"The Ill-Made Knight" (who is none other, of course, than Sir Lancelot, "best knight in all the world"—and how he worked to earn that title!) is drawn in chunks from Malory, from [John] Milton's "History of England," from one Thomas Bulfinch perhaps (though Mr. White who claims falconry as his favorite sport and medievalism as his specialty is obviously a student of sources) and, whether he likes it or not, from [Lord Tennyson's "Idylls of the King"]. Mr. White most shows his awareness of the inextricability of the sentimental Victorian from the Arthurian cycle when he scoffs at this or that poetic legend and re-creates it in a broader tone.

"The Ill-Made Knight" (which was preceded by two other novels of medieval England, "The Sword in the Stone" and "The Witch in the Wood") is devoted to the prolonged chivalric love affair of Guinever, herein called Jenny...