Produced by David Widger and Dagny
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE
TO WHICH IS PREFIXED THE IDEAL WORLD
By Edward Bulwer Lytton (Lord Lytton)
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE
TO HENRY LYTTON BULWER.
ALLOW me, my dear Brother, to dedicate this Work to you. The greater
part of it (namely, the tales which vary and relieve the voyages of
Gertrude and Trevylyan) was written in the pleasant excursion we made
together some years ago. Among the associations--some sad and some
pleasing--connected with the general design, none are so agreeable to
me as those that remind me of the friendship subsisting between us, and
which, unlike that of near relations in general, has grown stronger
and more intimate as our footsteps have receded farther from the fields
where we played together in our childhood. I dedicate this Work to you
with the more pleasure, not only when I remember that it has always
been a favourite with yourself, but when I think that it is one of my
writings most liked in foreign countries; and I may possibly, therefore,
have found a record destined to endure the affectionate esteem which
this Dedication is intended to convey.
Yours, etc.
E. L. B. LONDON, April 23, 1840.
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.
COULD I prescribe to the critic and to the public, I would wish that
this work might be tried by the rules rather of poetry than prose,
for according to those rules have been both its conception and its
execution; and I feel that something of sympathy with the author’s
design is requisite to win indulgence for the superstitions he has
incorporated with his tale, for the floridity of his style, and the
redundance of his descriptions. Perhaps, indeed, it would be impossible,
in attempting to paint the scenery and embody some of the Legends of
the Rhine, not to give (it may be, too loosely) the reins to the
imagination, or to escape the influence of that wild German spirit which
I have sought to transfer to a colder tongue.
I have made the experiment of selecting for the main interest of my
work the simplest materials, and weaving upon them the ornaments given
chiefly to subjects of a more fanciful nature. I know not how far I have
succeeded, but various reasons have conspired to make this the work,
above all others that I have written, which has given me the most
delight (though not unmixed with melancholy) in producing, and in which
my mind for the time has been the most completely absorbed. But the
ardour of composition is often disproportioned to the merit of the
work; and the public sometimes, nor unjustly, avenges itself for
that forgetfulness of its existence which makes the chief charm of an
author’s solitude,--and the happiest, if not the wisest, inspiration of
his dreams.
PREFACE.
WITH the younger class of my readers this work has had the good fortune
to find especial favour; perhaps because it is in itself a collection of
the thoughts and sentiments that constitute the Romance of youth. It has
little to do with the positive truths of our actual life, and does not
pretend to deal with the larger passions and more stirring interests
of our kind. It is but an episode out of the graver epic of human
destinies. It requires no explanation of its purpose, and no analysis of
its story; the one is evident, the other simple,--the first seeks but
to illustrate visible nature through the poetry of the affections; the
other is but the narrative of the most real of mortal sorrows, which the
Author attempts to take out of the region of pain by various accessories
from the Ideal. The connecting tale itself is but the string that binds
into a garland the wild-flowers cast upon a grave.
The descriptions of the Rhine have been considered by Germans
sufficiently faithful to render this tribute to their land and
their legends one of the popular guide-books along the course it
illustrates,--especially to such tourists as wish not only to take
in with the eye the inventory of the river, but to seize the peculiar
spirit which invests the wave and the bank with a beauty that can only
be made visible by reflection. He little comprehends the true charm of
the Rhine who gazes on the vines on the hill-tops without a thought of
the imaginary world with which their recesses have been peopled by the
graceful credulity of old; who surveys the steep ruins that overshadow
the water, untouched by one lesson from the pensive morality of Time.
Everywhere around us is the evidence of perished opinions and
departed races; everywhere around us, also, the rejoicing fertility of
unconquerable Nature, and the calm progress of Man himself through the
infinite cycles of decay. He who would judge adequately of a landscape
must regard it not only with the painter’s eye, but with the poet’s.
The feelings which the sight of any scene in Nature conveys to the
mind--more especially of any scene on which history or fiction has left
its trace--must depend upon our sympathy with those associations which
make up what may be called the spiritual character of the spot. If
indifferent to those associations, we should see only hedgerows and
ploughed land in the battle-field of Bannockburn; and the traveller
would but look on a dreary waste, whether he stood amidst the piles of
the Druid on Salisbury plain, or trod his bewildered way over the broad
expanse on which the Chaldaean first learned to number the stars.
To the former editions of this tale was prefixed a poem on “The Ideal,”
which had all the worst faults of the author’s earliest compositions
in verse. The present poem (with the exception of a very few lines) has
been entirely rewritten, and has at least the comparative merit of being
less vague in the thought, and less unpolished in the diction, than that
which it replaces.
CONTENTS.
THE IDEAL WORLD
THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE
CHAPTER I.
In which the Reader is Introduced to Queen Nymphalin