Thus, therefore, "the historians" are correct in their statement, that the matrimonial proposition was made by the English to Saladin, and that the parties were to be the brother of Saladin and the widowed Queen of Sicily. The novelist has not supported his assertion by a single historical testimony; and we may defy him to produce a tittle of evidence on his side. In the composition of his tales, the author of Waverley has seldom shown much respect for historical keeping. But greater accuracy than his no person had a right to expect in the text of a mere novel; and as long as he gave his readers no excuse for confounding fiction with truth, the play of his brilliant and excursive imagination was harmless. Thus in the Talisman, the poetical antiquarian only smiles when he finds the romance of the Squire of Low Degree quoted as familiar to the English long before it was written; and when, in the Betrothed, Gloucester is raised into a bishoprick three centuries and a half before the authentic æra, we equally admit the author's licence of anachronism. On these two occasions, as in innumerable other instances, in which the novelist, whether intentionally or unwittingly, has strayed from the path of historical accuracy, he has never given formal warranty for the truth of his statements, and he is entitled to laugh at the simple credulity which could mistake his Tales for veracious chronicles: But his assertion respecting the marriage of Saladin with his "Edith of Plantagenet" is a very different case. For here he throws aside the fanciful garb of a novelist, and quits the privilege of his text, that he may gravely and critically vouch in a note for the errors of our historians, and his own superior knowledge. If this can possibly be done merely to heighten the illusion of his romance, it is carrying the jest a little too far; for the preservation of historical truth is really too important a principle to be idly violated. But if he seriously designed to unite the province of the historian with that of the novelist, he has chosen a very unlucky expedient for his own reputation; and thus, in either case, he has rather wantonly led his readers into error, and brought against others a charge of ignorance, which must recoil more deservedly on himself. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. Page CHAP. I. THE ORIGIN AND FIRST APPEARANCES OF CHIVALRY IN EUROPE.