frivolous an affair as a tournament? It is the privilege of great
masters to make things so, and it is a churlish thing to gainsay
it. Was it not Wendell Holmes who described the prosaic man, who
enters a drawing-room with a couple of facts, like ill-conditioned
bull-dogs at his heels, ready to let them loose on any play of
fancy? The great writer can never go wrong. If Shakespeare gives
a sea-coast to Bohemia, or if Victor Hugo calls an English
prize-fighter Mr. Jim-John-Jack--well, it was so, and that's an end
of it. "There is no second line of rails at that point," said an
editor to a minor author. "I make a second line," said the author;
and he was within his rights, if he can carry his readers'
conviction with him.

But this is a digression from "Ivanhoe." What a book it is! The
second greatest historical novel in our language, I think. Every
successive reading has deepened my admiration for it. Scott's
soldiers are always as good as his women (with exceptions) are weak;
but here, while the soldiers are at their very best, the romantic
figure of Rebecca redeems the female side of the story from the
usual commonplace routine. Scott drew manly men because he was a
manly man himself, and found the task a sympathetic one.

He drew young heroines because a convention demanded it, which he
had never the hardihood to break. It is only when we get him for
a dozen chapters on end with a minimum of petticoat--in the long
stretch, for example, from the beginning of the Tournament to the
end of the Friar Tuck incident--that we realize the height of
continued romantic narrative to which he could attain. I don't
think in the whole range of our literature we have a finer
sustained flight than that.