Ivanhoe | Page 7

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