Caxton, in 1485, we come to the end of the Middle Ages in literature. Manuscripts written out laboriously by monks and clerks were now to give way to the printed page. The age of Elizabeth was less than a century away, one of the golden ages of the poets. Yet few of the Elizabethans touched on the story of Arthur. The main exception was Edmund Spenser, who made Prince Arthur the hero of his great poem _The Faerie Queene_, but Spenser's Arthur and his knights and ladies have little in common with the figures in the old romances. The succeeding centuries, great as they were in English writers of genius, paid little attention to Arthur. Milton and Dryden made little use of the legends. Stories of ancient chivalry lost their vogue, novels were becoming popular and the poets chose themes closer to their own times and point of view. Not until the nineteenth century did Arthur come into his own again. Then the Victorian poets turned to him for inspiration. William Morris wrote _The Defence of Guenevere_, and a host of lesser poets tried their hands on similar themes. Swinburne told the story of _Tristram of Lyonesse_ and the _Tale of Balen_, and James Russell Lowell composed his beautiful poem _The Vision of Sir Launfal_. Matthew Arnold wrote _Tristram and Iseult_. In 1850 Richard Wagner, the great German composer, produced his opera _Lohengrin_, and followed it with _Tristan und Isolde_ and _Parsifal_. These tell the old stories in somewhat new form, and follow the early French romances rather than Malory. But the true descendant of Chretien de Troies and Malory was Alfred Tennyson. The great work of this poet's life was his _Idylls of the King_, one of the finest achievements of English literature. He owed his inspiration chiefly to Malory. "The vision of Arthur as I have drawn him," Tennyson said to his son, "had come upon me when, little more than a boy, I first lighted upon Malory." He covered almost the entire field of the legends. The _Idylls of the King_ are _The Coming of Arthur_, _Geraint and Enid_, _Merlin and Vivien_, _Lancelot and Elaine_, _The Holy Grail_, _Pelleas and Ettarre_, _Balin and Balan_, _The Last Tournament_, _Guinevere_, and _The Passing of Arthur_. Tennyson gives to the stories far more allegory, far more philosophy than the early poets gave them. His age was interested in philosophy and so, as was the case with each of the earlier poets, Tennyson handled the legends after the fashion of his own times. In his pages we see the characters as actual men and women, subtly drawn, concerned with right and wrong far more than with mere knightly adventures. Arthur and Lancelot and Guinevere hold the center of the stage, and it is the fate of these three that provides the great moving motive of the poems. To Tennyson we owe the most nearly perfect version of the story that dates back to a dim and legendary England. What verse more beautiful than his to tell of chivalry? "Then, in the boyhood of the year, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere Rode thro' the coverts of the deer, With blissful treble ringing clear. She seem'd a part of joyous Spring: A gown of grass-green silk she wore, Buckled with golden clasps before; A light-green tuft of plumes she bore Closed in a golden ring." In beauty and dignity and human interest Tennyson gives us the great world of Arthurian legend in its most perfect form. Malory's _Morte Darthur_ was not Tennyson's only source for the stories of his Idylls. The adventures of...