The Study of Idylls of the King - Critical Notes, References, and Topics for Study #234249

If the reader has little notion of the meaning of the secret word, or of vows so straight that those who took them were pale as at the passing of a ghost, he will readily conceive of The Round Table as a fellowship of knights bound by the most sacred vows to uphold the king. In succeeding Idylls, each knight belongs to this fellowship, or seeks admission, and the honor and success of life is, for him, bound up in his worthiness as a member of Arthur's Table Round. In each separate Idyll, the king forms so slight a part of the narrative that without the aid of the Table Round and the relation of each knight, through this fellowship, to the king, Arthur's name and character will scarcely linger in the memory. But when in succeeding Idylls, knights as different as Gareth, Gawain, and Lancelot, each worship the king, and fear his disapproval, the strength of the fellowship as an order becomes a real thing to the student. Through it, the shadowy king, always in the background, is nevertheless unforgetable; and his character, revealed, by little and little, in the ideals of conduct required of his knights, is illumined and remains in the memory like the vision of some beautiful face seen in early years and then with drawn.