ciple of manly and honest ambition exists within us is roused and stimulated by the perusal of these writings; our passions are won to the cause of justice, purity, and self-denial; and the old, indissoluble ties that bind us to country, kindred, and birthplace, appear to strengthen as we read, and brace themselves more firmly about the heart and imagination. Both writers, although peculiarly happy in their conception of all chivalrous and romantic excellencies, are still more distinguished by their deep and true feeling and expressive delineation of the graces and virtues proper to domestic life. The gallant, elevated, and punctilious character which a Frenchman contemplates in speaking of 'un honnête homme,' is singularly combined, in these authors, with the genial, homely good qualities that win from a Caledonian the exclamation of 'honest man!' But the crown of their merits, as virtuous and moral writers, is the manly and exemplary spirit with which, upon all seasonable occasions, they pay honour and homage to religion, ascribing to it its just pre-eminence among the causes of human happiness, and dwelling on it as the only certain source of pure and elevated thoughts, and upright, benevolent, and magnanimous actions.

This then is common to the books of both writers; that they furnish a direct and distinguished contrast to the atrabilious gloom of some modern works of genius, and the wanton, but not

artless levity of others. They yield a memorable, I trust an immortal, accession to the evidences of a truth not always fashionable in literature, that the mind of man may put forth all its bold luxuriance of original thought, strong feeling, and vivid imagination, without being loosed from any sacred and social bond, or pruned of any legitimate affection; and that the Muse is indeed a heavenly goddess,' and not a graceless, lawless runagate,

66

· ἀφρήτως, αθέμιστος, ἀνέστιος.”

Hom. II. IX. 63.

Good sense, the sure foundation of excellence in all the arts, is another leading characteristic of these productions. Assuming the author of Waverley and the author of Marmion to be the same person, it would be difficult in our times to find a second equally free from affectation, prejudice, and every other distortion or depravity of judgment, whether arising from ignorance, weakness, or corruption of morals. It is astonishing that so voluminous and successful a writer should so seldom be betrayed into any of those 'fantastic tricks' which, in such a man, make the angels weep' and critics laugh. He adopts no fashionable cant, colloquial, philosophical, or literary; he takes no delight in being unintelligible; he does not amuse himself by throwing out those fine sentimental and meta

physical threads which float upon the air, and tease and tickle the passengers, but present no palpable substance to their grasp; he aims at no beauties that scorn the eye of vulgar light;' he is no dealer in paradoxes; no affecter of new doctrines in taste or morals; he has no eccentric sympathies or antipathies; no maudlin philanthropy, or impertinent cynicism; no non-descript hobby-horse; and with all his matchless energy and originality of mind, he is content to admire popular books, and enjoy popular pleasures; to cherish those opinions which experience has sanctioned; to reverence those institutions which antiquity has hallowed; and to enjoy, admire, cherish, and reverence all these with the same plainness, simplicity, and sincerity as our ancestors did of old.

There cannot be a stronger indication of good sense in a writer of fiction, than the judicious management of his fable; and in this point both the novelist and the poet often attain unusual excellence: their incidents are, not always, indeed, but generally, well contrived and well timed; and their personages, almost without exception, act from intelligible motives and on consistent principles. It is to the quality of good sense, more particularly as evinced in the management and keeping up of character, that the authors of Marmion and Waverley are in a great measure indebted for the strong interest with which their stories are read. When

the ruling motives, habitual feelings, and occasional impulses of the agents are natural and consistent, and such as strike us by their analogy to what we have ourselves experienced, then distance of time, remoteness of place, strange incidents, unusual modes of society, no longer freeze our sympathies or dissipate our curiosity; we become domesticated in castles, convents, and Highland fastnesses; and we converse more sociably with Coeur-de-Lion and the Knight of Snowdoun, than with half the heroes of scandalous and fashionable novels, whose adventures happened last week, within a furlong of St. James's.

The powerful operation of good sense is remarkably exemplified (if it be necessary to cite an example) in that gem of romantic fable, the Lay of the Last Minstrel. Such fantastic incidents, such grotesque superstitions, and a state of society so anomalous, as that story presents, might, notwithstanding the charms of its poetry, furnish matter of incurable offence to the prejudices of cultivated minds; but the characters are so distinctly conceived and their parts in the action so judiciously assigned, their manners, words, and conduct on every occasion are so consistent, and so rationally adapted to their respective views, habits, and modes of life, that the wildest scenes assume an air of truth and reality, a persuasive natural grace, which fascinates and disarms of his objections (I will say, if you

agree with me) the most discerning and experienced critic.

The good sense I have thus highly commended may exhibit itself in two ways; either in the just delineation of characters to which that quality is especially attributed, or in the discreet and masterly treatment of any character whatever: Lord Howard and the Lady of Branksome are strong instances of the first class, in the poem just alluded to; and Wat Tinlinn and William of Deloraine of the second. The novels, being a species of composition better suited than poetry to the description of sober and unambitious excellencies, afford, in some of their heroes and heroines, more finished examples of wisdom and sound understanding than are found, or can reasonably be expected, in the metrical tales. I scarcely need mention, in support of this remark, the names (which you have no doubt anticipated) of Father Eustace, in the Monastery; Rebecca, the Jewess, a pearl-richer than all her tribe *;'--and the incomparable Jeanie Deans, whose exquisite natural sagacity, so long and severely tried, compels me to believe, that her last witless adventure with Master Staunton, the Whistler, is a fable disingenuously palmed upon Peter Pattieson by some envious detractor. Of characters not distinguished by strong sense in

* Othello.

6

F