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allowed to possess in the same proportion superior softness and beauty;

and upon the whole, we feel ourselves entitled to exclaim with the

patriotic Syrian--" Are not Pharphar and Abana, rivers of Damascus,

better than all the rivers of Israel? "

Your objections to such an attempt, my dear Doctor, were, you may

remember, two-fold. You insisted upon the advantages which the Scotsman

possessed, from the very recent existence of that state of society

in which his scene was to be laid. Many now alive, you remarked, well

remembered persons who had not only seen the celebrated Roy

M'Gregor, but had feasted, and even fought with him. All those minute

circumstances belonging to private life and domestic character, all that

gives verisimilitude to a narrative, and individuality to the persons

introduced, is still known and remembered in Scotland; whereas in

England, civilisation has been so long complete, that our ideas of our

ancestors are only to be gleaned from musty records and chronicles, the

authors of which seem perversely to have conspired to suppress in their

narratives all interesting details, in order to find room for flowers of

monkish eloquence, or trite reflections upon morals. To match an English

and a Scottish author in the rival task of embodying and reviving the

traditions of their respective countries, would be, you alleged, in the

highest degree unequal and unjust. The Scottish magician, you said, was,

like Lucan's witch, at liberty to walk over the recent field of battle,

and to select for the subject of resuscitation by his sorceries, a body

whose limbs had recently quivered with existence, and whose throat

had but just uttered the last note of agony. Such a subject even the

powerful Erictho was compelled to select, as alone capable of being

reanimated even by " her" potent magic--

----gelidas leto scrutata medullas,

Pulmonis rigidi stantes sine vulnere fibras

Invenit, et vocem defuncto in corpore quaerit.

The English author, on the other hand, without supposing him less of

a conjuror than the Northern Warlock, can, you observed, only have the

liberty of selecting his subject amidst the dust of antiquity, where

nothing was to be found but dry, sapless, mouldering, and disjointed

bones, such as those which filled the valley of Jehoshaphat. You

expressed, besides, your apprehension, that the unpatriotic prejudices

of my countrymen would not allow fair play to such a work as that of

which I endeavoured to demonstrate the probable success. And this, you

said, was not entirely owing to the more general prejudice in favour of

that which is foreign, but that it rested partly upon improbabilities,

arising out of the circumstances in which the English reader is placed.

If you describe to him a set of wild manners, and a state of primitive

society existing in the Highlands of Scotland, he is much disposed to

acquiesce in the truth of what is asserted. And reason good. If he be

of the ordinary class of readers, he has either never seen those remote

districts at all, or he has wandered through those desolate regions in

the course of a summer tour, eating bad dinners, sleeping on truckle

beds, stalking from desolation to desolation, and fully prepared to

believe the strangest things that could be told him of a people, wild

and extravagant enough to be attached to scenery so extraordinary.

But the same worthy person, when placed in his own snug parlour, and

surrounded by all the comforts of an Englishman's fireside, is not half

so much disposed to believe that his own ancestors led a very different

life from himself; that the shattered tower, which now forms a vista

from his window, once held a baron who would have hung him up at his

own door without any form of trial; that the hinds, by whom his little

pet-farm is managed, a few centuries ago would have been his slaves;

and that the complete influence of feudal tyranny once extended over the

neighbouring village, where the attorney is now a man of more importance

than the lord of the manor.

While I own the force of these objections, I must confess, at the same

time, that they do not appear to me to be altogether insurmountable. The

scantiness of materials is indeed a formidable difficulty; but no one

knows better than Dr Dryasdust, that to those deeply read in antiquity,

hints concerning the private life of our ancestors lie scattered

through the pages of our various historians, bearing, indeed, a slender

proportion to the other matters of which they treat, but still, when

collected together, sufficient to throw considerable light upon the " vie

prive" of our forefathers; indeed, I am convinced, that however I myself

may fail in the ensuing attempt, yet, with more labour in collecting, or

more skill in using, the materials within his reach, illustrated as they

have been by the labours of Dr Henry, of the late Mr Strutt, and, above

all, of Mr Sharon Turner, an abler hand would have been successful;

and therefore I protest, beforehand, against any argument which may be

founded on the failure of the present experiment.

On the other hand, I have already said, that if any thing like a true

picture of old English manners could be drawn, I would trust to the

good-nature and good sense of my countrymen for insuring its favourable

reception.

Having thus replied, to the best of my power, to the first class of

your objections, or at least having shown my resolution to overleap the

barriers which your prudence has raised, I will be brief in noticing

that which is more peculiar to myself. It seems to be your opinion, that

the very office of an antiquary, employed in grave, and, as the

vulgar will sometimes allege, in toilsome and minute research, must be

considered as incapacitating him from successfully compounding a tale of

this sort. But permit me to say, my dear Doctor, that this objection

is rather formal than substantial. It is true, that such slight

compositions might not suit the severer genius of our friend Mr Oldbuck.

Yet Horace Walpole wrote a goblin tale which has thrilled through many a

bosom; and George Ellis could transfer all the playful fascination of

a humour, as delightful as it was uncommon, into his Abridgement of the

Ancient Metrical Romances. So that, however I may have occasion to rue

my present audacity, I have at least the most respectable precedents in

my favour.

Still the severer antiquary may think, that, by thus intermingling

fiction with truth, I am polluting the well of history with modern

inventions, and impressing upon the rising generation false ideas of the

age which I describe. I cannot but in some sense admit the force of this

reasoning, which I yet hope to traverse by the following considerations.

It is true, that I neither can, nor do pretend, to the observation of

complete accuracy, even in matters of outward costume, much less in the

more important points of language and manners. But the same motive

which prevents my writing the dialogue of the piece in Anglo-Saxon or in

Norman-French, and which prohibits my sending forth to the public this

essay printed with the types of Caxton or Wynken de Worde, prevents my

attempting to confine myself within the limits of the period in which my

story is laid. It is necessary, for exciting interest of any kind, that

the subject assumed should be, as it were, translated into the manners,

as well as the language, of the age we live in. No fascination has

ever been attached to Oriental literature, equal to that produced by Mr

Galland's first translation of the Arabian Tales; in which, retaining

on the one hand the splendour of Eastern costume, and on the other the

wildness of Eastern fiction, he mixed these with just so much ordinary

feeling and expression, as rendered them interesting and intelligible,

while he abridged the long-winded narratives, curtailed the monotonous

reflections, and rejected the endless repetitions of the Arabian

original. The tales, therefore, though less purely Oriental than in

their first concoction, were eminently better fitted for the European

market, and obtained an unrivalled degree of public favour, which they

certainly would never have gained had not the manners and style been

in some degree familiarized to the feelings and habits of the western

reader.

In point of justice, therefore, to the multitudes who will, I trust,

devour this book with avidity, I have so far explained our ancient

manners in modern language, and so far detailed the characters and

sentiments of my persons, that the modern reader will not find himself,

I should hope, much trammelled by the repulsive dryness of mere

antiquity. In this, I respectfully contend, I have in no respect

exceeded the fair license due to the author of a fictitious composition.

The late ingenious Mr Strutt, in his romance of Queen-Hoo-Hall, [5]

acted upon another principle; and in distinguishing between what was

ancient and modern, forgot, as it appears to me, that extensive neutral

ground, the large proportion, that is, of manners and sentiments which

are common to us and to our ancestors, having been handed down unaltered

from them to us, or which, arising out of the principles of our common

nature, must have existed alike in either state of society. In this

manner, a man of talent, and of great antiquarian erudition, limited the

popularity of his work, by excluding from it every thing which was not

sufficiently obsolete to be altogether forgotten and unintelligible.

The license which I would here vindicate, is so necessary to the

execution of my plan, that I will crave your patience while I illustrate

my argument a little farther.

He who first opens Chaucer, or any other ancient poet, is so much

struck with the obsolete spelling, multiplied consonants, and antiquated

appearance of the language, that he is apt to lay the work down in

despair, as encrusted too deep with the rust of antiquity, to permit his

judging of its merits or tasting its beauties. But if some intelligent

and accomplished friend points out to him, that the difficulties by

which he is startled are more in appearance than reality, if, by

reading aloud to him, or by reducing the ordinary words to the modern

orthography, he satisfies his proselyte that only about one-tenth part

of the words employed are in fact obsolete, the novice may be easily

persuaded to approach the " well of English undefiled, " with the

certainty that a slender degree of patience will enable him to to enjoy

both the humour and the pathos with which old Geoffrey delighted the age

of Cressy and of Poictiers.

To pursue this a little farther. If our neophyte, strong in the new-born

love of antiquity, were to undertake to imitate what he had learnt to

admire, it must be allowed he would act very injudiciously, if he were

to select from the Glossary the obsolete words which it contains, and

employ those exclusively of all phrases and vocables retained in modern

days. This was the error of the unfortunate Chatterton. In order to give

his language the appearance of antiquity, he rejected every word that

was modern, and produced a dialect entirely different from any that

had ever been spoken in Great Britain. He who would imitate an ancient

language with success, must attend rather to its grammatical character,

turn of expression, and mode of arrangement, than labour to collect

extraordinary and antiquated terms, which, as I have already averred, do

not in ancient authors approach the number of words still in use, though

perhaps somewhat altered in sense and spelling, in the proportion of one

to ten.

What I have applied to language, is still more justly applicable to

sentiments and manners. The passions, the sources from which these must

spring in all their modifications, are generally the same in all ranks

and conditions, all countries and ages; and it follows, as a matter

of course, that the opinions, habits of thinking, and actions, however

influenced by the peculiar state of society, must still, upon the whole,

bear a strong resemblance to each other. Our ancestors were not more

distinct from us, surely, than Jews are from Christians; they had " eyes,

hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; " were " fed with

the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,

warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, " as ourselves. The

tenor, therefore, of their affections and feelings, must have borne the

same general proportion to our own.

It follows, therefore, that of the materials which an author has to

use in a romance, or fictitious composition, such as I have ventured

to attempt, he will find that a great proportion, both of language and

manners, is as proper to the present time as to those in which he has

laid his time of action. The freedom of choice which this allows him,

is therefore much greater, and the difficulty of his task much more

diminished, than at first appears. To take an illustration from a sister

art, the antiquarian details may be said to represent the peculiar

features of a landscape under delineation of the pencil. His feudal

tower must arise in due majesty; the figures which he introduces must

have the costume and character of their age; the piece must represent

the peculiar features of the scene which he has chosen for his subject,

with all its appropriate elevation of rock, or precipitate descent of

cataract. His general colouring, too, must be copied from Nature: The

sky must be clouded or serene, according to the climate, and the general

tints must be those which prevail in a natural landscape. So far the

painter is bound down by the rules of his art, to a precise imitation of

the features of Nature; but it is not required that he should descend to

copy all her more minute features, or represent with absolute exactness

the very herbs, flowers, and trees, with which the spot is decorated.

These, as well as all the more minute points of light and shadow, are

attributes proper to scenery in general, natural to each situation, and

subject to the artist's disposal, as his taste or pleasure may dictate.

It is true, that this license is confined in either case within

legitimate bounds. The painter must introduce no ornament inconsistent

with the climate or country of his landscape; he must not plant cypress

trees upon Inch-Merrin, or Scottish firs among the ruins of Persepolis;

and the author lies under a corresponding restraint. However far he may

venture in a more full detail of passions and feelings, than is to be

found in the ancient compositions which he imitates, he must introduce

nothing inconsistent with the manners of the age; his knights, squires,

grooms, and yeomen, may be more fully drawn than in the hard, dry

delineations of an ancient illuminated manuscript, but the character and

costume of the age must remain inviolate; they must be the same figures,

drawn by a better pencil, or, to speak more modestly, executed in an age

when the principles of art were better understood. His language must

not be exclusively obsolete and unintelligible; but he should admit, if

possible, no word or turn of phraseology betraying an origin directly

modern. It is one thing to make use of the language and sentiments which

are common to ourselves and our forefathers, and it is another to

invest them with the sentiments and dialect exclusively proper to their

descendants.

This, my dear friend, I have found the most difficult part of my task;

and, to speak frankly, I hardly expect to satisfy your less partial

judgment, and more extensive knowledge of such subjects, since I have

hardly been able to please my own.

I am conscious that I shall be found still more faulty in the tone of

keeping and costume, by those who may be disposed rigidly to examine

my Tale, with reference to the manners of the exact period in which my

actors flourished: It may be, that I have introduced little which can

positively be termed modern; but, on the other hand, it is extremely

probable that I may have confused the manners of two or three centuries,

and introduced, during the reign of Richard the First, circumstances

appropriated to a period either considerably earlier, or a good deal

later than that era. It is my comfort, that errors of this kind will

escape the general class of readers, and that I may share in the

ill-deserved applause of those architects, who, in their modern Gothic,

do not hesitate to introduce, without rule or method, ornaments proper

to different styles and to different periods of the art. Those

whose extensive researches have given them the means of judging my

backslidings with more severity, will probably be lenient in proportion

to their knowledge of the difficulty of my task. My honest and neglected

friend, Ingulphus, has furnished me with many a valuable hint; but the

light afforded by the Monk of Croydon, and Geoffrey de Vinsauff, is

dimmed by such a conglomeration of uninteresting and unintelligible

matter, that we gladly fly for relief to the delightful pages of the

gallant Froissart, although he flourished at a period so much more

remote from the date of my history. If, therefore, my dear friend, you

have generosity enough to pardon the presumptuous attempt, to frame for

myself a minstrel coronet, partly out of the pearls of pure antiquity,

and partly from the Bristol stones and paste, with which I have

endeavoured to imitate them, I am convinced your opinion of the

difficulty of the task will reconcile you to the imperfect manner of its

execution.

Of my materials I have but little to say. They may be chiefly found in

the singular Anglo-Norman MS., which Sir Arthur Wardour preserves with

such jealous care in the third drawer of his oaken cabinet, scarcely

allowing any one to touch it, and being himself not able to read one

syllable of its contents. I should never have got his consent, on my

visit to Scotland, to read in those precious pages for so many hours,

had I not promised to designate it by some emphatic mode of printing,

as {The Wardour Manuscript}; giving it, thereby, an individuality

as important as the Bannatyne MS., the Auchinleck MS., and any other

monument of the patience of a Gothic scrivener. I have sent, for your

private consideration, a list of the contents of this curious piece,

which I shall perhaps subjoin, with your approbation, to the third

volume of my Tale, in case the printer's devil should continue impatient

for copy, when the whole of my narrative has been imposed.

Adieu, my dear friend; I have said enough to explain, if not to

vindicate, the attempt which I have made, and which, in spite of your

doubts, and my own incapacity, I am still willing to believe has not

been altogether made in vain.

I hope you are now well recovered from your spring fit of the gout, and

shall be happy if the advice of your learned physician should recommend

a tour to these parts. Several curiosities have been lately dug up near

the wall, as well as at the ancient station of Habitancum. Talking of

the latter, I suppose you have long since heard the news, that a sulky

churlish boor has destroyed the ancient statue, or rather bas-relief,

popularly called Robin of Redesdale. It seems Robin's fame attracted

more visitants than was consistent with the growth of the heather, upon

a moor worth a shilling an acre. Reverend as you write yourself, be

revengeful for once, and pray with me that he may be visited with such

a fit of the stone, as if he had all the fragments of poor Robin in that

region of his viscera where the disease holds its seat. Tell this not in

Gath, lest the Scots rejoice that they have at length found a parallel

instance among their neighbours, to that barbarous deed which demolished

Arthur's Oven. But there is no end to lamentation, when we betake

ourselves to such subjects. My respectful compliments attend Miss

Dryasdust; I endeavoured to match the spectacles agreeable to her

commission, during my late journey to London, and hope she has received

them safe, and found them satisfactory. I send this by the blind

carrier, so that probably it may be some time upon its journey. [6]

The last news which I hear from Edinburgh is, that the gentleman who

fills the situation of Secretary to the Society of Antiquaries of

Scotland, [7] is the best amateur draftsman in that kingdom, and that

much is expected from his skill and zeal in delineating those specimens

of national antiquity, which are either mouldering under the slow

touch of time, or swept away by modern taste, with the same besom of

destruction which John Knox used at the Reformation. Once more adieu;

" vale tandem, non immemor mei". Believe me to be,

Reverend, and very dear Sir,

Your most faithful humble Servant.

Laurence Templeton.

Toppingwold, near Egremont, Cumberland, Nov. 17, 1817.

IVANHOE.

CHAPTER I

Thus communed these; while to their lowly dome,

The full-fed swine return'd with evening home;

Compell'd, reluctant, to the several sties,

With din obstreperous, and ungrateful cries.

Pope's Odyssey

In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the

river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering

the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between

Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster. The remains of this

extensive wood are still to be seen at the noble seats of Wentworth, of

Warncliffe Park, and around Rotherham. Here haunted of yore the fabulous

Dragon of Wantley; here were fought many of the most desperate battles

during the Civil Wars of the Roses; and here also flourished in ancient

times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so

popular in English song.

Such being our chief scene, the date of our story refers to a period

towards the end of the reign of Richard I., when his return from his

long captivity had become an event rather wished than hoped for by his

despairing subjects, who were in the meantime subjected to every species

of subordinate oppression. The nobles, whose power had become exorbitant

during the reign of Stephen, and whom the prudence of Henry the Second

had scarce reduced to some degree of subjection to the crown, had now

resumed their ancient license in its utmost extent; despising the feeble

interference of the English Council of State, fortifying their castles,

increasing the number of their dependants, reducing all around them to a

state of vassalage, and striving by every means in their power, to place

themselves each at the head of such forces as might enable him to make a

figure in the national convulsions which appeared to be impending.

The situation of the inferior gentry, or Franklins, as they were called,

who, by the law and spirit of the English constitution, were entitled

to hold themselves independent of feudal tyranny, became now unusually

precarious. If, as was most generally the case, they placed themselves

under the protection of any of the petty kings in their vicinity,

accepted of feudal offices in his household, or bound themselves by

mutual treaties of alliance and protection, to support him in his

enterprises, they might indeed purchase temporary repose; but it must

be with the sacrifice of that independence which was so dear to every

English bosom, and at the certain hazard of being involved as a party in

whatever rash expedition the ambition of their protector might lead him

to undertake. On the other hand, such and so multiplied were the means

of vexation and oppression possessed by the great Barons, that they

never wanted the pretext, and seldom the will, to harass and pursue,

even to the very edge of destruction, any of their less powerful

neighbours, who attempted to separate themselves from their authority,

and to trust for their protection, during the dangers of the times, to

their own inoffensive conduct, and to the laws of the land.

A circumstance which greatly tended to enhance the tyranny of the

nobility, and the sufferings of the inferior classes, arose from

the consequences of the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy. Four

generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the Normans

and Anglo-Saxons, or to unite, by common language and mutual interests,

two hostile races, one of which still felt the elation of triumph, while

the other groaned under all the consequences of defeat. The power had

been completely placed in the hands of the Norman nobility, by the event

of the battle of Hastings, and it had been used, as our histories assure

us, with no moderate hand. The whole race of Saxon princes and nobles

had been extirpated or disinherited, with few or no exceptions; nor were

the numbers great who possessed land in the country of their fathers,

even as proprietors of the second, or of yet inferior classes. The royal

policy had long been to weaken, by every means, legal or illegal, the

strength of a part of the population which was justly considered as

nourishing the most inveterate antipathy to their victor. All the

monarchs of the Norman race had shown the most marked predilection for

their Norman subjects; the laws of the chase, and many others equally

unknown to the milder and more free spirit of the Saxon constitution,

had been fixed upon the necks of the subjugated inhabitants, to add

weight, as it were, to the feudal chains with which they were loaded. At

court, and in the castles of the great nobles, where the pomp and state

of a court was emulated, Norman-French was the only language employed;

in courts of law, the pleadings and judgments were delivered in the same

tongue. In short, French was the language of honour, of chivalry, and

even of justice, while the far more manly and expressive Anglo-Saxon

was abandoned to the use of rustics and hinds, who knew no other. Still,

however, the necessary intercourse between the lords of the soil,

and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that soil was cultivated,

occasioned the gradual formation of a dialect, compounded betwixt

the French and the Anglo-Saxon, in which they could render themselves

mutually intelligible to each other; and from this necessity arose by

degrees the structure of our present English language, in which the

speech of the victors and the vanquished have been so happily blended

together; and which has since been so richly improved by importations

from the classical languages, and from those spoken by the southern

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