When a novelist enchanted by one of the world's great matters reaches his third volume, as Mr. White does in his successor to "The Sword in the Stone" and "The Witch in the Wood," he has committed himself to a quest that will not let him go. ["The Ill-Made Knight"] matches the others in virtuosity and wit, and it outdoes them in wisdom, swift, scalpel-sharp, of a kind infrequently consorting with cleverness….

As he should be in any treatment of the Round Table, Lancelot is the hero. Straightway the reader needs one warning: here is no nineteenth-century sentimentalizing, no languishing, soft condonement of sin in the guise of "fated passion" and "great love." The men and the morals follow more ancient models. Even as a boy, Lancelot is ugly, soul-tormented, ferocious with himself, powerful, and pitiable, self-named "the Chevalier Mal-Fet—the Ill-Made Knight." Beyond his beloved Malory, Mr...