Arthur / A Short Sketch of His Life and History in English Verse of the First Half of the Fifteenth Century

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Copied and Edited From the Marquis of Bath's MS.
Frederick J. Furnivall, M.A., Camb.
Editor of De Borron's and Lonelich's History of the Holy Graal, Walter Map's Queste Del Saint Graal, Etc. Etc.
London: Published for the Early English Text Society, by Trübner & Co., 60, Paternoster Row. MDCCCLXIV

As one of the chief objects of the Early English Text Society is to print every Early English Text relating to Arthur, the Committee have decided that this short sketch of the British hero's life shall form one of the first issue of the Society's publications. The six hundred and forty-two English lines here printed occur in an incomplete Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Britain, bound up with many other valuable pieces in a MS. belonging to the Marquis of Bath. The old chronicler has dealt with Uther Pendragon, and Brounsteele (Excalibur), and is narrating Arthur's deeds, when, as if feeling that Latin prose was no fit vehicle for telling of Arthur, king of men, he breaks out into English verse,
Herkeneþ, þat loueþ hono ur ,
Of kyng Arthour & hys labo ur .
He that will more look,
Read on the French book,
says our verse-writer: and to that the modern reader must still be referred, or to the translations of parts of it, which we hope to print or reprint, and that most pleasantly jumbled abstract of its parts by Sir Thomas Maleor, Knight, which has long been the delight of many a reader,—though despised by the stern old Ascham, whose Scholemaster was to turn it out of the land.—There the glory of the Holy Grail will be revealed to him; there the Knight of God made known; there the only true lovers in the world will tell their loves and kiss their kisses before him; and the Fates which of old enforced the penalty of sin will show that their arm is not shortened, and that though the brave and guilty king fights well and gathers all the glory of the world around him, yet still the sword is over his head, and, for the evil that he has done, his life and vain imaginings must pass away in dust and confusion.