Ivanhoe | Page 9

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