The spirit of dilettante adventure which pervades the mediaeval romances gives them a tone entirely different from that of the epics. In these latter the activities attach themselves to deeds that have to be done, to misfortunes that the hero would willingly have avoided. Some of these sought-out adventures have crept insidiously into Howard Pyle's _Robin Hood_; but they are entirely foreign to the spirit of the original epos. The idea of "worshipfully winning worship," of seeking adventure for mere adventure's sake, or for the mere display of one's own powers, or for the sake of getting trained, is a corrupting one in our society, and should not be implanted in our children's consciousness. Like the old epic heroes, what we have to do we will do--often boldly; but, like the old epic heroes, we will do it because it needs to be done. We can get together a series of stories from the Arthur romance that will touch but lightly the exaggerated, false devotion to ladies; that will leave out of sight the guilty passion which lies at the center of Malory's poem and of most of the other literary versions; that will put into a minor place the mystical religious element that lingers about the Holy Grail side of the romance; that will make little of the symbolism, ignore the dilettante and merely amateur adventure, handling the heroic rather than the romantic deeds--that will do all these things and still be a romance of King Arthur. He who would make such a version must choose out from Malory or _The Mabinogion_, material that belongs in such a series. Or he may find his material more sifted for him in Lanier's _The Boy's King Arthur_, and _Knightly Legends of Wales_. Let him make much of Arthur, simple of nature, guileless and strong, looking to conquest and the good of his people rather than to his own "worship" or to his own love-affairs; let him by no means neglect Merlin, the most permanently interesting figure; he is Odysseus among the Greeks, the sacred bard among the warriors, Tusitala in Samoa, the subtle one, always so appealing and so satisfying to a child's imagination--the embodiment of that intellectual dominance which, be it wisdom or magic, always stands beside epic achievement in the child's estimation. And having got it together, he may reassure himself, as regards his epos of King Arthur, that there is no one Arthur; that the whole legend is a mine out of which every student may draw a treasure; or, to change the figure, a great, beautiful field in which many people may gather grain according to their need and their taste. Much later when, as growing youth, they are waking up to certain mature social problems, the children will be ready for the style and matter of Tennyson's _Idylls_. But they will not get the characteristic value of the legend till, as mature and experienced readers of books and livers of life, they come back to Malory and Chrétien de Troyes.