[Burlesques by William Makepeace Thackeray]@TWC D-Link bookBurlesques CHAPTER I 3/15
There it is in black and white at the end of the third volume of Sir Walter Scott's chronicle, that the couple were joined together in matrimony.
And must the Disinherited Knight, whose blood has been fired by the suns of Palestine, and whose heart has been warmed in the company of the tender and beautiful Rebecca, sit down contented for life by the side of such a frigid piece of propriety as that icy, faultless, prim, niminy-piminy Rowena? Forbid it fate, forbid it poetical justice! There is a simple plan for setting matters right, and giving all parties their due, which is here submitted to the novel-reader.
Ivanhoe's history MUST have had a continuation; and it is this which ensues.
I may be wrong in some particulars of the narrative,--as what writer will not be ?--but of the main incidents of the history, I have in my own mind no sort of doubt, and confidently submit them to that generous public which likes to see virtue righted, true love rewarded, and the brilliant Fairy descend out of the blazing chariot at the end of the pantomime, and make Harlequin and Columbine happy.
What, if reality be not so, gentlemen and ladies; and if, after dancing a variety of jigs and antics, and jumping in and out of endless trap-doors and windows, through life's shifting scenes, no fairy comes down to make US comfortable at the close of the performance? Ah! let us give our honest novel-folks the benefit of their position, and not be envious of their good luck. No person who has read the preceding volumes of this history, as the famous chronicler of Abbotsford has recorded them, can doubt for a moment what was the result of the marriage between Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe and Lady Rowena.
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