Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/446

Rh mainly drawn from ‘Lancelot;’ but the last three chapters of book xii. (the fight between Tristram and Palomydes) are an interpolation from another source, which it is difficult to identify. Malory, at the close of book xii., writes, ‘Here ends the second book of Syr Trystram that was drawen oute of Frensshe.’ ‘But,’ he adds, ‘here is no rehersal made of the thyrd book;’ no ‘third book’ of Tristram seems now known, nor does any extant version of the French ‘Romance of Tristram’ deal with any of the incidents noticed by Malory in book xii.

Book XVIII. is a rifacimento of ‘Lancelot’ and the English metrical ‘Le Morte Arthur,’ but Malory's arrangement seems original. Chapters xx. (‘How the corps of the Mayde of Astolat arryued tofore Kyng Arthur, and of the buryeng, and how Syr Lancelot offryd the masse peny’) and xxv. (‘How true love is likened to summer’) are original interpolations by Malory. Book XIX. again depends on ‘Lancelot,’ with some help from an unidentified romance. Books XX. (except chap. i., which seems in part original) and XXI. render into prose the English metrical ‘Le Mort Arthur,’ which Dr. Furnivall edited from Harl. MS. 2252 in 1864.

Malory's style is characterised by the simplicity and perspicuity of his French originals, and although latinised words are not uncommon, and he connects his sentences with particles like ‘and,’ ‘then,’ and ‘so,’ his best effects are produced by the use of monosyllables. No effort in English prose on so large a scale had been made before him, and he did much to encourage a fluent and pliant English prose style in the century that succeeded him. In the nineteenth century, interest in his work was revived after a long interval. Tennyson's ‘Idylls of the King,’ Mr. William Morris's ‘Defence of Guinevere,’ Mr. Swinburne's ‘Tristram of Lyonesse,’ and Mr. Matthew Arnold's ‘Death of Tristram,’ were all suggested by Malory's book.

The morality of Malory's work has been questioned. Ascham, in his ‘Scholemaster,’ 1568, first denounced it as tending to immorality. ‘The whole pleasure of [the] book,’ Ascham wrote, ‘standeth in two special points, in open manslaughter and bold bawdry: In which booke those be counted the noblest knights that do kill most men without any quarrel, and commit foulest adulteries by subtlest shifts: as Sir Lancelot with the wife of King Arthur his master; Sir Tristram with the wife of King Mark his uncle; Sir Lamerocke with the wife of King Lote that was his aunt’ (ed., pp. 81–2, 224–5). According to Tennyson, Malory's book hovers ‘between war and wantonness, and crownings and dethronings.’ But despite the frequency with which Malory deals with sinful passion, he honestly reprobates it, and enforces the doctrine which Caxton claimed to be characteristic of the work, ‘Do after the good and leave the evil.’ Scenes of violence were essential to a romance of chivalry, but Malory improves on many of his predecessors by intermingling with barbarous combats ‘many noble and renowned acts of humanity and courtesy.’ Occasionally, as in book xviii. chap. xxv., Malory digresses into reflective sentiment of incontrovertible beauty.

Of the first edition, printed by Caxton in folio in 1485, the sole perfect copy, formerly in the Osterley Park Library, now belongs to Mrs. Abby E. Pope, of Brooklyn, U.S.A. The only other copy known is in the Althorp collection, now at Manchester, and has eleven leaves supplied in facsimile. Reprints by Wynkyn de Worde appeared in 1498 and 1529. An unique copy of the former, with illustrations, is in the Althorp collection, and a unique copy of the latter is in the Grenville collection at the British Museum. Other early editions are by William Copland, 1557 (Brit. Mus., two copies); by Thomas East about 1585, fol. (ib.) and 4to; and by William Stansby in 1634. The book was not reissued again until 1816, when Stansby's edition was twice somewhat carelessly reprinted: by Haslewood, in three vols., and in ‘Walker's British Classics’ (2 vols.). Southey edited, from Caxton's edition at Althorp, another reprint in 1817. Thomas Wright, in 1856, re-edited Stansby's edition, and Sir Edward Strachey, in 1868, issued Caxton's version ‘revised for modern use.’ A very scholarly reprint of Caxton, fully edited by Dr. Oskar Sommer, was published in 1889. Two vols. of critical apparatus appeared respectively in 1890 and 1891.

 MALTBY, EDWARD (1770–1859), bishop of Durham, was born in the parish of St. George of Tombland, Norwich, on 6 April 1770, and baptised on 8 April by Samuel Bourn (1714–1796) [q. v.] His father, George Maltby (d. August 1794, aged 64), was a master weaver and deacon of the presbyterian congregation at the Octagon Chapel. His first cousin William [q. v.] is noticed below. In 1779 Maltby entered the Norwich grammar school, under Samuel Parr [q. v.]; he was at