Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott

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On the footing of unreserved communication
which the Author has established with the
reader, he may here add the trifling circumstance,
that a roll of Norman warriors, occurring
in the Auchinleck Manuscript, gave him
the formidable name of Front-de-Buf.

Ivanhoe was highly successful upon its appearance,
and may be said to have procured
for its author the freedom of the Rules, since
he has ever since been permitted to exercise
his powers of fictitious composition in England,
as well as Scotland.

The character of the fair Jewess found so
much favour in the eyes of some fair readers,
that the writer was censured, because, when
arranging the fates of the characters of the
drama, he had not assigned the hand of Wilfred
to Rebecca, rather than the less interesting
Rowena. But, not to mention that the prejudices
of the age rendered such an union almost
impossible, the author may, in passing,
observe, that he thinks a character of a highly
virtuous and lofty stamp, is degraded rather
than exalted by an attempt to reward virtue
with temporal prosperity. Such is not the recompense
which Providence has deemed worthy
of suffering merit, and it is a dangerous
and fatal doctrine to teach young persons, the
most common readers of romance, that rectitude
of conduct and of principle are either naturally
allied with, or adequately rewarded by,
the gratification of our passions, or attainment
of our wishes. In a word, if a virtuous and self-denied
character is dismissed with temporal
wealth, greatness, rank, or the indulgence of
such a rashly formed or ill assorted passion as
that of Rebecca for Ivanhoe, the reader will be
apt to say, verily Virtue has had its reward.
But a glance on the great picture of life will
show, that the duties of self-denial, and the
sacrifice of passion to principle, are seldom thus
remunerated; and that the internal consciousness
of their high-minded discharge of duty,
produces on their own reflections a more adequate
recompense, in the form of that peace
which the world cannot give or take away.

Abbotsford,
1st September, 1830.

DEDICATORY EPISTLE

TO

THE REV. DR DRYASDUST, F.A.S.

Residing in the Castle-Gate, York.

Much esteemed and dear Sir,

It is scarcely necessary to mention the
various and concurring reasons which induce
me to place your name at the head of the following
work. Yet the chief of these reasons
may perhaps be refuted by the imperfections
of the performance. Could I have hoped to
render it worthy of your patronage, the public
would at once have seen the propriety of
inscribing a work designed to illustrate the
domestic antiquities of England, and particularly
of our Saxon forefathers, to the learned
author of the Essays upon the Horn of King
Ulphus, and on the Lands bestowed by him
upon the patrimony of St Peter. I am conscious,
however, that the slight, unsatisfactory,
and trivial manner, in which the result of my
antiquarian researches has been recorded in
the following pages, takes the work from under
that class which bears the proud motto,
_Detur digniori_. On the contrary, I fear I shall
incur the censure of presumption in placing
the venerable name of Dr Jonas Dryasdust at
the head of a publication, which the more
grave antiquary will perhaps class with the
idle novels and romances of the day. I am
anxious to vindicate myself from such a charge;
for although I might trust to your friendship
for an apology in your eyes, yet I would not
willingly stand conviction in those of the public
of so grave a crime, as my fears lead me
to anticipate my being charged with.

I must therefore remind you, that when we
first talked over together that class of productions,
in one of which the private and family
affairs of your learned northern friend, Mr
Oldbuck of Monkbarns, were so unjustifiably
exposed to the public, some discussion occurred
between us concerning the cause of the
popularity these works have attained in this
idle age, which, whatever other merit they
possess, must be admitted to be hastily written,
and in violation of every rule assigned to
the epopeia. It seemed then to be your opinion,
that the charm lay entirely in the art with
which the unknown author had availed himself,
like a second M`Pherson, of the antiquarian
stores which lay scattered around him, supplying
his own indolence or poverty of invention,
by the incidents which had actually taken
place in his country at no distant period, by
introducing real characters, and scarcely suppressing
real names. It was not above sixty
or seventy years, you observed, since the whole
north of Scotland was under a state of government
nearly as simple and as patriarchal
as those of our good allies the Mohawks and
Iroquois. Admitting that the author cannot
himself be supposed to have witnessed those
times, he must have lived, you observed, among
persons who had acted and suffered in them;
and even within these thirty years, such an infinite
change has taken place in the manners
of Scotland, that men look back upon the habits
of society proper to their immediate ancestors,
as we do on those of the reign of Queen
Anne, or even the period of the Revolution.
Having thus materials of every kind lying
strewed around him, there was little, you observed,
to embarrass the author, but the difficulty
of choice. It was no wonder, therefore,
that, having begun to work a mine so plentiful,
he should have derived from his works
fully more credit and profit than the facility
of his labours merited.

Admitting (as I could not deny) the general
truth of these conclusions, I cannot but
think it strange that no attempt has been made
to excite an interest for the traditions and
manners of Old England, similiar to that which
has been obtained in behalf of those of our poorer
and less celebrated neighbours. The Kendal
green, though its date is more ancient,
ought surely to be as dear to our feelings, as
the variegated tartans of the north. The name
of Robin Hood, if duly conjured with, should
raise a spirit as soon as that of Rob Roy; and
the patriots of England deserve no less their
renown in our modern circles, than the Bruces
and Wallaces of Caledonia. If the scenery of
the south be less romantic and sublime than
that of the northern mountains, it must be 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 qurit.

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,*

* The author had revised this posthumous work of Mr Strutt.
* See General Preface to the present edition, Vol I. p. 65.

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 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.