Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863
But the sullen ocean answered with a louder deeper roar,
And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling, sounding on the shore;
Back the keeper and the bishop, back the king and courtiers bore.
We must go to the book to look at the picture of the king as he is
killing the youngest of the sons of the Count of Chalons. Those
illustrations of Doyle's are admirable. The size of the king's head, and
the size of his battle-axe as contrasted with the size of the child, are
burlesque all over. But the king has been wounded by a bolt from the bow
of Sir Bertrand de Gourdon while he is slaughtering the infant, and
there is an end of him. Ivanhoe, too, is killed at the siege,--Sir Roger
de Backbite having stabbed him in the back during the scene. Had he not
been then killed, his widow Rowena could not have married Athelstane,
which she soon did after hearing the sad news; nor could he have had
that celebrated epitaph in Latin and English;
Hie est Guilfridus, belli dum vixit avidus.
Cum gladeo et lancea Normannia et quoque Francia
Verbera dura dabat. Per Turcos multum equitabat.
Guilbertum occidit;--atque Hyerosolyma vidit.
Heu! nunc sub fossa sunt tanti militis ossa.
Uxor Athelstani est conjux castissima Thani.[5]
The translation we are told was by Wamba;
Under the stone you behold,
Buried and coffined and cold,
Lieth Sir Wilfrid the Bold.
Always he marched in advance,
Warring in Flanders and France,
Doughty with sword and with lance
Famous in Saracen fight,
Rode in his youth, the Good Knight,
Scattering Paynims in flight.
Brian, the Templar untrue,
Fairly in tourney he slew;
Saw Hierusalem too.
Now he is buried and gone,
Lying beneath the gray stone.
Where shall you find such a one?
Long time his widow deplored,
Weeping, the fate of her lord,
Sadly cut off by the sword.
When she was eased of her pain,
Came the good lord Athelstane,
When her ladyship married again.
The next chapter begins naturally as follows; "I trust nobody will
suppose, from the events described in the last chapter, that our friend
Ivanhoe is really dead." He is of course cured of his wounds, though
they take six years in the curing. And then he makes his way back to
Rotherwood, in a friar's disguise, much as he did on that former
occasion when we first met him, and there is received by Athelstane and
Rowena,--and their boy!--while Wamba sings him a song:
Then you know the worth of a lass,
Once you have come to forty year!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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