Books: Going Strong

THE ILL-MADE KNIGHT—T. H. White—Pufnam ($2.50).

King Arthur of Britain lived about 525 —if at all. Legend encrusted his name almost at once. Nine hundred years later the Arthurian Cycle was already decadent when "Syr Thomas Maleore Knyght" wrote his Morte d'Arthur. Another 500 years later, with Tennyson's pious allegories, Mark Twain's farce, John Erskine's sophistications, etc., King Arthur was still going strong.

Newest minstrel of Arthurian romance is bearded, falconry-loving T. H. White, onetime English schoolmaster. The Sword in the Stone (1938), a tale of young Arthur's education in the hands of the wizard Merlyn, was so brightly fanciful that Walt Disney...