Ivanhoe

CHAPTER XLIV

1 (p. 454) epigraph: The line, slightly altered, is from John Webster’s The White Devil (1612; act 4, scene 1).

2 (p. 458) good-natured brother. The reconciliation between John and Richard was initiated by John and presided over by their mother in France in 1194. Richard restored his younger brother’s lands the following year.

3 (p. 461) the mixed language, now termed English, was spoken at the court of London: Edward III officially instituted English, rather than Norman French, as the language of the court in his address to Parliament in 1367.

4 (p. 464) Johnson … a TALE: Samuel Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes” (lines 219-222); “foreign” is substituted for “barren” to signify Richard’s dying in Belgium, and “humble” for “dubious” because that death, unlike the Swedish King’s, contained no element of mystery.