"King Arthur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Numberless were the solicitations of the dazzled swains of Cambria for the honour of the two first dances with the one or the other of these fascinating friends; but little availed, on this occasion, the pedigree lineally traced from Caractacus or King Arthur; their two philosophical lovers, neither of whom could have given the least account of his great-great-grandfather, had engaged them many days before. Mr Panscope chafed and fretted like Llugwy in his bed of rocks, when the object of his adoration stood up with his ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... seem most excellent where all are so good. A mother of a few generations ago whose small boy was eager to read tales of chivalry simply gave him "Le Morte D'Arthur"; there was no "children's edition" of it, no "Boy's King Arthur," no "Tales of the Round Table." The father whose little girl desired to read for herself the stories of Greece he had told her put into her hands Bulfinch's "Age of Fable"; he could not, as can fathers ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... Hawthorne. Young folks' book of poetry. Campbell. Poetry for childhood. Eliot. Bits of talk about home matters. H.H. The Seven Little Sisters. Andrews. Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates. Dodge. Room for one more. Mary T. Higginson. King Arthur for boys. Lanier. Doings of the Bodley family. Scudder. Mother-play and Nursery-rhymes. Children's Robinson Crusoe. The four-footed lovers. Mammy Tittleback and her family. H.H. The Little ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... Romance of the Death of King Arthur; now first printed, from a Manuscript in the Library of Lincoln Cathedral. Seventy-five ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... had meant they should, and Pip said, "Give us another," so she chanted with increasing dramatic effect the story of King Arthur. ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... the Misses Buzza engaged in rowing their papa homewards. The Three Queens as they steered King Arthur to Avilion can have been no sadder pageant. It is true the Misses Buzza grieved for no Excalibur, but the Admiral had ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... English rhymes contains The Mulberry Bush, King Arthur, Jack and Jill, and many others equally familiar, with ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... and barons, remained in London, but they went to see the king when it pleased them, and they were put upon their honor only." Chandos's poet adds, "Many a dame and many a damsel, right amiable, gay, and lovely, came to dance there, to sing, and to cause great galas and jousts, as in the days of King Arthur." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Champion is Launcelot, the most famous of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. See Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King,' especially 'Lancelot and Elaine,' and William ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... to this courteous stranger. And now, sir," she continued, springing into her saddle, "it is not fit that I leave you without a word more. Clerk or no, you have acted this day as becomes a true knight. King Arthur and all his table could not have done more. It may be that, as some small return, my father or his kin may have power to advance your interest. He is not rich, but he is honored and hath great friends. Tell me what is your purpose, and see if he may ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tradition. There is a whole class of traditions attached to personages about whose historical existence there can be but little doubt, and just because of the accretion of tradition round them their historical existence has oftentimes been denied. The most famous example in our history is of course King Arthur, and so great an authority as Sir John Rhys is obliged to resort to a special argument to account for the problems he is faced with. He argues, and argues strongly, for an historic Arthur—an Arthur who was the British successor of the Roman emperor ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... wish therefore in the first few lectures on English literature to glance at the character of our old Saxon ancestors, and the legends connected with their first invasion of the country; and above all at the magnificent fables of King Arthur and his times which exercised so great an influence on the English mind, and were in fact, although originally Celtic, so thoroughly adopted and naturalised by the Saxon, as to reappear under different forms in every age, and form the keynote of most of our fictions, from Geoffrey of Monmouth ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... most purely romantic of Thomas Warton's poems are "The Crusade" and "The Grave of King Arthur." The former is the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... a book I greatly enjoy, for it is full of the tales of the mighty King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. You will like to hear me read these brave stories when you are tired with your day's work, or on rainy days when you can neither hunt nor ride. Then you know not how to amuse yourselves and time is heavy on your hands, since you can ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... at his Castle of Windsor by EDWARDIII. at the most brilliant period of his reign: and it is highly probable that the Order suggested itself to the mind of the King, as a natural result of his own chivalrous revival of a knightly "Round Table," such as flourished in the days of King Arthur. How much of historical fact there may be in the popular legend, which professes to derive from a certain romantic incident the Title certainly borne by King EDWARD'S Order from the time of its original ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... hen, swallows Gwion Bach, in the form of a grain of wheat. In the same manner the princess in the Arabian Nights swallowed the Geni. Here then we have in the Hesiodic myth an old marchen pressed into the service of the higher mythology. The apprehension which Zeus (like Herod and King Arthur) always felt lest an unborn child should overthrow him, was also familiar to Indra; but, instead of swallowing the mother and concealing her in his own body, like Zeus, Indra entered the mother's body, and himself was born instead of the dreaded child.(3) A cow on this occasion ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... in seemly sort The ladie was full fain; But King Arthur, all sore amazed, No answer made again. 'What wight art thou," the ladie said "That will not speak to me? Sir, I may chance to ease thy pain, Though I be foul to see." The Marriage ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... few superb women was more effective against the plainness of the crowd. The result was mediaeval, and amusing; sometimes coarse to a degree that might have startled a roustabout, and sometimes courteous and considerate to a degree that suggested King Arthur's Round Table; but this artistic contrast was surely not the perfection that Motley had in his mind. He meant something scholarly, worldly, and modern; he was thinking of ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... remarkably stirring men in their day and generation, and foremost in whatever was going on in the world, whether political or religious. To begin, there was Guy, Earl of Warwick, who lived somewhere in the times of the old dispensation, before King Arthur, and who distinguished himself, according to the fashion of those days, by killing giants and various colored dragons, among which a green one especially figures. It appears that he slew also a notable dun cow, of a kind of mastodon breed, which ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... to phallic principles in a number of the early chivalric societies of England. He states that the Knights of the Round Table of King Arthur had phallic emblems and other features similar to those of the Rosicrucians. The same author submits considerable evidence to indicate that the Order of the Garter is of much greater antiquity than is generally believed ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... agricultural interest had very properly replied, "Thank you for nothing, my Lord;" but from the sight of the French paper what a host of recollections started up at the moment! The mind flew back to history, and was revelling in all the romance of chivalry, from King Arthur and his Knights, to the Field ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... has in prison three-score knights And four that he did wound; Knights of King Arthur's court they be, And of his ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... gentleman for that neither," said Dame Ursley, in the same tone; "let a man bear his folly gaily and his knavery stoutly, and let me see if gravity or honesty will look him in the face now-a- days. Tut, man, it was only in the time of King Arthur or King Lud, that a gentleman was held to blemish his scutcheon by a leap over the line of reason or honesty—It is the bold look, the ready hand, the fine clothes, the brisk oath, and the wild brain, that makes ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Almost involuntarily we remember the oath which Arthur administered to his knights, when he bade them 'never to do outrage nor murder, and always to flee treason; also by no means to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asked mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore.' In a land where chivalry like this had ever taken root, either as an ideal or as an institution, the chapters of Machiavelli could scarcely have been published. The Italians lacked the virtues of knighthood. It was possible ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... manly, and clean, and wholesome, and the man who lives by it is a man to be admired. The point of view may be higher in course of time, and the observer's horizon widened. The limitations of the mind which adopts the present standpoint may be found in 'A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.' Apart from its ethics, the book is a mistake, for a jest which could have been elaborated to tedium in a score of pages is stretched to spread through a bulky volume, and snaps into ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... respect; so that the spirit of the age fostered conceptions not unlike those of the Japanese Bushido. Where elements of Christianity were combined with this we have the spirit of the pure chivalry of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, which affords perhaps the very best ideals for youth to be found in history, as we shall see more ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... than Geraint; the gold boat and silver oars were not visible. The remains were replaced and the excavation closed. There was a later Geraint who fought against the Saxon Ina in 710. But it is almost more difficult to identify these Geraints than it is to attain any certitude about King Arthur himself. ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... King Arthur heard this he was greatly displeased, for he wist well that they might not again say their avows. "Alas!" said King Arthur unto Sir Gawaine, "ye have nigh slain me with the avow and promise that ye have ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... morrow lingered not long in Innsbruck. They did not fail, however, to visit the tomb of Maximilian in the Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross, and gaze with some admiration upon the twenty-eight gigantic bronze statues of Godfrey of Bouillon, and King Arthur and Ernest the Iron-man, and Frederick of the Empty Pockets, kings and heroes, and others, which stand leaning on their swords between the columns of the church, as if guarding the tomb of the dead. These statues reminded Flemming of the bronze giants, which strike ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... mixed up with the civil life of the nation; and yet in any thorough and honest inquiry not only had details to be modified here and there, but the whole building had to be overturned as much as the Franconian primitive history of king Pharamund or the British of king Arthur. An inquirer of conservative views, such as was Varro for instance, could have no wish to put his hand to such a work; and if a daring freethinker had undertaken it, an outcry would have been raised by all good citizens against this worst ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... pleasure with the very air we breathe, and to feel happy we know not why. Whoever has felt the worth of worthy man, or has doted on lovely woman, will, on such a day, call them tenderly to mind, and feel his heart all alive with long-buried recollections. "For thenne," says the excellent romance of King Arthur, "lovers call ageyne to their mynde old gentilnes and old servyse, and many kind dedes that were ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... seem to have trekked away towards the north, and even Botha for a time appears to have lost heart and to have suggested to Joubert that the siege of Ladysmith should be raised. The Boer leaders had already, like King Arthur, ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... and had a cathedral and a number of other churches dedicated to him. Without too grossly admitting my ignorance, I tried to draw out from my mentor some further biographical facts that my imagination might work on during my stay. He thought that St. David was some relation to King Arthur, but just what the relation was, and whether he was only a relative by marriage, he didn't know. It wasn't very much information, but I ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... true faith, was born in this place. This city is well situated on the river Usk, navigable to the sea, and adorned with woods and meadows. The Roman ambassadors here received their audience at the court of the great king Arthur; and here also, the archbishop Dubricius ceded his honours to David of Menevia, the metropolitan see being translated from this place to Menevia, according to the prophecy of Merlin Ambrosius. "Menevia pallio urbis Legionum induetur." "Menevia ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... with mud and the sweat and lather of their horses. They were quite unknown to the people of Gisors, but seen for great men, as indeed they were. Richard of Anjou was the first of them, a young man of inches incredible to Gisors. 'He had a face like King Arthur's of Britain,' says one: 'A red face, a tawny beard, eyes like stones.' Behind him were three abreast: Roussillon, a grim, dark, heavy-eyed man, bearded like a Turk; Beziers, sanguine and loose-limbed, a man with a sharp tongue; Gaston of Bearn, airy hunter of fine phrases, looking now ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... only used it to rob the past or deceive the future. The story of Arthur may have been really connected with the most fighting Christianity of falling Rome or with the most heathen traditions hidden in the hills of Wales. But the word "Mappe" or "Malory" will always mean King Arthur; even though we find older and better origins than the Mabinogian; or write later and worse versions than the "Idylls of the King." The nursery fairy tales may have come out of Asia with the Indo-European race, now fortunately extinct; they may have ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... department gatherings, preferably in the homes, for the habit of reverence in God's house will receive almost fatal counteraction in the average social gathering of this age held in the church. Organizations like the "Knights of King Arthur," for boys, and the "Sunshine Club," for girls, are to be highly commended because of their social features, their appeal to the love of uniform, password and secrets, to hero worship and to activity through the ideals of life and service ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... eighteen the fairy conveyed him to the camp of King Arthur, who was then waging a fierce and exterminating warfare with the Saxons. Here the young warrior was invested with the badge of knighthood. His person, accomplishments, and unparalleled bravery, having won the heart of many a fair dame in this splendid abode ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the first book of Gower's "Confessio Amantis;" or perhaps from an older narrative from which Gower himself borrowed. Chaucer has condensed and otherwise improved the fable, especially by laying the scene, not in Sicily, but at the court of our own King Arthur. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... uncouth, and impolite, No 'By your leave' or 'S'il vous plait' They came to rob, remained to prey. Horsa Horsa was slain in four-five-five, 455 Leaving Hengist still alive To live out his allotted term, Surviving partner of the Firm. King Arthur Time has many a fable wound About King Arthur's table round, Where Knights quaffed cordials, wines and ales, And told their little fairy tales. Augustine About six hundred years A.D. 597 To teach ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... grandfather of Aneurin, but as he died in king Arthur's time, A.D. 530, we can hardly identify him with the Geraint of the text, who probably was a son, or some other relation, ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... came from France!" And then when blushed the lady more, nor spoke, You said, "At least it came from Germany!" The air was English!—a true English air; A downright English air!—a common air; Old as "When Good King Arthur." Not a square, Court, alley, street, or lane about the town, In which it is not whistled, played, or sung! But you must have it come from Italy, Or Germany, or France. Go home! Go home! To Lincolnshire, ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... beauty. You look up and see flocks of cowbirds flying in the same direction and still larger flocks of night hawks, hundreds of them in the air at once. Like the queens on the mournful barge of the fallen King Arthur, their mission is to escort the dying summer floating down, ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... on account of its facility and agreeableness, to prose narration, (quicquid redactum, sive inventum est ad vulgare prosaicum suum est); and he instances the books compiled on the gests of the Trojans and Romans and the delightful adventures of King Arthur, with many other histories and works of instruction. The Spanish (or Provencal) may boast of its having produced such as first cultivated in this as in a more perfect and sweet language, the vernacular poetry: among whom ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... surroundings. More exhilarating still was the extreme punctiliousness with which the old gentleman raised the handle of his foil to his chin after he had made his point, and saluted his antagonist as if he had been some knight of King Arthur's table. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... equal to his own. "My letters home contained descriptions and sketches of them, and my mamma became interested in their spiritual welfare." Surrounded by the halo of memory, they afterwards seemed to him primitive gentlemen worthy of King Arthur's Round Table. He describes existence between the hours of work as full of charm owing to the friendship of surrounding farmers and small gentry. In a "Trilby" way he describes how he "rode, and wrestled, and ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... with omissions, Miss Jessie L. Watson's sketch in King Arthur and his Knights. Nutt, 1899. The learning of the subject is enormous; Dr Sommer's Le Mort d'Arthur, the second volume ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... "How the Child of the Sea was made Knight," we are told how a boy of twelve became a page to the queen, and in the opening pages of the story "The Adventures of Sir Gareth," we get a glimpse of a young man growing up at the court of King Arthur. It was not an easy life, that of a boy who wished to become a knight, but it made a man of him. He was taken at an early age, sometimes when only seven years old, to the castle of the king or knight he was to serve. He first ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... though their first descent was perhaps no better than from a tapster or tinker, yet highly value themselves upon their birth and parentage. One fetches his pedigree from AEneas, another from Brute, a third from king Arthur: they hang up their ancestors' worm-eaten pictures as records of antiquity, and keep a long list of their predecessors, with an account of all their offices and tides, while they themselves are but transcripts of their forefathers' dumb statues, and ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Was a Bachelor" Unknown "Johnny Shall Have a New Bonnet" Unknown The City Mouse and the Garden Mouse Christina Rossetti Robin Redbreast Unknown Solomon Grundy Unknown "Merry Are the Bells" Unknown "When Good King Arthur Ruled This Land" Unknown The Bells of London Unknown "The Owl and the Eel and the Warming Pan" Laura E. Richards The Cow Ann Taylor The Lamb William Blake Little Raindrops Unknown "Moon, So Round and Yellow" Matthias Barr The House That Jack ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... these rhymes is the same as that found in the nursery songs of all nations, namely, the food element. "Jack Sprat," "Little Jacky Horner," "Four and Twenty Black-birds," "When Good King Arthur Ruled the Land," and a host of others will indicate what I mean. A little child is a highly developed stomach, and anything which tells about something that ministers to the appetite and tends to satisfy that aching void, commends ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... on the other, to re-edit and reprint all that is most valuable in printed English books, which from their scarcity or price are not within the reach of the student of moderate means.[6] Those relating to KING ARTHUR will be the Committee's first care; those relating to our Language and its Dialects the second; while in due proportion with these, will be mixed others of general interest, though with no one special common design. The Committee hope that no year will pass without ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... through our dominions, fulfilling of appointments, and achieving amorous adventures; while we are condemned to sit in our royal halls, as dull and as immovable as if our Majesty was carved on the stern of some Manx smuggling dogger, and christened the King Arthur of Ramsey." ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... King Kenwalk of Wessex showed thus also a royal munificence to the Celtic monastery of Glastonbury, only stipulating in return that the British monks there, condoning past injuries, should offer a prayer for him when they knelt at the tomb of King Arthur. ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... began the ballad of "Sir Gawaine's Wedding." She would have silenced it, but feared to draw more attention on her charge, who had never heard the song, and did not know what was coming, but listened with increasing eagerness as she heard of King Arthur, and of the giant, and the secret that the King could not guess, till as ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... know Little Lord Fauntleroy? And do you know about Sir Lancelot, and the Holy Grail, and King Arthur and his Round Table, and the Lady Rowena, and Ivanhoe, and all ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... you again some day," said Mrs. Hilary; the tone suggested that she was looking forward to some future existence, when my earthly sins should have been sufficiently purged. It reminded me for the moment of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... form of the soul after death is still a current belief in the Hebrides. Butterflies in Ireland, and moths in Cornwall, and in France bats or butterflies, are believed to be souls of the dead.[1225] King Arthur is thought by Cornishmen to have died and to have been changed into the form of a raven, and in mediaeval Wales souls of the wicked appear as ravens, in Brittany as black dogs, petrels, or hares, or serve their term ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Then King Arthur set himself to restore order throughout his kingdom. To all who would submit and amend their evil ways, he showed kindness; but those who persisted in oppression and wrong he removed, putting in their places others ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... King Arthur. An heroick poem. In twelve books. London, for Awnsham and John Churchill, and Jacob Tonson, ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... more civilly with his two poems, because nothing ill is to be spoken of the dead; and therefore peace be to the manes of his Arthurs! I will only say, that it was not for this noble knight that I drew the plan of an Epic poem on King Arthur, in my preface to the translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected them, as Dares did the whirlbats of Eryx, when they were ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... there are giants who are rich to overflowing through a whole shelf of books,—Shakespeare, the mutual ancestor of Englishmen and Americans, above all,—and I think the much that they did, and did well, will be the great hold on posterity of Scott and of Byron. Have you happened to see Bulwer's King Arthur? It astonished me very much. I had a full persuasion that, with great merit in a certain way, he would never be a poet. Indeed, he is beginning poetry just at the age when Scott, Southey, and a host of others, left it off. But ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Henry van Dyke in his "Poetry of Tennyson" and Newell Dwight Hillis in his "Great Books as Life-Teachers." Without interpretation "The Idylls" may teach false as well as true lessons of life. Some of the Knights of the Round Table (Galahad and Percivale) were worthy followers of the good and pure King Arthur, and some of them (like Lancelot and Tristram and Merlin) proved unable to live up to the vow of chastity to which Arthur swore all his knights. And on the part of the ladies of Arthur's court, there was purity and devotion and true womanhood ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... which were supposed to take place, in heaven and earth, upon Charles' attaining the pinnacle of uncontrolled power, was originally the intended termination of the opera; which, as first written, consisted of only one act, introductory to the drama of "King Arthur." But the eye and the ear of Charles were never to be regaled by this flattering representation: he died while the opera was in rehearsal. A slight addition, as the author has himself informed us, adapted the conclusion of his piece to this new and unexpected ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... to believe that the earliest British legends recorded the glories of King Arthur—the defender of Christianity against the worshippers of Odin. The origin of these accounts have been traced by some to Scandinavian, by some to Arabian sources, but we may suppose them to have arisen among those ancient British ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... replied Simon, "when King Arthur and his Round Table could not make stand against them. I wish, Henry, you would speak more reverently of the Highlanders. They are often in Perth, both alone and in numbers, and you ought to keep peace with them so long as they will keep peace ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... time lived King Arthur (if the whole story be not a fable) who was so famous for beating the Saxons ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... that nation) about a certain Rebecca Ben Isaacs, of whom, being a married man, he never would have thought, had he been in his sound senses. During this delirium, what were politics to him, or he to politics? King John or King Arthur was entirely indifferent to a man who announced to his nurse-tenders, the good hermits of Chalus before mentioned, that he was the Marquis of Jericho, and about to marry Rebecca the Queen of Sheba. In a word, he only heard of what had occurred when he reached England, and his senses were ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... along the canyon side, while a high lattice on the other shows dim outlines of the hills beyond. In the wall are arches with gates so curved as to leave circular openings, through which we get glimpses of the sea. It makes me think of King Arthur's castle at Tintagel. In the lattice there is a wicket gate. There is something very alluring about a wicket gate—it connotes a Robin. Unfortunately, my Robin can only appear from Friday to Monday, but I'm not complaining. Any one is fortunate who can count on romance ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... him, somewhat atrophied from long disuse, stirred him almost to the point of assault; then dignity whispered more prudent counsel in his ear, and Gerald was past the danger-zone and out in the passage. Mr. Carmyle turned to face Sally, as King Arthur on a similar but less impressive occasion must have ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... unattainable ideal. No man can be or do the best he is capable of unless he is ever reaching out toward an ideal that lies beyond his grasp. Tennyson put this truth in the mouth of the ancient sage who tells the youthful and ambitious Gareth who is eager to enter into the service of King Arthur of ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... thing?" she remarked. "He's just like one of King Arthur's knights. And he called me ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... "King Arthur aims at relating one of the most fascinating of all national and chivalrous legends. It is a valuable addition to the poetical treasures of our language, and we regard it as not only worthy, but likely, to take its place among those fine, though not faultless performances ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... a man's thumb. He began to peel this, observing that to ask a good woodman to shoot at a target so broad as had hitherto been used, was to put shame upon his skill. "For my own part," he said, "and in the land where I was bred, men would as soon take for their mark King Arthur's round table, which held sixty knights around it. A child of seven years old," he said, "might hit yonder target with a headless shaft; but," added he, walking deliberately to the other end of the lists, and sticking the willow wand upright in the ground, "he that hits that ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... man, with a smile; "and yet they are very witty, and are much read at Court. The king likes especially the romance of Messeurs Iffven and Gaudian, which describes King Arthur and his knights of the round table. He has joked about it with the gentlemen of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the North Coast, Pentire Point, Tintagel, King Arthur's Castle, etc. On the 1st of February he left Penquite, and slept the night at Trethinnick. The next morning he set out on horseback ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... actual year to which the extracts refer is unfortunately left in obscurity. But from internal evidence, and certain references to current events, it is supposed that the date cannot have been later than the reign of King Arthur—or at any rate before ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... American artist Howard Pyle undertook to retell and illustrate the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. His four-volume work has long been considered one of the outstanding interpretations ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... many a lordly tomb, Where Death is mock'd by trophies fair; I pierce the dim aisle's hallow'd gloom; King Arthur ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... Heptarchy' (Seven Kingdoms). The resistance of the Britons to the Anglo-Saxon advance was often brave and sometimes temporarily successful. Early in the sixth century, for example, they won at Mount Badon in the south a great victory, later connected in tradition with the legendary name of King Arthur, which for many years gave them security from further aggressions. But in the long run their racial defects proved fatal; they were unable to combine in permanent and steady union, and tribe by tribe the newcomers drove them slowly back; until early in the seventh century the Anglo-Saxons ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... rarely-seen world around them of fairies, ghosts, spirits and witches. In some out-of-the-way corners in England—even in these days of board schools and competitive examinations, when we are told that King Arthur never existed and that William Tell is a "sun-myth"—some remnants of this belief still linger. In Devonshire folks speak shyly and with bated breath of the "good people;" and even in the year of grace 1879 a Warwickshire ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Thumb, From the Fairies I come; When King Arthur shone, This court was my home. In me he delighted, By him I was knighted. Did you never hear ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... anything more to offer on the subject. "We're all English to start with, but with the glory of America added on," said Betty with girlish enthusiasm. "You can't take away our English inheritance. I used to be always insisting upon that with the girls, that Shakespeare and King Arthur were just as much ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... body had been handled by the Commissary of the Republic, had returned to earth in the shape of five or six perfectly distinct individuals, Bruneau, Hervagault, Naundorff, whatever else their names; that King Arthur is still living in the kingdom of Morgan le Fay; and Barbarossa still asleep on the stone table, waiting till the rooks which circle round the Kiefhaeuser hill shall tell him to arise; and the world had, therefore, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... London. During his time, it rained pure blood for three days. At another time, a monster came from the sea, and, after having devoured great multitudes of people, swallowed the king and disappeared. They tell us that King Arthur was not born like other mortals, but was the result of a magical contrivance; that he had great luck in killing giants; that he killed one in France that had the cheerful habit of eating some thirty men a day. That this giant had clothes woven of the beards of the kings he ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... ago. It appears that the family on both sides goes back into the mists of antiquity, in the days when legend, handed down by word of mouth (can you hand things out of your mouth? Sounds rude), was the forerunner of history. His father's ancestors are supposed to be descended from King Arthur; hence the "Pendragon"; though, I suppose, if it's true, King Arthur must really have been married several times, as say the vulgar records of which Tennyson very properly takes no notice. There have been dukes and earls in ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... chiefs whose names are graved upon the stone, Not yet have moved upon this worldly stage; But will within seven hundred years be known, To the great honour of a future age. What time king Arthur filled the British throne, This fountain Merlin made, enchanter sage; Who things to come upon the marble fair Made sculpture by a ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... in a birch-bark canoe (in private life the fender), after a terrible encounter with a polar bear fashioned from the bolster and four skittles dressed up in "Da's" nightgown. After that, his father, seeking to steady his imagination, brought him Ivanboe, Bevis, a book about King Arthur, and Tom Brown's Schooldays. He read the first, and for three days built, defended and stormed Front de Boeuf's castle, taking every part in the piece except those of Rebecca and Rowena; with piercing cries of: "En avant, de Bracy!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... King Arthur, sword in hand, is not at the head of the table, but Queen Susan is, the silver crown of seventy honorable years upon her brow; and we gather here from every quarter of the Union, little knights and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... stanzas are from a poem by Hookham Frere, really entitled Prospectus and specimen of an inteneded national Work . . . relating to King Arthur and his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... young loveliness, that touched the noblest chords of his heart. He loved her with a chivalrous devotion, which, after all, is as natural to the breast of a young Englishman in these modern days, miscalled degenerate, as when the spotless knight King Arthur loved and wooed ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... days of Bennett, Greeley, Webb, Prentice, and Raymond. Their standards were high. Their energy was tremendous. And when they came to blows the combat was terrific. But Greeley, the last survivor, found his Camlan in 1872. He was ambushed and came to his end much as King Arthur from a race that he had trusted and defended. In Greeley's defeat for the Presidency all theorists who had dwelt upon the so-called "Power of the Press" received a shuddering blow. The men who had affected ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... King Arthur ruled this land, He was a goodly king; He stole three pecks of barley-meal, To make ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... written AVALLON, AVOLLON, AVILION and AVELION), in Welsh mythology the kingdom of the dead, afterwards an earthly paradise in the western seas, and finally, in the Arthurian romances, the abode of heroes to which King Arthur was conveyed after his last battle. In Welsh the name is Ynys yr Afallon, usually interpreted "Isle of Apples," but possibly connected with the Celtic tradition of a king over the dead named Avalloc (in Welsh Afallach). If the traditional derivation is correct, the name is derived from the Welsh ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... friends, had a moral purpose. He meant to shadow forth, under the figures of twelve knights, and in their various exploits, the characteristics of "a gentleman or noble person," "fashioned in virtuous and gentle discipline." He took his machinery from the popular legends about King Arthur, and his heads of moral philosophy from the current Aristotelian catalogue ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... the holy bishop, Saint Patrick.) (After this, the MSS. give as 56, the legend of king Arthur, which in this edition occurs ...
— History Of The Britons (Historia Brittonum) • Nennius
... Women" might, so far as its subject-matter is concerned, have been written by a French, a Spanish, or an Italian Chaucer, just as well as by the British Daniel. Spenser's "Faerie Queene" numbers St. George and King Arthur among its heroes; but its scene is laid in Faerie Lande, if it be laid anywhere, and it is a barefaced moral allegory throughout. Shakespeare wrote thirty-seven plays, the elimination of which from English literature would ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... Governor Bartlett, who was a native of the town, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Amesbury or Ambresbury, so called from the "anointed stones" of the great Druidical temple near it, was the seat of one of the earliest religious houses in Britain. The tradition that the guilty wife of King Arthur fled thither for protection forms one of the finest passages in Tennyson's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... plays have stamped upon the English mind the figures of Hotspur or Richard III., which have been thus set up in permanent type for all subsequent ages. At any rate portraits of this kind have not been modernised to suit the taste of a later age, as has been done with King Arthur in Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King.' And when work of this sort has been finely executed, the question whether the details are untrustworthy or even fictitious is immaterial, particularly in cases where the precise facts can never be recovered. We do not know ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... that is so good esteemed, that never feared for no host by hill nor by vale, for now thou fleest for fear before thou feelest harm (ll. 2247-2272). Such cowardice of that knight did I never hear. I never flinched nor fled when thou didst aim at me in King Arthur's house. My head flew to my feet and yet I never fled, wherefore I deserve to be called ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... Allison explained all about King Arthur and his Round Table, and gave us the motto: 'Live pure, speak truth, right the wrong, honour ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... there fidgeting, with the starvation on me for my godfather, it flashed to me that there's a legend in every nation about some one of its heroes, how in the hour of need he will come back to save the people—Charlemagne in France, don't you know, and Barbarossa and King Arthur and—oh, a number. And I spoke aloud, so that the chap next prodded me in the ribs and said: 'Stop that, will you? I can't hear'—I ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... to me," I said, "that it was a vision of the Holy Grail; and happy would King Arthur or our Wessex Ina have held you that you ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... as fierce as some of those told of King Arthur's knights. Long and sturdily the two champions fought, foot to foot, sword to scimitar, until their shields and armor were rent and hacked and the ground was red with their blood. Never had those hills seen so furious a fight ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... shriller than his own; "I am none of thy houris, and thou art no such infidel trash as the Mohammed of whom thou speakest. May my curse rest upon his coffin! I tell thee, thou ass of Issachar, thou art King Arthur of Britain, whom the fairies stole away from the field of Avalon; and I am Dame Guenevra, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... many others, possess a commanding interest to him who has familiarised himself with their history. All places too connected with the memory and half fabulous history of king Arthur—the grand forms of Welch scenery ennobled and glorified by the fine old romancers, Norman or English, or by the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... remains of Platycnemic man—so named from his having sharp shin-bones; Cefn, St. Asaph; Uphill, Somerset; King's Scar and the Victoria Cave, Settle; Robin Hood's Cave and Pinhole Cave, Derbyshire; Black Rock, Caldy Island, Coygan Caves, Pembrokeshire; King Arthur's Cave, Monmouth; Durdham Downs, Bristol; and sundry others, near Oban, in the valleys of the Trent, Dove, and Nore, and of the Irish Blackwater, and ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... John Thornton of Coventry who is known as the maker of the east window of York Minster. The upper part has numerous coats of arms of kings, cities, and princes, while the nine lights are filled with "portraitures of several kings in their surcotes," William I, Richard I, Henry III, IV, V, VI, King Arthur, the Emperor Constantine, and another unnamed. The windows on either side of the hall have suffered grievously. Those on the west (left) were deprived of their heraldry and portraits in 1785. In those on the east new glass with poor imitations of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... to meeting. She told herself that she might have expected it, for she knew that Malcolm was Joyce's age; but she had associated them so long with the handsome little fellows in the photograph Lloyd had, clad in the knightly costumes of King Arthur's time, that it was hard to recognize them now, in these up-to-date, American college boys, who had long ago discarded ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the early history of Windsor Castle appear the mighty phantoms of the renowned King Arthur and his knights, for whom it is said Merlin reared a magic fortress upon its heights, in a great hall whereof, decorated with trophies of war and of the chase, was placed the famous Round Table. But if the antique tale ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of Ovid and the Art of Love, and composed the Bite of the Shoulder, and sang of King Mark and of the blonde Iseult, and of the metamorphosis of the Hoopoe and of the Swallow and of the Nightingale, is now beginning a new tale of a youth who was in Greece of the lineage of King Arthur. But before I tell you anything of him, you shall hear his father's life—whence he was and of what lineage. So valiant was he and of such proud spirit, that to win worth and praise he went from Greece to England, which was then called Britain. We find this story that I desire to tell and ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... of the injury done to it by "boys and childish men." S. Laurence was the only figure in his day, and it was then "generally said to be an effigy of S. John the Evangelist." In the County Hall, which includes the remains of the ancient castle of William the Conqueror's days, is "King Arthur's Round Table." This is mentioned as being here by the chronicler John Harding (1378-1465), so that its antiquity is undoubted. Its present painted design, however, can not be earlier than the beginning of the sixteenth century, but ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... whether a particular person or event is truly historical, is not always an easy one to answer. By the adaptation in it of some purely mythical character or event, a novel is no more constituted "historical" than is a Fairy-tale by the adaptation of folklore. King Arthur and Robin Hood are unhistorical, and, if I have ventured to insert in my list certain tales which deal with the latter, it is not on that account, but because other figures truly historical (e.g., Richard I.) appear. As there has been some dispute on this question ...
— A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales • Jonathan Nield
... of Sir Thomas Malory, who, according to Caxton, "did take out of certain French books a copy of the noble histories of King Arthur and reduced it to English." We learn from the text that "this book was finished in the ninth year of the reign of King Edward the Fourth, by Sir Thomas Malory, Knight." That would be in the year 1469. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... also, on the banks of the Elorn, is the Avenue of the Chateau de la Joyeuse Garde, celebrated as being the rendezvous of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Nothing now remains but the ruins of a subterranean vault and a romantic Gothic Gateway of the twelfth century, covered with ivy and creeping shrubs. The whole surroundings ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... in the child's mind with things dead and gone—with the Puritan world of Miles Standish, the Revolutionary days of Paul Revere, the Dutch epoch of Rip Van Winkle; or with not even this comparatively recent national interest, it takes the child back to the strange folk of the days of King Arthur and King Robert of Sicily, of Ivanhoe and the Ancient Mariner. Thus when the child leaves school his literary studies do not connect helpfully with those forms of literature with which—if he reads ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... Croppy, dwelt with passionate regret on the departed glories of Tara. He held strong views about the historical reality of the Tuath-de-Danaan, and got irritated at the most casual mention of Dr. Petrie's theory of the round towers. He had proved that King Arthur was an Irishman, with whose reputation Malory and Tennyson had taken unwarrantable liberties. The name of Dante brought a smile of contempt to his lips, for he knew that the 'Purgatorio' was stolen shamelessly from the works of a monk of Cong. He nourished a secret passion ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... about King Arthur and Galahad and all them instead of reading the Scientific American, and about these fool horseless carriages and stuff——There never will be any practical use ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the stories in which the chief element of interest is that which arises from the deeds of heroic characters, are the Robin Hood and the King Arthur stories. The Robin Hood tales contain material unusually interesting and valuable for children; but, though they have been told and retold times without number, there is but one version that may properly be called a ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... magic; who founded their institutions and established their religions, who governed them long with glory abroad and peace at home; and finally, did not die, but like Frederick Barbarossa, Charlemagne, King Arthur, and all great heroes, vanished mysteriously, and still lives somewhere, ready at the right moment to return to his beloved people and lead them to victory and happiness. Such to the Algonkins was Michabo ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... artists; a capital acting operetta for children "The Land of Nod," with words and music; a splendid story by Washington Gladden, "A Christmas Dinner with the Man in the Moon," the illustrations of which rival Dore's; "King Arthur and his Knights," by Sidney Lanier; one of Frank R. Stockton's inimitable FAIRY STORIES; the "Treasure Box of Literature," etc., etc.;—in all, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... The Beggar's Valentine Honor Among Scamps The Gamblers On the Road to Nowhere Upon Returning to the Country Road The Angel and the Clown Springfield Magical Incense The Wedding of the Rose and the Lotos King Arthur's Men Have Come Again Foreign Missions in Battle Array Star of My Heart Look You, I'll Go Pray At Mass Heart of God The Empty Boats With a Bouquet of Twelve Roses St. Francis of Assisi Buddha A Prayer to All the Dead Among Mine Own ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... small but vivid touches of the past meet those who visit the Wall. At "King Arthur's Well," for example, near Thirlwall, the tiny chives growing in the crevices of the rock are presumably descendants of those acclimatized there by Roman gastronomy. At Borcovicus ("House-steads") the wheel-ruts still score the pavement; at Cilurnum the hypocaust ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... did David, nor Ogier, nor Roland, that proud knight, nor the great Charlemagne, nor the proud Duke of Mayence, nor Mongleive, the heir, from whom issued noble fruit, nor King Arthur, nor Oliver, nor Rossillon, nor Charbonnier in their dozens of victories approach or touch with hand or foot ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... signs, smiles, and laughter, and whereas the subtilties along the table represented the entire story of Sir Gawain and his Loathly Lady, she contrived to explain the story to him, greatly to his edification; and they went on to King Arthur, and he did his best to narrate the German reading of Sir Parzival. The difficulties engrossed them till the rose-water was brought in silver bowls to wash their fingers, on which Sigismund, after observing and imitating the two ladies, ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... harshly. The girl upstairs had broken his heart, ruined his life, and practically compared him to Roland Bean, and his pride should have built up an impassable wall between them, but—she had cake and cocoa. In similar circumstances King Arthur would have ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Him, too, I enthroned upon my temple-frieze; he would have figured there as Meleager had I been a few years older. As it was, he rode a blazoned charger, all black, and feutred his lance with the Knights of King Arthur's court. Then there was H——n, a good-looking, good-natured boy, and T——r, another. Many and many a day did they ride forth with me adventuring—that is, spiritually they did so; physically speaking, I had no scot or lot with them. We were in plate armour, visored ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... prince of love—be bravest of the brave! As I have read in those old chronicles, Love aye went coupled with heroic deeds, And valiant heroes, not inglorious shepherds, So legends tell us, graced King Arthur's board. The man whose valor is not beauty's shield Is all unworthy of her golden prize. Here the arena! combat for the crown, Thy royal heritage! With knightly sword Thy lady's honor and thy realm defend— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... story in a sympathetic vein. "Though the success of the 'Prophetess' and 'King Arthur' (two dramatic operas in which the patentees[A] had embark'd all their hopes) was in appearance very great, yet their whole receipts did not so far balance their expense as to keep them out of a large debt, which it was publicly known ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... is not suffering from any special malady, but is the victim of extreme old age; not surprising, as he is Brons himself, who has survived from the dawn of Christianity to the days of King Arthur. We are told that the effect of asking the question will be to restore him to youth;[7] as a matter of fact it appears to bring about his death, as he only lives three days after ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... of his large works in a serious form is the second sonata, called the "Eroica." This is designated by the composer as a "flower from the realm of King Arthur," and it is dedicated to Dr. William Mason. Beginning very seriously and slowly, it almost immediately rises to intense vigor, which, after a while, gives place to a second subject—a song-melody in the ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... his mysterious exit, have fabled that, like Romulus, he was translated to the skies, and forms a very fiery little star somewhere on the left claw of the Crab; while others, equally fanciful, declare that he had experienced a fate similar to that of the good King Arthur, who, we are assured by ancient bards, was carried away to the delicious abodes of fairy-land, where he still exists in pristine worth and vigor, and will one day or another return to restore the gallantry, the honor and the immaculate probity which prevailed in the glorious days ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... Dale is his chair; a chasm at Chatsworth is his leap; Blackstone Edge, in Lancashire, is his bed."[20] In fact, his name bids fair to overrun every remarkable object of the sort which has not been already appropriated to King Arthur or the Devil; with the latter of whom, at least, it is presumed, that, however ancient, he will not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... is true, been rather an intimate friend of mine, as far as (printer's) ink and paper can keep up a friendship, but I had not heard his name mentioned for years; and for aught I knew he lay enchanted with King Arthur's knights, who lie entranced until the blast of the trumpets of four mighty kings shall call them to help at England's need. But the question had been asked in serious earnest by that gentleman, whom I more wished to think well of me than I did any other person in the room. So I answered respectfully ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and the assailants were clambering over the outer wall. So the Baron called for his Sunday hauberk of Milan steel, and his great two-handed sword with the terrible name:—it was the fashion in feudal times to give names to swords: King Arthur's was christened Excalibar; the Baron called his Tickletoby, and whenever he took it in hand, it was ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... that wound through the woodland three-quarters of a mile to his house. And as he moved through the park, through sunlight and shadow of these great trees that were his, he felt like a knight of King Arthur, like some young knight long exiled, at last coming to his own. He longed with an unreasonable seizure of desire to come here to live, to take care of it, beautify it, fill it with life and prosperity as it had once been filled, surround it with cheerful faces ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... king Arthur, | and mother to Huncamunca, a woman intirely | Mrs MULLART. faultless, saving that she is a little given | to drink, a little too much a virago towards | her husband, and in love ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... into their gifts to favoured knights. King Ris, if he had received any such token from his lady-love, returned it with interest; for he sent her a mantle in which were inwoven the beards of nine conquered kings, a tenth space being left for that of King Arthur, which he promised to ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... King Arthur, Merlin, the most learned enchanter of his time, was on a journey; and, being very weary, stopped one day at the cottage of an honest ploughman to ask for refreshment. The ploughman's wife, with great civility, immediately brought him ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... attempted in poetry by Tennyson in the least inspired of his works, The Idylls of the King. In "Lancelot and Elaine" and "Guinevere" (as Julia Magruder points out, North American Review, April, 1905) Guinevere is married to King Arthur, whom she has never seen, when already in love with Lancelot, so that the "marriage" was merely a ceremony, and not a real marriage (cf., May Child, "The Weird of Sir Lancelot," North ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... he gan ride, Arthur the powerful, right to Silchester; there it seemed good to him; there was the host of Britons boldly assembled. Great was the bliss when Arthur came to the burgh; then was blast of trumpets, and men most glad; there they raised to be king Arthur ...
— Brut • Layamon
... a literary trip. From Plymouth, the traveler may go to Exeter (a quaint old town with a fine cathedral, the home of Exeter Book,) thence by rail to Camelford in Cornwall and by coach four miles to the fascinating Tintagel (King Arthur), where, as Tennyson says in his Idylls of ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Oliver," said the old gentleman, on recovering some degree of composure, "you should have lived in the days of good King Arthur, and been one of the Knights of the Round Table. Knocked down Jim Cuttance! What think'ee, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... condition, the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the knights of Arthur's court to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of the most exquisite of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Musical taste in England was presumably not cultivated enough to appreciate a work of so advanced a style. At any rate, for the rest of his life, Purcell wrote nothing for the theatre but incidental music. Much of this, notably the scores of 'Timon of Athens,' 'Bonduca,' and 'King Arthur,' is wonderfully beautiful, but in all of these works the spoken dialogue forms the basis of the piece, and the music is merely an adjunct, often with little reference to the main interest of the play. In 'King Arthur' occurs the famous 'Frost Scene,' the close ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild |
