all the words bound triumphantly over the tongue, and (fanciful as the remark may seem, when thus drily stated) the largeness of the phrase appears to correspond with a dilating of the heart. But I will point out one or two examples in a calmer tone, and on a more extended scale. Such is the animated and energetic apology of Roderick Dhu for his predatory course of lifet. The following speech of Claverhouse, though far from new in substance, is, I think, composed with great eloquence as well as simplicity. Part of its effect, however, may be owing to the prophetic glance which it casts, in the conclusion, at the speaker's own fate : "You are but young in these matters, Mr. Morton, and I do not think the worse of you as a young soldier for appearing to feel them acutely. But habit, duty, and necessity, reconcile men to every thing.-You would hardly believe that, in the beginning of my military career, I had as much aversion to seeing blood spilt as ever man felt; it seemed to me to be wrung from my own heart ; and yet, if you trust one of those whig fellows, he will tell you I drink a warm cup of it every morning before I breakfast. But, in truth, Mr. Morton, why should we care so much for death, light around us whenever it may? Men die daily-not a bell tolls the hour but it is the death-note of some one or other, and why hesitate to shorten the span of others, or take over anxious care to prolong our own? It is all a lottery-when the hour of midnight came, you were to die-it has struck-you are alive and safe, and the lot has fallen on those fellows who were to murder you.-It is not the expiring pang that is worth thinking of in an event that must happen one day, and may befall us on any given moment-it is the memory which the soldier leaves behind him, like the long train of light that follows the sunken sun- -that is all which is worth caring for, which distinguishes the death of the brave or the ignoble. When I think of death, Mr. + Lady of the Lake, Canto V. St. 7. Morton, as a thing worth thinking of, it is in the hope of pressing one day some well-fought and hard-won field of battle, and dying with the shout of victory in my earthat would be worth dying for, and more, it would be worth having lived for Old Mortality, last vol. ch. 5. There is a melancholy grandeur in the reflections of Bertram Risingham on his approaching close of life: “My soul hath felt a secret weight, The dawning of my youth, with awe As bodeful as their beacon flame. Dyes the wide wave with bloody light, LETTER VI. -Nec tenui Pennâ, biformis— Vates Hor. Carm. Lib. II. Od. 20. You will recollect, Sir, that in a former letter, when speculating on the studies and pursuits with which the two writers appeared equally conversant, I offered reasons for believing that the author of Waverley was, by nature and practice, a poet. I propose now to compare him, in a few points of his poetical character, with the author of Marmion. The short metrical pieces introduced in some of the novels are too scanty in substance, and too slightly characterized (though occasionally spirited and elegant), to furnish any important matter for comparison. Besides, if these ornamental stanzas could be traced to the very portfolio of the author of Marmion, we should still have proved too little, unless we could repel the natural and easy suggestion, that one writer probably composed the novels, and another contributed the poetry. Such illustrations, therefore, as I may find occasion to draw from these works, will be taken from their prose passages, which, after all, comprise the richest vein of fancy and of feeling. If required to distinguish the poetry of the author of Marmion from that of other writers by a single epithet, I should apply to it the term Popular. The same easy openness which was remarked in his prose style, is also a prevailing quality of his poetical composition, where, however, it appears not so much in verbal arrangement, as in the mode of developing and expressing thoughts. Few authors are less subject to the fault of over-describing, or better know the point at which a reader's imagination should be left to its own activity; but the images which he does supply are placed directly in our view, under a full noon-day light. It is a frequent practice of other poets, instead of exhibiting their ideas in a detailed and expanded form, to involve them in a brilliant complication of phrase, high-wrought and pregnant with imagery, but supplying materials only, which the reader may shape out in his own mind according to his reach of fancy, or subtlety of apprehension, and not presenting in itself any regular, fixed, or definite representation of objects. This style of composition is well exemplified in the TOVTÍNY κυμάτων ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα of Æschylus*; the lines of Shakspeare, "Now creeping murmur, and the poring dark, Fills the wide vessel of the universe-" these of Milton, Chorus to Henry V. Act IV. "The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Comus. and where, describing the battle of the angels, he says that the war "Soaring on main wing, Tormented all the air." Paradise Lost, B. VI. In no instance that I recollect, does the author of Marmion adopt this kind of poetical phraseology, which conveys, in a few words, the germ and essence of a beautiful or sublime description, but is not itself that description. I do not insist upon the circumstance as a subject of either praise or censure; I only point to it as distinguishing the style and method of an individual writer from those of his brethren. Again, it is very common with poets of strong feeling and exuberant fancy, to describe (if that word may be applied to such a process) by accumulating round the prin * Prometh. 89, 90. cipal object a number of images not physically connected with it, or with each other, but which, through the unfailing association of ideas, give, unitedly, the same impulse to the imagination and passions, as would have been produced by a finished detail of strictly coherent circumstances. Such is the effect of that well-known passage in Macbeth, where murder is thus personified : "Now wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, Macbeth, Act. II. Sc. I. This method, also, appears unsuitable to the simplicity with which the author of Marmion is accustomed to unfold his poetical conceptions. In his mode of describing, the circumstances, however fanciful in themselves, still follow each other by natural consequence, and in an orderly series; and hang together, not by the intervention of unseen links, but by immediate and palpable conjunction. His epithets and phrases, replete as they often are with poetic force and meaning, have always a direct bearing upon the principal subject. In short, he pursues his theme, from point to point, with the steadiness and plainness of one who descants on a common matter of fact. The difference between his style of description, and the two kinds which I have placed in opposition to it, is very perceptible in the following lines- |