Additional Information:
NOTE:  Several years before reading a line of Tennyson, I had met with the old romance of "Prince Arthur," translated from the French.  Observing then the poetical nature of many of its incidents, I selected for future experiment most of those which afterwards formed the groundwork of these legends; though some — "The First Meeting of Launcelot and Guinevere," "The King and the Bard," and "Avilion" — had their origin entirely in my own imagination.  The first six of the series were printed in the "Evening Journal" of Philadelphia, in 1857; the next two were published in 1859, before the appearance of "Idylls of the King;" the rest were written since, with the exception of "The Best Knight," and "The Last Meeting of Launcelot and Guinevere," which were composed more than a year before, though not issued in the "Home Journal" of New York until some time after Tennyson's book came out.
  This explanation is furnished so as to exonerate myself from an anticipated accusation of plagiarism of idea.