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.”

“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