CHAPTER III. How La Cote Male Taile overthrew Sir Dagonet the king's fool, and of the rebuke that he had of the damosel. CHAPTER IV. How La Cote Male Taile fought against an hundred knights, and how he escaped by the mean of a lady. CHAPTER V. How Sir Launcelot came to the court and heard of La Cote Male Taile, and how he followed after him, and how La
Cote Male Taile was
CHAPTER VI. How Sir Launcelot fought with six knights, and after with Sir Brian, and how he delivered the prisoners. CHAPTER VII. How Sir Launcelot met with the damosel named Male disant, and named her the Damosel Bienpensant. CHAPTER VIII. How La Cote Male Taile was taken prisoner, and after rescued by Sir Launcelot, and how Sir Launcelot overcame
four brethren.
CHAPTER IX. How Sir Launcelot made La Cote Male Taile lord of the Castle of Pendragon, and after was made knight of the
Round Table.
CHAPTER X. How La Beale Isoud sent letters to Sir Tristram by her maid Bragwaine, and of divers adventures of Sir Tristram. CHAPTER XI. How Sir Tristram met with Sir Lamorak de Galis, and how they fought, and after accorded never to fight together. CHAPTER XII. How Sir Palomides followed the Questing Beast, and smote down Sir Tristram and Sir Lamorak with one spear. CHAPTER XIII. How Sir Lamorak met with Sir Meliagaunce, and fought together for the beauty of Dame Guenever.
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CHAPTER XIV. How Sir Meliagaunce told for what cause they fought, and how Sir Lamorak jousted with King Arthur.
CHAPTER XV. How Sir Kay met with Sir Tristram, and after of the shame spoken of the knights of Cornwall, and how they
jousted.
CHAPTER XVI. How King Arthur was brought into the Forest Perilous, and how Sir Tristram saved his life.
CHAPTER XVII. How Sir Tristram came to La Beale Isoud, and how Kehydius began to love Beale Isoud, and of a letter that
Tristram found.
CHAPTER XIX. How Sir Tristram soused Dagonet in a well, and how Palomides sent a damosel to seek Tristram, and how Palomides met with King Mark.
CHAPTER XX. How it was noised how Sir Tristram was dead, and how La Beale Isoud would have slain herself.
CHAPTER XXI. How King Mark found Sir Tristram naked, and made him to be borne home to Tintagil, and how he was there known by a brachet.
CHAPTER XXII. How King Mark, by the advice of his council, banished Sir Tristram out of Cornwall the term of ten years. CHAPTER XXIII. How a damosel sought help to help Sir Launcelot against thirty knights, and how Sir Tristram fought with them. CHAPTER XXIV. How Sir Tristram and Sir Dinadan came to a lodging where they must joust with two knights.
CHAPTER XXV. How Sir Tristram jousted with Sir Kay and Sir Sagramore le Desirous, and how Sir Gawaine turned Sir Tristram
from Morgan le Fay.
CHAPTER XXVI. How Sir Tristram and Sir Gawaine rode to have foughten with the thirty knights, but they durst not come out. CHAPTER XXVII. How damosel Bragwaine found Tristram sleeping by a well, and how she delivered letters to him from La Beale
Isoud.
CHAPTER XXVIII. How Sir Tristram had a fall with Sir Palomides, and how Launcelot overthrew two knights.
CHAPTER XXIX. How Sir Launcelot jousted with Palomides and overthrew him, and after he was assailed with twelve knights. CHAPTER XXX. How Sir Tristram behaved him the first day of the tournament, and there he had the prize.
CHAPTER XXXI. How Sir Tristram returned against King Arthur's party because he saw Sir Palomides on that party. CHAPTER XXXII. How Sir Tristram found Palomides by a well, and brought him with him to his lodging.
CHAPTER XXXIII. How Sir Tristram smote down Sir Palomides, and how he jousted with King Arthur, and other feats. CHAPTER XXXIV. How Sir Launcelot hurt Sir Tristram, and how after Sir Tristram smote down Sir Palomides. CHAPTER XXXV. How the prize of the third day was given to Sir Launcelot, and Sir Launcelot gave it to Sir Tristram.
CHAPTER XXXVI. How Palomides came to the castle where Sir Tristram was, and of the quest that Sir Launcelot and ten knights made for Sir Tristram.
CHAPTER XXXVII. How Sir Tristram, Sir Palomides, and Sir Dinadan were taken and put in prison.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. How King Mark was sorry for the good renown of Sir Tristram. Some of King Arthur's knights jousted with
knights of Cornwall.
CHAPTER XXXIX. Of the treason of King Mark, and how Sir Gaheris smote him down and Andred his cousin.
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CHAPTER XL. How after that Sir Tristram, Sir Palomides, and Sir Dinadan had been long in prison they were delivered.
CHAPTER XLI. How Sir Dinadan rescued a lady from Sir Breuse Saunce Pite, and how Sir Tristram received a shield of Morgan le
Fay.
CHAPTER XLII. How Sir Tristram took with him the shield, and also how he slew the paramour of Morgan le Fay. CHAPTER XLIII. How Morgan le Fay buried her paramour, and how Sir Tristram praised Sir Launcelot and his kin. CHAPTER XLIV. How Sir Tristram at a tournament bare the shield that Morgan le Fay delivered to him.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
THE Morte D'Arthur was finished, as the epilogue tells us, in the ninth year of Edward IV., i.e. between March 4, 1469 and the same date in 1470. It is thus, fitly enough, the last important English book written before the introduction of printing into this country, and since no manuscript of it has come down to us it is also the first English classic for our knowledge of which we are entirely dependent on a printed text. Caxton's story of how the book was brought to him and he was induced to print it may be read farther on in his own preface. From this we learn also that he was not only the printer of the book, but to some extent its editor also, divid-ing Malory's work into twenty-one books, splitting up the books into chapters, by no means skilfully, and supplying the "Rubrish" or chapter-headings. It may be added that Caxton's preface contains, moreover, a brief criticism which, on the points on which it touches, is still the soundest and most sympathetic that has been written. Caxton finished his edition the last day of July 1485, some fifteen or sixteen years after Malory wrote his epilogue. It is clear that the author was then dead, or the printer would not have acted as a clumsy editor to the book, and recent discoveries (if bibliogra-phy may, for the moment, enlarge its bounds to mention such matters) have revealed with tolerable certainty when Malory died and who he was. In letters to The Athenaeum in July 1896 Mr. T. Williams pointed out that the name of a Sir Thomas Malorie occurred among those of a number of other Lancastrians excluded from a general pardon granted by Edward IV. in 1468, and that a William Mallerye was mentioned in the same year as taking part in a Lancastrian rising. In September 1897, again, in another letter to the same paper, Mr. A. T. Martin reported the finding of the will of a Thomas Malory of Papworth, a hundred partly in Cambridgesh-ire, partly in Hunts. This will was made on September 16, 1469, and as it was proved the 27th of the next month the testator must have been in immediate expectation of death. It contains the most careful provision for the education and starting in life of a family of three daughters and seven sons, of whom the youngest seems to have been still an infant. We cannot say with certainty that this Thomas Malory, whose last thoughts were so busy for his children, was our author, or that the Lancastrian knight discovered by Mr. Williams was identical with either or both, but such evidence as the Morte D'Arthur offers favours such a belief. There is not only the epilogue with its petition, "pray for me while I am alive that God send me good deliverance and when I am dead pray you all for my soul," but this very request is foreshadowed at the end of chap. 37 of Book ix. in the touching passage, surely inspired by personal experience, as to the sickness "that is the greatest pain a prisoner may have"; and the reflections on English fickleness in the first chapter of Book xxi., though the Wars of the Roses might have inspired them in any one, come most naturally from an author who was a Lancastrian knight. If the Morte D'Arthur was really written in prison and by a prisoner distressed by ill-health as well as by lack of liberty, surely no task was ever better devised to while away weary hours. Leaving abundant scope for originality in selection, modification, and ar-rangement, as a compilation and translation