Changes

I think that all of the Arthur stories, but particularly ''The Sword in the Stone'', are such that they may well furnish children with their very first ideas of both the strength in gentleness and the power that comes with disciplined restraint. Not that children can put these qualities into words, but they are there, embodied in the strong but kindly Sir Ector, King Pellinore, Sir Grummore and Robin Wood and also, and especially also, in Merlyn, the educator who never patronises but always shows the way. The sword came out of the stone for Wart and for no one else, because he had been taught to be the kind of person for whom swords ought to come out of stones; because he had been truly educated.

And I don't think it matters at all that a lot of ''The Sword in the Stone '' goes over the heads of children the first time they read it. They still enjoy it, they still laugh, they still enjoy the adventures, and they even understand that as Wart pulled the sword from the stone he used all the knowledge that Merlyn and his experiences with the fish, the birds, the snake and the badger had given him. They may not understand why or how, but they understand that Wart would not have been able to do it without Merlyn and perhaps even that he wouldn't have been able to do it without Merlyn's particular brand of education. Wart, a child himself, puts it far better than me:

"''The Wart did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown-ups who talked to him like a baby, but the ones who just went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to jump along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas."''