 romance is derived; and the identifying the irregular Eremite with the
Friar Tuck of Robin Hood's story, was an obvious expedient.
    The name of Ivanhoe was suggested by an old rhyme. All novelists have had
occasion at some time or other to wish, with Falstaff, that they knew where a
commodity of good names was to be had. On such an occasion the author chanced to
call to memory a rhyme recording three names of the manors forfeited by the
ancestor of the celebrated Hampden, for striking the Black Prince a blow with
his racket, when they quarrelled at tennis: -
 
Tring, Wing, and Ivanhoe,
For striking of a blow
Hampden did forego,
And glad he could escape so.
 
The word suited the author's purpose in two material respects, for, first, it
had an ancient English sound; and, secondly, it conveyed no indication whatever
of the nature of the story. He presumes to hold this last quality to be of no
small importance. What is called a taking title, serves the direct interest of
the bookseller or publisher, who by this means sometimes sells an edition while
it is yet passing the press. But if the author permits an over degree of
attention to be drawn to his work ere it has appeared, he places himself in the
embarrassing condition of having excited a degree of expectation which, if he
proves unable to satisfy, is an error fatal to his literary reputation. Besides,
when we meet such a title as the Gunpowder Plot, or any other connected with
general history, each reader, before he has seen the book, has formed to himself
some particular idea of the sort of manner in which the story is to be
conducted, and the nature of the amusement which he is to derive from it. In
this he is probably disappointed, and in that case may be naturally disposed to
visit upon the author or the work, the unpleasant feelings thus excited. In such
a case the literary adventurer is censured, not for having missed the mark at
which he himself aimed, but for not having shot off his shaft in a direction he
never thought of.
    On the footing of unreserved communication which the author has established
with the reader, he may here add the trifling circumstance, that a roll of
Norman warriors, occurring in the Auchinleck Manuscript, gave him the formidable
name of Front-de-Boeuf.
    Ivanhoe was highly successful upon its appearance, and may be said to have
procured for its author the freedom, of the Rules, since he has ever since been
permitted to exercise his powers of fictitious composition in England as
