inisters. Yet these
things are, in their own nature, fully as picturesque, and as
interesting, as the ribbons at the mane of Lord Marmion's horse, or his
supper and breakfast at the castle of Norham. We are glad, indeed, to
find these little details in _old_ books, whether in prose or verse,
because they are there authentic and valuable documents of the usages
and modes of life of our ancestors; and we are thankful when we light
upon this sort of information in an antient romance, which commonly
contains matter much more tedious. Even there, however, we smile at the
simplicity which could mistake such naked enumerations for poetical
description; and reckon them as nearly on a level, in point of taste,
with the theological disputations that are sometimes introduced in the
same meritorious compositions. In a _modern_ romance, however, these
details being no longer authentic, are of no value in point of
information; and as the author has no claim to indulgence on the ground
of simplicity, the smile which his predecessors excited is in some
danger of being turned into a yawn. If he wishes sincerely to follow
their example, he should describe the manners of his own time, and not
of theirs. They painted from observation, and not from study; and the
familiarity and _naivete_ of their delineations, transcribed with a
slovenly and hasty hand from what they saw daily before them, is as
remote as possible from the elaborate pictures extracted by a modern
imitator from black-letter books, and coloured, not from the life, but
from learned theories, or at best from mouldy monkish illuminations, and
mutilated fragments of painted glass.

But the times of chivalry, it may be said, were more picturesque than
the present times. They are better adapted to poetry; and everything
that is associated with them has a certain hold on the imagination, and
partakes of the interest of the period. We do not mean utterly to deny
this; nor can we stop, at present, to assign exact limits to our assent:
but this we will venture to observe, in general, that if it be true that
the interest which we take in the contemplation of the chivalrous era,
arises from the dangers and virtues by which it was distinguished,--from
the constant hazards in which its warriors passed their days, and the
mild and generous valour with which they met those hazards,--joined to
the singular contrast which it presented between the ceremonious polish
and gallantry of the nobles