Ivanhoe: A Romance
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 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 privée_ 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