Produced by David Starner, Joshua Hutchinson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net [TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: This text contains the character yogh (ȝ and Ȝ). Users whose computers cannot display this character may use the ascii version of this text instead.] Arthur A Short Sketch of His Life and History in English Verse of the First Half of the Fifteenth Century Copied and Edited From the Marquis of Bath's MS. by 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 Contents Preface Arthur Words Notes Preface 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_." The story he tells is an abstract, with omissions, of the earlier version of Geoffry of Monmouth, before the love of Guinevere for Lancelot was introduced by the French-writing English romancers of the Lionheart's time (so far as I know), into the Arthur tales. The fact of Mordred's being Arthur's son, begotten by him on his sister, King Lot's wife, is also omitted; so that the story is just that of a British king founding the Round Table, conquering Scotland, Ireland, Gothland, and divers parts of France, killing a giant from Spain, beating Lucius the Emperor of Rome, and returning home to lose his own life, after the battle in which the traitor whom he had trusted, and who has seized his queen and his land, was slain. "He that will more look, Read on the French book,"