re invented.
The Minnesingers of Germany took up the same fruitful theme, producing a
"Parzivale," a "Tristan and Isolt," and other heroic romances. From all
this mass of material, Malory wrought his "Morte Darthur," as Homer
wrought his "Iliad" from the preceding warlike ballads, and the unknown
compiler of the "Nibelungenlied" wrought his poem from similar ancient
sources.

Malory was not solely an editor. He was in a large sense a creator. It
was coarse and crude material with which he had to deal, but in his
hands its rude prose gained a degree of poetic fervor. The legends which
he preserves he has in many cases transmuted from base into precious
coin. There is repulsive matter in the old romances, which he freely
cuts out. To their somewhat wooden heroes he gives life and character,
so that in Lancelot, Gawaine, Dinadan, Kay, and others we have to deal
with distinct personalities, not with the non-individualized
hard-hitters of the romances. And to the whole story he gives an epic
completeness which it lacked before. In the early days of Arthur's reign
Merlin warns him that fate has already woven its net about him and that
the sins of himself and his queen will in the end bring his reign to a
violent termination, and break up that grand fellowship of the Round
Table which has made Britain and its king illustrious. This epic
character of Malory's work is pointed out in the article "Geoffrey of
Monmouth" in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," whose writer says that the
Arthurian legends "were converted into a magnificent prose poem by Sir
Thomas Malory in 1461. Malory's _Morte Darthur_ is as truly _the_ epic
of the English mind as the _Iliad_ is the epic of the Greek mind."

Yet the "Morte Darthur," if epic in plan and treatment, is by no means
free from the defects of primitive literature. It was written before the
age of criticism, and confusion reigns supreme in many of its pages,--a
confusion which a very little critical supervision might have removed.
As an instance, we find that Galahad, two years after his birth, is made
a knight, being then fifteen years old. In like manner the "seat
perilous" at the Round Table is magically reserved for Galahad, the
author evidently forgetting that he had already given it to Percivale.
King Mark's murder of his brother Baldwin is revenged by Baldwin's
grandson, thirty or forty years afterward, though there is nothing to
show that the characters had grown a year older in the in