The Historical Novel: An Essay

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The University Press, 1924 - Historical fiction - 113 pages
 

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Page 25 - NormanFrench was the only language employed; in courts of law, the pleadings and judgments were delivered in the same tongue. In short, French was the language of honour, of chivalry, and even of justice, while the far more manly and expressive Anglo-Saxon was abandoned to the use of rustics and hinds, who knew IVANHOE no other.
Page 19 - Aeaea, patched up new — Stern painted brighter blue — ) That talkative bald-headed seaman came (Twelve patient comrades sweating at the oar) From Troy's doom-crimson shore, And with great lies about his wooden horse Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course. It was so old a ship — who knows, who knows?
Page 19 - Blood, water, fruit and corpses up the hold. But now through friendly seas they softly run. Painted the mid-sea blue or shore-sea green, Still patterned with the vine and grapes in gold. But I have seen, Pointing her shapely shadows from the dawn And image tumbled on a rose-swept bay, A drowsy ship of some yet older day; And, wonder's breath indrawn, Thought I — who knows — who knows...
Page 40 - Yet to me, the wandering over the field of Bannockburn was the source of more exquisite pleasure than gazing upon the celebrated landscape from the battlements of Stirling castle. I do not by any means infer that I was dead to the feeling of picturesque scenery ; on the contrary, few delighted more in its general effect. But I was unable with the eye of a painter to dissect the various parts of the scene, to comprehend how the one bore upon the other, to estimate the effect which various features...
Page 19 - I HAVE seen old ships sail like swans asleep Beyond the village which men still call Tyre, With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep For Famagusta and the hidden sun That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire ; And all those ships were certainly so old Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun, Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges, The pirate Genoese Hell-raked them till they rolled Blood, water, fruit, and corpses up the hold.
Page 25 - Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, or to unite, by common language and mutual interests, two hostile races, one of which still felt the elation of triumph, while the other groaned under all the consequences of defeat.
Page 41 - local names and peculiarities make a fictitious story look so much better in the face.' In fact, from his boyish habits, he was but half satisfied with the most beautiful scenery when he could not connect with it some local legend, and when I was forced sometimes to confess with the Knife-grinder, ' Story ! God bless you ! I have none to tell, sir' — he would laugh and say, ' then let us make one — nothing so easy as to make a tradition.
Page 16 - O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields ; on old women spinning in cottages ; on ships far out in the silent main...
Page 25 - Still, however, the necessary intercourse between the lords of the soil, and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that soil was cultivated, occasioned the gradual formation of a dialect, compounded betwixt the French and the Anglo-Saxon...
Page 33 - The general plan of the story was, to conjoin two characters in that bustling and contentious age, who, thrown into situations which gave them different views on the subject of the Reformation, should, with the same sincerity and purity of intention, dedicate themselves, the one to the support of the sinking fabric of the Catholic Church, the other to the establishment of the Reformed doctrines.

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