THE very favourable reception which has been given to the New Edition of the Tales and Sketches of the Ettrick Shepherd, has induced the Publishers, with the concurrence of the Shepherd's family, and at the urgent desire of many friends and admirers of the deceased Poet, to publish a uniform series of the Poetical Works, which shall comprise more especially those pieces which gained so great celebrity for the Author, and also the Lyrical and Miscellaneous Poems, which, though less generally known, are pregnant with all that richness of imagination and fervid feeling, characteristic of the Shepherd's writings. The poetical writings of the Ettrick Shepherd have generally been considered his most successful productions. He, in common with other poets, seems to have felt the shackles of prose to be more irksome than those of verse; for whilst in his Tales and Sketches there are Scenes of deep pathos, imaginings of great beauty, and a general sprightliness and ease of expression, there are also evident indications of restraint on his imaginative powers. When he took full advantage of the poetic license, and suffered his kindling eye to glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, then it was that he appeared in the full vigour of intellectual strengthhimself a mountain spirit—waking the hills to melody, and clothing the sublimities of nature in a richly woven veil of fairy-land. This Edition of the Poetical Works may be received as the Poet's legacy to his friends and admirers, since it will embody his latest alterations and corrections; and the accompaniment of a Life of the Author, by PROFESSOR WILSON, cannot fail to create a deep interest, since of all men he is the one to whom we should look for biographical reminiscences and characteristic sketches of the Poet. From him alone the British nation can expect a powerful delineation of the lights and shadows, the strange impulses and varied being of Kilmeny's Bard. The names of North and the Shepherd have grown together on our minds as familiar household words-the 'Noctes cœnæque deorum' have reared them a joint monument which the world will long admire; and this tri pute of the living genius to the departed shade, must call forth feelings dear to Scotland and to man. |
