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

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.

A circumstance which greatly tended to enhance the tyranny of the

nobility, and the sufferings of the inferior classes, arose from

the consequences of the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy.

Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of

the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, or to unite, by common language and

mutual interests, two hostile races, one of which still felt the

elation of triumph, while the other groaned under all the

consequences of defeat. The power had been completely placed in

the hands of the Norman nobility, by the event of the battle of

Hastings, and it had been used, as our histories assure us, with

no moderate hand. The whole race of Saxon princes and nobles had

been extirpated or disinherited, with few or no exceptions; nor

were the numbers great who possessed land in the country of their

fathers, even as proprietors of the second, or of yet inferior

classes. The royal policy had long been to weaken, by every

means, legal or illegal, the strength of a part of the population

which was justly considered as nourishing the most inveterate

antipathy to their victor. All the monarchs of the Norman race

had shown the most marked predilection for their Norman subjects;

the laws of the chase, and many others equally unknown to the

milder and more free spirit of the Saxon constitution, had been

fixed upon the necks of the subjugated inhabitants, to add

weight, as it were, to the feudal chains with which they were

loaded. At court, and in the castles of the great nobles, where

the pomp and state of a court was emulated, Norman-French was the

only language employed; in courts of law, the pleadings and

judgments were delivered in the same tongue. In short, French

was the language of honour, of chivalry, and even of justice,

while the far more manly and expressive Anglo-Saxon was abandoned

to the use of rustics and hinds, who knew no other. Still,

however, the necessary intercourse between the lords of the soil,

and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that soil was

cultivated, occasioned the gradual formation of a dialect,

compounded betwixt the French and the Anglo-Saxon, in which they

could render themselves mutually intelligible to each other; and

from this necessity arose by degrees the structure of our present

English language, in which the speech of the victors and the

vanquished have been so happily blended together; and which has

since been so richly improved by importations from the classical

languages, and from those spoken by the southern nations of

Europe.

This state of things I have thought it necessary to premise for

the information of the general reader, who might be apt to

forget, that, although no great historical events, such as war or

insurrection, mark the existence of the Anglo-Saxons as a

separate people subsequent to the reign of William the Second;

yet the great national distinctions betwixt them and their

conquerors, the recollection of what they had formerly been, and

to what they were now reduced, continued down to the reign of

Edward the Third, to keep open the wounds which the Conquest had

inflicted, and to maintain a line of separation betwixt the

descendants of the victor Normans and the vanquished Saxons.

The sun was setting upon one of the rich grassy glades of that

forest, which we have mentioned in the beginning of the chapter.

Hundreds of broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched oaks,

which had witnessed perhaps the stately march of the Roman

soldiery, flung their gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the

most delicious green sward; in some places they were intermingled

with beeches, hollies, and copsewood of various descriptions, so

closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking

sun; in others they receded from each other, forming those long

sweeping vistas, in the intricacy of which the eye delights to

lose itself, while imagination considers them as the paths to yet

wilder scenes of silvan solitude. Here the red rays of the sun

shot a broken and discoloured light, that partially hung upon the

shattered boughs and mossy trunks of the trees, and there they

illuminated in brilliant patches the portions of turf to which

they made their way. A considerable open space, in the midst of

this glade, seemed formerly to have been dedicated to the rites

of Druidical superstition; for, on the summit of a hillock, so

regular as to seem artificial, there still remained part of a

circle of rough unhewn stones, of large dimensions. Seven stood

upright; the rest had been dislodged from their places, probably

by the zeal of some convert to Christianity, and lay, some

prostrate near their former site, and others on the side of the

hill. One large stone only had found its way to the bottom, and

in stopping the course of a small brook, which glided smoothly

round the foot of the eminence, gave, by its opposition, a feeble

voice of murmur to the placid and elsewhere