The monastery; The abbot.

10 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
who places its pleasure in misleading and tormenting mortals, and tho
benevolent Fairy of the East, who uniformly guides, aids, and supports
them.
Either, however, the author executed his purpose indifferently, or the
public did not approve of it; for the White Lady of Avenel was far from
being popular. He does not now make the present statement, in the view
of arguing readers into a more favourable opinion on the subject, but
merely with the purpose of exculpating himseif from the charge of having
wantonly intruded into the narrative a being of inconsistent powers and
propensities.
In the delineation of another character, the author of the Monastery
failed, where he hoped for some success. As nothing is so successful a
subject for ridicule as the fashionable follies of the time, it occurred to him
that the' more serious scenes of his narrative might be relieved by the
humour of a cavaliero of the age of Queen Elizabeth. In every period,
the attempt to gain and maintain the highest rank of Society, has depended
on the power of assuming and supporting a certain fashionable kind of
affectation, usually connected with some vivacity of talent and energy of
character, but distinguished at the same time by a transcendent flight,
beyond sound reason and common sense; both faculties too vulgar to be
admitted into the estimate of one who claims to be esteemed "a choice
spirit of the age." These, in their different phases, constitute the gallants
of the day, whose boast it is to drive the whims of fashion to extremity.
On all occasions, the manners of the sovereign, the court, and the time,
must give the tone to the peculiar description of qualities by which those
who would attain the height of fashion must seek to distinguish themselves.
The reign of Elizabeth, being that of a maiden queen, was distinguished
by the decorum of the courtiers, and especially the affectation of the
deepest deference to the sovereign. After the acknowledgment of the
Queen's matchless perfections, the same devotion was extended to beauty as
it existed among the lesser stars in her court, who sparkled, as it was the
mode to say, by her reflected lustre. It is true, that gallant knights no
longer vowed to Heaven, the peacock, and the ladies, to perform some feat
of extravagant chivalry, in which they endangered the lives of others as
well as their own; but although their chivalrous displays of personal gallantry seldom went farther in Elizabeth's days than the tilt-yard, where
barricades, called barriers, prevented the shock of the horses, and limited
the display of the cavalier's skill to the comparatively safe encounter of
their lances, the language of the lovers to their ladies was still in the
exalted terms which Amadis would have addressed to Oriana, before encountering a dragon for her sake. This tone of romantic gallantry found
a clever but conceited author, to reduce it to a species of constitution and
form, and lay down the courtly manner of conversation, in a pedantic book,
called Euphues and his England. Of this, a brief account is given in the
text, to which it may now be proper to make some additions.
The extravagance of Euphuism, or a symbolical jargon of the same class,
predominates in the romances of Calprenade and Scuderi, which were read
foz the amusement of the fair sex of France during the long reign of Louis
XIV., and were supposed to contain the only legitimate language of love
and gallantry. In this reign they encountered the satire of Moliere and
Boileau. A similar disorder, spreading into private society, formed the
ground of the affected dialogue of the Precieuses, as they were styled, who
formed the coterie of the Hotel de Rlambouillet, and afforded Moliere matter
for his admirable comedy, Les Precieuses Ridicules. In England, the
humour does not seem to have long survived the accession of James I.
The author had the vanity to think that a character, whose peculiarities
should turn on extravagances which were once universally fashionable,
mig;ht be read in a fictitious story with a good chance of affording amuse