Ivanhoe

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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 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,*

* 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
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.*

* This anticipation proved but too true, as my learned
* correspondent did not receive my letter until a
* twelvemonth after it was written. I mention this
* circumstance, that a gentleman attached to the cause of
* learning, who now holds the principal control of the
* post-office, may consider whether by some mitigation of
* the present enormous rates, some favour might not be shown
* to the correspondents of the principal Literary and
* Antiquarian Societies. I understand, indeed, that this
* experiment was once tried, but that the mail-coach having
* broke down under the weight of packages addressed to
* members of the Society of Antiquaries, it was relinquished
* as a hazardous experiment. Surely, however it would be
* possible to build these vehicles in a form more
* substantial, stronger in the perch, and broader in the
* wheels, so as to support the weight of Antiquarian
* learning; when, if they should be found to travel more
* slowly, they would be not the less agreeable to quiet
* travellers like myself.---L. T.

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,*

* Mr Skene of Rubislaw is here intimated, to whose taste and
* skill the author is indebted for a series of etchings,
* exhibiting the various localities alluded to in these
* novels.

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.