Ivanhoe - Walter Scott (e ink ebook reader txt) 📗

Providence has deemed worthy of suffering

merit, and it is a dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young

persons, the most common readers of romance, that rectitude of

conduct and of principle are either naturally allied with, or

adequately rewarded by, the gratification of our passions, or

attainment of our wishes. In a word, if a virtuous and

self-denied character is dismissed with temporal wealth,

greatness, rank, or the indulgence of such a rashly formed or ill

assorted passion as that of Rebecca for Ivanhoe, the reader will

be apt to say, verily Virtue has had its reward. But a glance on

the great picture of life will show, that the duties of

self-denial, and the sacrifice of passion to principle, are

seldom thus remunerated; and that the internal consciousness of

their high-minded discharge of duty, produces on their own

reflections a more adequate recompense, in the form of that peace

which the world cannot give or take away.

Abbotsford,

1st September, 1830.

DEDICATORY EPISTLE

TO

THE REV. DR DRYASDUST, F.A.S.

Residing in the Castle-Gate, York.

Much esteemed and dear Sir,

It is scarcely necessary to mention the various and concurring

reasons which induce me to place your name at the head of the

following work. Yet the chief of these reasons may perhaps be

refuted by the imperfections of the performance. Could I have

hoped to render it worthy of your patronage, the public would at

once have seen the propriety of inscribing a work designed to

illustrate the domestic antiquities of England, and particularly

of our Saxon forefathers, to the learned author of the Essays

upon the Horn of King Ulphus, and on the Lands bestowed by him

upon the patrimony of St Peter. I am conscious, however, that

the slight, unsatisfactory, and trivial 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

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