Of Milton’s debt to Malory there is no less probability. He no doubt knew the other legends of Arthur, but Malory’s book must surely have had some part in taking that hold on his imagination, and exercising that influence in the formation of his character and life, of which he himself tells us. In his poem addressed to Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, the friend of Tasso, and of himself when he visited Naples, he says:— ‘O mihi si mea sors talem concedat amicum; Phoebaeos decorasse viros qui tam bene nôrit, Si quando indigenas revocabo in carmina reges, Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moventem; Aut dicam invictae sociali foedere mensae Magnanimos Heroas, et (O modo spiritus adsit) Frangam Saxonicas Britonem sub Marte phalanges.’—_Mansus_ 78[16]. The like hope and purpose of writing an Epic poem of British story is to be found in the _Epitaphium Damonis_. And in his defence of his life in the ‘Apology for Smectymnuus,’ he says:— ‘Next, (for hear me out now, readers), that I may tell ye whither my younger feet wandered; I betook me among those lofty fables and romances, which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from thence had in renown over all christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he should defend to the expence of his best blood, or of his life, if it so befel him, the honour and chastity of virgin or matron; from whence even then I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the defence of which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of themselves, had sworn; and if I found in the story afterward, any of them, by word or deed breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault of the poet, as that which is attributed to Homer, to have written indecent things of the gods; only this my mind gave me, that every free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight, nor needed to expect the gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder to stir him up both by his counsel and his arms, to secure and protect the weakness of any attempted chastity. So that even these books, which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose living; I cannot think how, unless by divine indulgence, proved to me so many incitements, as you have heard, to the love and steadfast observation of virtue.’ In a word, not the fears of Ascham but the hopes of Caxton were now fulfilled in Milton’s study of the old romances. And though it were idle and mistaken to wish that the poet had finally chosen the Death of Arthur rather than Paradise Lost, the lovers of the story of the Round Table may be forgiven if they wish it were possible to call up him who left untold that story as it would have been seen in the light of his genius.