Ivanhoe: A Romance
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