-bade the passing knell to toll
For welfare of a parting soul.

Slow o'er the midnight wave it swung,
Northumbrian rocks in answer rung;
To Warkworth cell the echoes roll'd,
His beads the wakeful hermit told;
The Bamborough peasant raised his head,
But slept ere half a prayer he said;
So far was heard the mighty knell,
The stag sprung up on Cheviot Fell,
Spread his broad nostril to the wind,
Listed before, aside, behind,

Then couch'd him down beside the hind,
And quaked among the mountain fern,
To hear that sound, so dull and stern."
Marmion, Canto II. St. 33.

These remarks, which in part explain my application of the term "popular," will not, I think, appear irrelevant, when it is considered that a poet accustomed to express himself in this expanded, simple, and consecutive style, can readily transfer the riches of his genius to prose composition, while the attempt would be almost hopeless to one who delighted in abrupt transition and fanciful combination, and whose thoughts habitually condensed themselves into the most compendious phraseology.

The author of Marmion is a popular poet in this respect also; that his writings display an intense, though discriminating, sensibility to the grand and obvious appearances of nature, rather than that acute and critical study of her abstruser phenomena, which some writers carry even to pedantry. He rarely seems ambitious to mark out for description a circumstance, or combination of circumstances, beyond the scope of common observation, but embracing the whole supposed scene with a vigorous grasp of imagination, relies for success on his judgment in selecting, his enthusiasm in feeling, and his energy in painting*. His reflections, too, on the objects before him, are unmarked by any laboured subtlety or capricious singularity; he has no eccentric starts or devious excursions of thought; his verse is not the exposition of sentiments cherished, and speculations prosecuted, by a refined and fanciful individual, but the lively copy of those sensations and habits of mind, in which nature and custom have disposed the generality of mankind to participate. The spirit of his poetry is not contenıplative, but stirring and passionate; he seldom pauses upon any object after he has noted the first

* It must be owned, however, that the subjects of his verse are often so new and striking in their general features, as to preclude the necessity of those minute and curious particularities which are sometimes judiciously resorted to for the purpose of giving an air of freshness to a familiar and almost exhausted theme.

impression it makes on the senses, and the first idea it calls up in the mind; to reduce things to their elements, and meditate on them in the abstract, is not his manner; but he loves, on the contrary, to view them invested with such adventitious circumstance, and illuminated by such artificial lights, as most powerfully enhance their effect on the imagination and feelings.

Hence, more than any other poet, he delights in localizing his descriptions of general nature, as in these elegant lines:

but still,

When summer smiled on sweet Bowhill,
And July's eve, with balmy breath,
Waved the bluebells on Newark heath;
When throstles sung on Hare-head Shaw,
And corn waved green on Carterhaugh,
And flourish'd, broad, Blackandro's oak,
The aged harper's soul awoke!
Then would he sing achievements high,
And circumstance of chivalry,
Till the rapt traveller would stay,
Forgetful of the closing day;
And noble youths, the strain to hear,
Forsook the hunting of the deer;
And Yarrow, as he roll'd along,

Bore burden to the minstrel's song."

Lay of the Last Minstrel.-Conclusion.

On the other hand, when speaking of places, he seldom introduces their names unaccompanied by some appropriate allusion to natural objects. It is his frequent practice to diffuse a peculiar tinge over his scene, by causing us to see it through the eyes of some strongly characterized individual: as in several of the lines describing William of Deloraine's expedition to Melrose; and in the following passage:

66 Harold was born where restless seas
Howl round the storm-swept Orcades;
Where erst St. Clairs held princely sway
O'er isle and islet, strait and bay;
Still nods their palace to its fall,

Thy pride and sorrow*, fair Kirkwall !
Thence oft he mark'd fierce Pentland rave,
As if grim Odinn rode her wave;

And watch'd, the whilst, with visage pale,
And throbbing heart, the struggling sail;
For all of wonderful and wild

Had rapture for the lonely child.”

Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto VI. St. 21.

Again he neglects no opportunity of touching those chords of association by which places, things, and persons, are connected in men's thoughts with local or national attachments, with romantic or pa

* Not now either the one or the other, if I may judge from the degraded condition in which I saw it six years ago.

triotic recollections, with feelings of superstitious awe, or with the traditional veneration of mysterious antiquity. The Border beacons in communication with Branksome, "gleamed

"On many a cairn's grey pyramid,

Where urns of mighty chiefs lie hid."

Lady of the Lake, Canto III. St. 29.

The priest who was despatched from Loch-Ranza with a message to Robert Bruce—

"-Cross'd his brow beside the stone
Where Druids erst heard victims groan,
And at the cairns upon the wild,
O'er many a heathen hero piled,
He breathed a timid prayer for those
Who died ere Shiloh's sun arose."

Lord of the Isles, Canto V. St. 6.

In the stag-hunt upon the wild Highland frontier,

66

-The sounds of sylvan war

Disturb the heights of Uam-Var,

And roused the cavern,

where 'tis told

A giant made his den of old."

Lady of the Lake, Canto I. St. 4.

When Deloraine and the Monk sit down in the

dreary chancel of Melrose, we are told that

"A Scottish monarch slept below,"