illustration of my remark on the genius of its author. If other examples were required, I would point out the Introduction to Old Mortality, and the story of serjeant More M'Alpin*, both, I think, conceived in the true spirit of poetry. It seems not improbable that the Legend of Montrose was, in part, formed out of materials originally collected for a metrical romance; but the author has succeeded ill in making this portion of his fable combine and harmonize with the rest. There appears a natural incongruity between the lofty and imaginative, and the broad and familiar parts of the subject; they may be joined, but they refuse to blend. The Monastery is liable to a similar objection: nothing can be more poetical in conception, and sometimes in language, than the fiction of the White Maid of Avenel; but when this ætherial personage, who rides on the cloud which for Araby is bound,' who is

Something betwixt heaven and hell

Something that neither stood nor fell+"

whose existence is linked by an awful and mysterious destiny to the fortunes of a decaying family; when such a being as this descends to clownish pranks, and promotes a frivolous jest about a

* Introduction to A Legend of Montrose, Tales of My Landlord, Third Series, vol. iii.

+ Vol. i. c. 11.

tailor's bodkin, the course of our sympathies is rudely arrested, and we feel as if the author had put upon us the old-fashioned pleasantry of selling a bargain. It is an unsafe thing to venture on a high poetical flight in a composition partly ludicrous and familiar, unless some reconciling medium can be found to give mellowness and consistency to the whole. No man can be more sensible of this difficulty, for no man has more frequently triumphed over it, than the writer whom I have presumed, in the instances just cited, to pronounce unsuccessful.

From the invention and general conduct of his stories, I might proceed to the particular passages of the novelist which betray a poet's hand. But examples of this nature are so abundant, and the best of them are so familiar even to the most negligent reader, that it would be unpardonable to detain you on this point. I have only then to observe, that the passages alluded to are not merely eloquent, natural, spirited, impassioned, they are nothing if not poetical. You are probably acquainted with Mr. Hope's Memoirs of a Greek: it is a work abounding in brilliant and often affecting composition; it has much eloquent narrative, much highly-finished description; but the narrative and the description are those of an accomplished prose writer. In all that he relates we see distinctly and with pleasure the object or action which the au

C

thor places before us: but there his power ceases; he has not the art of making a few words call up a host of images in the mind, and, by the happy suggestion of a single thought, transporting the reader's fancy into a world of illusion: and in this he totally differs from the author of Waverley, and from every true poet.

6

But the novelist (and it serves to illustrate the habitual bent of his mind) not only indulges in poetical description, when the course of his narrative obviously leads to it, but discerns, as by instinct, and seizes with enthusiasm, every slighter opportunity which the incidents afford him for introducing such embellishments. Thus he compares the antics of a clownish boy escaped from his pedagogue to the frisking' of a 'goblin' by moonlight*.* In describing a maiden sinking under consumption, You would have thought,' he says, that the very trees mourned for her, for their • leaves dropt around her without a gust of wind†.' If he puts in motion a body of soldiers, by daylight they are seen issuing from among trees, their arms glance like lightning, and the waving of banners is accompanied by the clang of trumpets and kettle-drums: by night the steel-caps glitter in the moon-light, and the dark figures of the horses ' and riders' are 'imperfectly traced through the

* Kenilworth, vol. i. c. 9.

+ Waverley vol. i. c. 4.

gloom. If a cannon is discharged from a fortress, the castle is invested in wreaths of smoke, 'the edges of which dissipate slowly in the air, ' while the central veil is darkened ever and anon 'by fresh clouds poured forth from the battlements,' and the spectator reflects, that each explosion may ring some brave man's knell+.' If we launch our vessel on a Highland loch, a piper makes shrill melody in the bow, or the rowers chant wild airs that float mournfully to the shore ‡. If we embark for a sea voyage, the white sails swell, the ship 'leans her side to the gale, and goes roaring through 'the waves, leaving a long and rippling furrow to 'track her course;' the port becomes undistinguishable in the distance, and the hills melt into the blue sky. This is not the professional cant of a vulgar novel-maker, whose moon trembles on the sea of course, whenever his heroine touches the lute in a balcony: it is the writing of one who has always looked at objects with the eye of a poet, and unavoidably speaks of them as he sees them.

There is, I think, no occasion to demonstrate that the author of Waverley is as great an antiquary as the author of Marmion, and as deeply in

* Waverley, vol. ii. c. 23. Tales of My Landlord, First Series, vol. ii. c. 6. 11.

+ Waverley, vol. ii. c. 16.

Legend of Montrose, last vol. c. 2. Heart of Mid Lothian, vol. iv. c. 9.

Tales of My Landlord, First Series, vol. iv. c. 7.

fected with bibliomania as the editor of Patrick

Carey's Triolets. No person can have a doubt on this latter point, who remembers the description put into the mouth of Mr. Oldbuck, of a bookcollector picking up a curious work at a stall, where its value is unknown*. It is an effusion from the very heart: and there can, I think, be no question, that the character of Monkbarns, with all its eccentricities, was originally created by the novelist for the purpose of parading his own hobby

horse.

While the Antiquary is before us, let me remark as a trifling circumstance, yet not unworthy of attention, that in the course of this novel (and I believe not in this only) the writer makes frequent display of his acquaintance with the language and literature of Germany, to which the author of Marmion is at least no stranger+. The poet is evidently a proficient in the Spanish tongue ‡; and the novelist quotes Cervantes in the original §.

In classical learning both writers appear to have made equal and very similar acquirements: we may trace in the works of either (so far as they afford any illustration of this point) the reading of a gen

+ See, for instance, his translation of Bürger's L enore,' and other German ballads. Miscellaneous Poems, Edinburgh, 1820.

See Note ii. on The Vision of Don Roderick.

General motto to the Tales of My Landlord.