Ivanhoe by Walter Scott (world best books to read .TXT) 📖

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