Sometimes he may not take the best available version of a story; but we must ask ourselves whether he knew it.

Sometimes he may put in what we do not want: but we must ask ourselves whether there was not a reason for doing so, to him if not to us.

What is certain is that he, and he only in any language, makes of this vast assemblage of stories one story, and one book.

He does it (much more than half unconsciously no doubt) by following the lines of, as I suppose, Walter Map, and fusing the different motives, holding to this method even in parts of the legend with which, so far as one knows, Map cannot have meddled.

Before him this legend consisted of half a dozen great divisions--a word which may be used of malice prepense.
These were the story of Merlin, that of Arthur's own origin, and that of the previous history of the Graal for introduction; the story of Arthur's winning the throne, of the Round Table, and of the marriage with Guinevere, also endless branchings of special knights' adventures, and of the wars with the Saxons and the Romans, and the episode of the False Guinevere--with whom for a time Arthur lives as with his queen--for middle; and the story of the Graal-quest, the love of Lancelot for the Queen, and the rebellion of Mordred with its fatal consequences, for close.