Launcelot come but of the eighth degree from our Lord Jesu Christ; and Sir Galahad is from the ninth degree from our Lord Jesu Christ; therefore I dare say they be the greatest gentlemen of the world." This pedigree is as absurd as possible; but no one will deny that it im plies the highest sort of obligation for a man of rank. "Now fair Sir" said Galahad to the son of a King of Penmark since ye become of kings and queens, now look that knight well set in you, for ye ought to be a mirror unto all chivalry." Chaucer writes: "He is gentle who doth gentle deeds." Malory insists: "He who is gentle ought to do gentle deeds " Noblesse oblige.
Malory believed in the established order of things, the ascendency of the nobles, but not as one indifferent to corruption or injustice. He would have had the lords of his day reform themselves, and he would have conducted the reform on the basis of idealis tic principle, the pressure to change coming from within, spiritual, rather than from without, temporal. He would not have wished to overthrow the consti tution of knighthood when it no longer perfectly fulfilled the object of its being: he would have amended it so that it might still prevail for good. Malory was serious, earnest, high-souled. He loved his country, "the noble realm of England," and though inflexible in class feeling, he was undoubtedly a force for righteousness in his day. Because of just such men as he, the English aristocracy has long been honoured, nay beloved.
In England there has never been so definite a cleavage between the different ranks of society as exists on the Continent. In England noble birth seldom ensures a title to others than the eldest born of a family, and there are at present innumerable gentle men in the realm of better lineage than many of the peers. This fact has been an endless aid to the main tenance of knightly ideals among the people at large. Chivalry has not concerned the titled alone. Commoners and aristocrats alike have striven to exhibit the noble qualities which Malory led them to admire in the heroes of the Round Table. Through the Morte d'Arthur the whole nation has come better to comprehend the virtue of chivalry its beauty and its holiness.
