Mr. White has now brought to a conclusion the great work which began in 1938 with the publication of The Sword in the Stone. In 1940 The Witch in the Wood and in 1941 The Ill-Made Knight, carried on the tangled story; at last The Candle in the Wind completes a crowded architectural design. The Candle in the Wind is published as the fourth book in an omnibus volume, The Once and Future King, which contains revised versions of the three previous works. The whole 300,000 words make a unity, whose tone appears now as something much deeper and more serious than a casual reading of the earlier volumes would lead the reader to suppose.

The subject of the long book is the complete Matter of Britain, the cycle of King Arthur from his mysterious birth to the mystery surrounding the close of his reign. As the author points out in a...