Ivanhoe | Page 8

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 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,