greater proportion of the work is accordingly made up of splendid descriptions of arms and dresses-moated and massive castles-tourna ments of mailed champions-solemn feastsformal courtesies, and other matters of external and visible presentment, that are only entitled to such distinction as connected with the olden time, and new only by virtue of their antiquity

while the interest of the story is maintained, far more by surprising adventures and extraordinary situations, the startling effect of exaggerated sentiments, and the strong contrast of exaggerated characters, than by the sober charms of truth and reality,-the exquisite representation of scenes with which we are familiar, or the skilful development of affections which we have often experienced.

In stating these difficulties, however, we really mean less to account for the defects, than to enhance the merits of the work before us. For though the author has not worked impossibilities, he has done wonders with his subject; and though we do sometimes miss those fresh and living pictures of the characters which we know, and the nature with which we are familiar-and that high and deep interest which the home scenes of our own times, and our own people could alone generate or sustain, it is impossible to deny that he has made marvellous good use of the scanty materials at his disposal-and eked them out both by the greatest skill and dexterity in their arrangement, and by all the resources that original genius could render subservient to such a design. For this purpose These bright lights and deep shadows—this he has laid his scene in a period when the succession of brilliant pictures, addressed as rivalry of the victorious Norman and the con- often to the eye as to the imagination, and quered Saxon, had not been finally composed; oftener to the imagination than the heart-this and when the courtly petulance, and chival-preference of striking generalities to homely rous and military pride of the one race, might yet be set in splendid opposition to the manly steadiness, and honest but homely simplicity of the other: And has, at the same time, given an air both of dignity and of reality to his story, by bringing in the personal prowess of Cœur de Lion himself, and other personages of historical fame, to assist in its development. Though reduced, in a great measure, to the vulgar staple of armed knights, and jolly friars or woodsmen, imprisoned damsels, lawless barons, collared serfs, and household fools-he has made such admirable use of his great talents for description, and invested those traditional and theatrical persons with so much of the feelings and humours that are of all ages and all countries, that we frequently cease to regard them-as it is generally right to regard them-as parts of a fantastical pageant; and are often brought to consider the knights who joust in panoply in the lists, and the foresters who shoot deer with arrows, and plunder travellers in the woods, as real individuals, with hearts of flesh and blood beating in their bosoms like our own-actual existences, in short, into whose views we may still reasonably enter, and with whose emotions we are bound to sympathise. To all th's he has added, out of the prodigality of his high and inventive genius, the grace and the interest of some lofty, and sweet, and superhuman characters-for which, though evidently fictitious, and unnatural in any stage of society, the remoteness of the scene on which they are introduced, may serve as an apology-if they could need any other than what they bring along with them in their own sublimity and beauty.

In comparing this work then with the former productions of the same master-hand, it is impossible not to feel that we are passing in a good degree from the reign of nature and reality, to that of fancy and romance; and exchanging for scenes of wonder and curiosity, those more homefelt sympathies and deeper touches of delight that can only be excited by the people among whom we live, and the ob'ects that are constantly around us. A far

details, all belong more properly to the province of Poetry than of Prose; and Ivanhoe accordingly seems to us much more akin to the most splendid of modern poems, than the most interesting of modern novels; and savours more of Marmion, or the Lady of the Lake, than of Waverley, or Old Mortality. For our part we prefer, and we care not who knows it, the prose to the poetry—whether in mêtre or out of it; and would willingly exchange, if the proud alternative were in our choice, even the great fame of Mr. Scott, for that which awaits the mighty unknown who has here raised his standard of rivalry, within the ancient limits of his reign. We cannot now, however, give even an abstract of the story; and shall venture, but on a brief citation, from the most striking of its concluding scenes. The majestic Rebecca, our readers will recollect, had been convicted before the grand master of the Templars, and sentenced to die, unless a champion appeared to do battle with her accuser, before an appointed day. The appointed day at last arrives. Rebecca is led out to the scaffold-faggots are prepared by the side of the lists--and in the lists appears the relentless Templar, mounted and armed for the encounter. No champion appears for Rebecca; and the heralds ask her if she yields herself as justly condemned.

"Say to the Grand Master,' replied Rebecca, that I maintain my innocence, and do not yield me as justly condemned, lest I become guilty of mine own blood. Say to him, that I challenge such delay as his forms will permit, to see if God, whose opportunity is in man's extremity, will raise me up a deliverer; and when such uttermost space is The herald passed, may his Holy will be done!' retired to carry this answer to the Grand Master.-

God forbid,' said Lucas Beaumanoir, that Jew or Pagan should impeach us of injustice.-Until the shadows be cast from the west to the eastward, will we wait to see if a champion will appear for this unfortunate woman.'

The hours pass away-and the shadows begin to pass to the eastward. The assembled multitudes murmur with impatience and compassion--and the Judges whisper to each other, that it is time to proceed to doom.

"At this instant a knight, urging his horse to alone. Elgitha had no sooner retired with unwilling speed, appeared on the plain advancing towards the s'eps, than, to the surprise of the Lady of Ivanhoe, lists. An hundred voices exclaimed. A champion her fair visitant kneeled suddenly on one knee, a champion! And, despite the prepossession and pressed her hands to her forehead, and, bending her prejudices of the multitude, they shouted unani-head to the ground, in spite of Rowena's resistance, mously as the knight rode rapidly into the tilt-yard. kissed the embroidered hem of her tunic.- What To the summons of the herald, who demanded his means this?' said the surprised bride; or why do rank, his name, and purpose, the stranger knight you offer to me a deference so unusual?'-Beanswered readily and boldly, 'I am a good knight cause to you, Lady of Ivanhoe,' said Rebecca, and noble, come hither to sustain with lance and rising up and resuming the usual quiet dignity of sword the just and lawful quarrel of this damsel, her manner, I may lawfully, and without rebuke, Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York; to uphold the pay the debt of gratitude which I owe to Wilfred of doom pronounced against her to be false and truth-Ivanhoe. I am-forgive the boldness which has less; and to defy Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, as a offered to you the homage of my country-I am the traitor, murtherer, and liar.' The stranger must unhappy Jewess, for whom your husband hazarded first show,' said Malvoisin, that he is a good his life against such fearful odds in the tilt-yard of Knight, and of honourable lineage. The Temple Templestowe.- Damsel,' said Rowena, Wilfred sendeth not forth her champions against nameless of Ivanhoe on that day rendered back but in a slight men. My name,' said the Knight, raising his measure your unceasing charity towards him in his helmet, is better known, my lineage more pure, wounds and misfortunes. Speak, is there aught Malvoisin, than thine own. am Wilfred of Ivan- remains in which he and I can serve thee?'- Noth hoe.'-'I will not fight with thee,' said the Templar, ing,' said Rebecca, calmly, unless you will transin a changed and hollow voice. Get thy wounds mit to him my grateful farewell.'-' You leave Eng. healed, and purvey thee a better horse, and it may land, then,' said Rowena, scarce recovering the sur be I will hold it worth my while to scourge out of prise of this extraordinary visit. I leave it, lady, thee this boyish spirit of bravade.'-' Ha! proud ere this moon again changes. My father hath a Templar,' said Ivanhoe, hast thou forgotten that brother high in favour with Mohammed Boabdil, twice didst thou fall before this lance? Remember King of Grenada-thither we go, secure of peace the lists at Acro-remember the Passage of Arms and protection, for the payment of such ransom as at Ashby-remember thy proud vaunt in the halls the Moslem exact from our people.'-' And are you of Rotherwood, and the gage of your gold chain not then as well protected in England?' said Rowe against my reliquary, that thou wouldst do battle na: My husband has favour with the King-the with Wilfred of Ivanhoe, and recover the honour King himself is just and generous. Lady,' said thou hadst lost! By that reliquary, and the holy Rebecca, 'I doubt it not-but England is no safe relique it contains. I will proclaim thee, Templar, abode for the children of my people. Ephraim is an a coward in every court in Europe-in every Pre- heartless dove-Issachar an over-laboured drudge, ceptory of thine Order-unless thou do battle with- which stoops between two burthens. Not in a land out farther delay.'-Bois-Guilbert turned his coun- of war and blood, surrounded by hostile neighbours, tenance irresolutely towards Rebecca, and then ex- and distracted by internal factions, can Israel hope claimed, looking fiercely at Ivanhoe, Dog of a to rest during her wanderings.' But you, maiden,' Saxon, take thy lance, and prepare for the death said Rowena- you surely can have nothing to fear. thou hast drawn upon thee!' 'Does the Grand She who nursed the sick-bed of Ivanhoe,' she conMaster allow me the combat?' said Ivanhoe.-'Itinued, rising with enthusiasm- she can have nothmay not deny what you have challenged,' said the ing to fear in England, where Saxon and Norman Grand Master, yet I would thou wert in better will contend who shall most do her honour.'-' Thy plight to do battle. An enemy of our Order hast speech is fair, lady,' said Rebecca, and thy purthou ever been, yet would I have thee honourably pose fairer; but it may not be there is a gulf ben.at with ' Thus thus as I am, and not other-twixt us. Our breeding, our faith, alike forbid either wise,' said Ivanhoe; it is the judgment of God! to pass over it. Farewell!—yet, ere I go, indulge to his keeping I commend myself.""

We cannot make room for the whole of this catastrophe. The overtired horse of Ivanhoe falls in the shock; but the Templar, though scarcely touched by the lance of his adversary, reels, and falls also;-and when they seek to raise him, is found to be utterly dead! a victim to his own contending passions.

We will give but one scene more-and it is in honour of the divine Rebecca-for the fate of all the rest may easily be divined. Richard forgives his brother; and Wilfred weds Rowena.

me one request. The bridal veil hangs over thy fame speaks so highly. They are scarce worthy face; raise it, and let me see the features of which of being looked upon,' said Rowena; but, expecting the same from my visitant, I remove the veil.'She took it off accordingly, and partly from the consciousness of beauty, partly from bast fulness, she blushed so intensely, that cheek, brow, neck, and bosom, were suffused with crimson. Rebecca blushed also, but it was a momentary feeling; and, mastered by higher emotions, passed slowly from her features like the crimson cloud, which changes colour when the sun sinks beneath the horizon.

644

'Lady, she said, the countenance you have deigned to show me will long dwell in my remem. "It was upon the second morning after this happy brance. There reigns in it gentleness and goodbridal, that the Lady Rowena was made acquaintedness; and if a tinge of the world's pride or vanities by her handmaid Elgitha, that a damsel desired admission to her presence, and solicited that their parlev might be without witness. Rowena wondered, hesitated, became curious, and ended by commanding the damsel to be admitted, and her attendants to withdraw.-She entered-a noble and commanding figure; the long white veil in which she was shrouded, overshadowing rather than concealing the elegance and majesty of her shape. Her demeanour was that of respect, unmingled by the east shade either of fear, or of a wish to propitiate favour. Rowena was ever ready to acknowledge the claims, and attend to the feelings of others. She arose, and would have conducted the lovely stranger to a seat; but she looked at Elgitha, and again intimated a wish to discourse with the Lady Rowena

may mix with an expression so lovely, how may we chide that which is of earth for bearing some colour of its original? Long, long shall I remember your features, and bless God that I leave my noble de. liverer united with'-She stopped short-her eyes filled with tears. She hastily wiped them, and answered to the anxious inquiries of Rowena-'I am well. lady-well. But my heart swells when I think of Torquilstone and the lists of Templestowe !Farewell! One, the most trifling part of my duty, remains undischarged. Accept this casket-startle not at its contents.-Rowena opened the small si ver-chased casket, and perceived a carcanet, or necklace, with ear-jewels, of diamonds, which were visibly of immense value. It is impossible,' she said, tendering back the casket, I dare not accept

my

a gift of such consequence. Yet keep it, lady,' or Cynocephali. The interest we do take is a returned Rebecca. Let me not think you deem the situations-and the extremes of perii. he so wretchedly ill of my nation as your commons be. lieve. Think ye that I prize these sparkling frag-roism, and atrocity, in which the great ments of stone above my liberty? or that my father tude of the fiction enables the author to irvalues them in comparison to the honour of his only dulge. Even with this advantage, we sou. child? Accept them, lady-to me they are valueless. feel, not only that the characters he brings be I will never wear jewels more. You are then fore us are contrary to our experience, but that unhappy,' said Rowena, struck with the manner in they are actually impossible. There could a which Rebecca uttered the last words. O, remain fact have been no such state of society as that with us-the counsel of holy men will wean you of which the story before us professes to give from your unhappy law, and I will be a sister to you. No, lady.' answered Rebecca, the same us but samples and ordinary results. I a calin melancholy reigning in her soft voice and beau- country beset with such worthies as Front-detiful features, that may not be. I may not change Boeuf, Malvoisin, and the rest, Isaac the Jew the faith of my fathers, like a garment unsuited to could neither have grown rich, nor lived to old the climate in which I seek to dwell; and unhappy, age; and no Rebecca could either have ac lady, I will not be. He, to whom I dedicate future life, will be my comforter, if I do His will. quired her delicacy, or preserved her honour, Have you then convents, to one of which you Neither could a plump Prior Aymer have folmean to retire?' asked Rowena.- No, lady,' said lowed venery in woods swarming with the the Jewess; but among our people, since the time merry men of Robin Hood.-Rotherwood must of Abraham downward, have been women who have been burned to the ground two or three have devoted their thoughts to Heaven, and their actions to works of kindness to men, tending the times in every year-and all the knights and sick, feeding the hungry, and relieving the distress-thanes of the land been killed off nearly as ed. Among these will Rebecca be numbered. Say often. The thing, in short, when calmly con this to thy lord, should he inquire after the fate of sidered, cannot be received as a reality- and, her whose life he saved!'--There was an involun- after gazing for a while on the splendid pageant tary tremor in Rebecca's voice, and a tenderness which it presents, and admiring the exagger of accent, which perhaps betrayed more than she would willingly have expressed. She hastened to rated beings who counterfeit, in their grand bid Rowena adieu.-- Farewell,' she said, may style, the passions and feelings of our poor huHe who made both Jew and Christian, shower man nature, we soon find that we must turn down on you his choicest blessings!' again to our Waverleys, and Antiquaries, and Old Mortalities, and become acquainted with our neighbours and ourselves, and our duties, and dangers, and true felicities, in the exquisite pictures which our author there exhibits of the follies we daily witness or display, and of the prejudices, habits, and affections, by which we are still hourly obstructed, governed, or cheered.

"She glided from the apartment, leaving Rowena surprised as if a vision had passed before her. The fair Saxon related the singular conference to her husband, on whose mind it made a deep impression. He lived long and happily with Rowena; for they were attached to each other by the bonds of early affection, and they loved each other the more from recollection of the obstacles which had impeded their union. Yet it would be inquiring too curiously to ask, whether the recollection of Rebecca's beauty and magnanimity did not recur to his mind more frequently than the fair descendant of Alfred might altogether have approved."

The work before us shows at least as much genius as any of those with which it must now be numbered-and excites, perhaps, at least on the first perusal, as strong an interest: But it does not delight so deeply-and we rather think it will not please so long. Rebecca is almost the only lovely being in the story-and she is evidently a creature of the fancy-a mere poetical personification. Next to herfor Isaac is but a milder Shylock, and by no means more natural than his original-the heartiest interest is excited by the outlaws and their merry chief-because the tone and manners ascribed to them are more akin to those that prevailed among the yeomanry of later days, than those of the Knights, Priors, and Princes, are to any thing with which a more recent age has been acquainted.--Cedric the Saxon, with his thralls, and Bois-Guilbert the Templar with his Moors, are to us but theoretical or mythological persons. We know nothing about them--and never feel assured that we fully comprehend their drift, or enter rightly into their feelings. The same genius which now busies us with their concerns, might have excited an equal interest for the adventures of Oberon and Pigwiggin-or for any imaginary community of Giants, Amazons,

We end, therefore, as we began by pre ferring the home scenes, and the copies of originals which we know-but admiring, in the highest degree, the fancy and judgment and feeling by which this more distant and ideal prospect is enriched. It is a splendid Poem-and contains matter enough for six good Tragedies. As it is, it will make a glorious melodrame for the end of the season.Perhaps the author does better-for us and for himself-by writing more novels: But we have an earnest wish that he would try his hand in the actual bow of Shakespeare-ven ture fairly within his enchanted circle-and reassert the Dramatic Sovereignty of England, by putting forth a genuine Tragedy of passion, fancy, and incident. He has all the qualifications to insure success*-except perhaps the art of compression;-for we suspect it would cost him no little effort to confine his story, and the development of his characters, to some fifty or sixty small pages. But the attempt is worth making; and he may be cer tain that he cannot fail without glory.

*We take it for granted, that the charming extracts from "Old Plays," that are occasionally given as mottoes to the chapters of this and some of his other works, are original compositions of the that he is not less a master of the most beautiful author whose prose they garnish:-and they show style of Dramatic versification, than of all the higher and more inward secrets of that forgotten art.

(June, 1822.)

The Fortunes of Nigel. By the Author of "Waverley," "Kenilworth," &c. In 3 vols. 12mo. pp. 950. Edinburgh: Constable & Co. 1822.

Ir was a happy thought in us to review this author's works in groups, rather than in single pieces; for we should never otherwise have been able to keep up both with him and with our other business. Even as it is, we find we have let him run so far ahead, that we have now rather more of him on hand than we can well get through at a sitting; and are in danger of forgetting the early part of the long series of stories to which we are thus obliged to look back, or of finding it forgotten by the public-or at least of having the vast assemblage of events and characters that now lie before us something jumbled and confounded, both in our own recollections, and that of our admiring readers.

Our last particular notice, we think, was of Ivanhoe, in the end of 1819; and in the two years that have since elapsed, we have had the Monastery, the Abbot, Kenilworth, the Pirates, and Nigel,-one, two, three, four, five -large original works from the same fertile and inexhaustible pen. It is a strange manufacture! and, though depending entirely on invention and original fancy, really seems to proceed with all the steadiness and regularity of a thing that was kept in operation by industry and application alone. Our whole fraternity, for example, with all the works of all other writers to supply them with materials, are not half so sure of bringing out their two volumes in the year, as this one author, with nothing but his own genius to depend on, is of bringing out his six or seven. There is no instance of any such experiment being so long continued with success; and, according to all appearances, it is just as far from a termination now, as it was at the beginning. If it were only for the singularity of the thing, it would be worth while to chronicle the actual course and progress of this extraordinary adventure.

merely notice one or two things that still live in our remembrance.

We do not think the White Lady, and the other supernatural agencies, the worst blemish of "The Monastery." On the contrary, the first apparition of the spirit by her lonely fountain (though borrowed from Lord Byron's Witch of the Alps in Manfred), as well as the effect of the interview on the mind of the young aspirant to whom she reveals herself, have always appeared to us to be very beautifully imagined: But we must confess, that their subsequent descent into an alabaster cavern, and the seizure of a stolen Bible from an altar blazing with cold flames, is a fiction of a more ignoble stock; and looks very like an unlucky combination of a French fairy tale and a dull German romance. The Euphuist too, Sir Piercie Shafton, is a mere nuisance throughout. Nor can we remember any incident in an unsuccessful farce more utterly absurd and pitiable, than the remembrance of tailorship that is supposed to be conjured up in the mind of this chivalrous person, by the presentment of the fairy's bodkin to his eyes. There is something ineffably poor at once, and extravagant, in the idea of a solid silver implement being taken from the hair of a spiritual and shadowy being, for the sage purpose of making an earthly coxcomb angry to no end ;-while our delight at this happy imagination is not a little heightened by reflecting that it is all the time utterly unintelligible, how the mere exhibition of a lady's bodkin should remind any man of a tailor in his pedigree-or be thought to import such a disclosure to the spectators.

But, notwithstanding these gross faults, and the general flatness of the monkish partsincluding that of the Sub-prior, which is a failure in spite of considerable labour-it would be absurd to rank this with common Of the two first works we have mentioned, novels, or even to exclude it from the file of the Monastery and the Abbot, we have the the author's characteristic productions. It has least to say; and we believe the public have both humour, and fancy and pathos enough, the least curiosity to know our opinion. They to maintain its title to such a distinction.are certainly the least meritorious of the whole The aspiring temper of Halbert Glendinning, series, either subsequent or preceding; and the rustic establishment of Glendearg, the while they are decidedly worse than the other picture of Christie of Clinthill, and, above all, works of the same author, we are not sure the scenes at the castle of Avenel, are all that we can say, as we have done of some of touched with the hand of a master. Julian's his other failures, that they are better than dialogue, or soliloquy rather, to his hawk, in those of any other recent writer of fiction.-presence of his paramour, with its accompaniSo conspicuous, indeed, was their inferiority, that we at one time apprehended that we should have been called upon to interfere before our time, and to admonish the author of the hazard to which he was exposing his fame. But as he has since redeemed that slip, we shall now pass it over lightly, and

ments and sequel, is as powerful as any thing the author has produced; and the tragic and historical scenes that lead to the conclusion are also, for the most part, excellent. It is a work, in short, which pleases more upon a second reading than at first-as we not only pass over the Euphuism and other dull pas

rages, but, being aware of its defects, no sparing fulness, but with the most brilliant