Any description, or any imitation of the exploits in which those
qualities were signalized, will do this most effectually.
Battles,--tournaments,--penances,--deliverance of damsels,--instalments
of knights, &c.--and, intermixed with these, we must admit some
description of arms, armorial bearings, castles, battlements, and
chapels: but the least and lowest of the whole certainly is the
description of servants' liveries, and of the peaceful operations of
eating, drinking, and ordinary salutation. These have no sensible
connexion with the qualities or peculiarities which have conferred
certain poetical privileges on the manners of chivalry. They do not
enter either necessarily or naturally into our conception of what is
interesting in those manners; and, though protected, by their
strangeness, from the ridicule which would infallibly attach to their
modern equivalents, are substantially as unpoetic, and as little
entitled to indulgence from impartial criticism.
We would extend this censure to a larger proportion of the work before
us than we now choose to mention--certainly to all the stupid monkish
legends about St Hilda and St Cuthbert--to the ludicrous description of
Lord Gifford's habiliments of divination--and to all the various scraps
and fragments of antiquarian history and baronial biography, which are
scattered profusely through the whole narrative.
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