Stood on the eps of ftone, By which you reach the Donjon gate, And he, their courtesy to requite, Gave them a chain of twelve marks weight, Sir Hugh the Heron then orders supper- -And after the repast is concluded, they have some mulled wine, and drink good night very ceremoniously. Lord Marmion drank a fair good reft, The Captain pledged his noble gueft, In the morning, again, we are informed that they had prayers, and that knight and squire broke their faft On rich fubftantial repast. ' Then came the ftirrup-cup in courfe,' &c. &c. And thus a whole Canto is filled up with the account of a visit and a supper, which lead to no consequences whatever, and are not attended with any circumstances which must not have occur→ red at every visit and supper among persons of the same rank at that period. Now, we are really at a loss to know, why the mere circumstance of a moderate antiquity should be supposed so far to ennoble those details, as to entitle them to a place in poetry, which certainly never could be claimed for a description of more modern adventures. Nobody, we believe, would be bold enough to introduce into a serious poem a description of the hussar boots and gold epaulets of a commander in chief, and much less to particularize the liveries and canes of his servants, or the order and array of a grand dinner, given even to the cabinet ministers. Yet these things are, in their own nature, fully as picturesque, and as interesting, as the ribbons at the mane of Lord Marmion's horse, or his supper and breakfast at the castle of Norham. We are glad, indeed, to find these little details in old books, whether in prose or verse, because they are there authentic and valuable documents of the usages and modes of life of our ancestors; and we are thankful when we light upon this sort of information in an antient romance, which commonly contains matter much more tedious. Even there, however, we smile at the simplicity which could mistake such naked enumerations for poetical description; and reckon them as nearly on a level, in point of taste, with the theological disputations that are sometimes introduced in the same meritorious compositions. In a modern romance, however, however, these details being no longer authentic, are of no value in point of information; and as the author has no claim to indulgence on the ground of simplicity, the smile which his predecessors excited is in some danger of being turned into a yawn. If he wishes sincerely to follow their example, he should describe the manners of his own time, and not of theirs. They paint-` ed from observation, and not from study; and the familiarity and naïveté of their delineations, transcribed with a slovenly and hasty hand from what they saw daily before them, is as remote as possible from the elaborate pictures extracted by a modern imitator from black-letter books, and coloured, not from the life, but from learned theories, or at best from mouldy monkish illuminations, and mutilated fragments of painted glass. But the times of chivalry, it may be said, were more picturesque than the present times. They are better adapted to poetry; and every thing that is associated with them has a certain hold on the imagination, and partakes of the interest of the period. We do not mean utterly to deny this; nor can we stop, at present, to assign exact limits to our assent: but this we will venture to observe, in general, that if it be true that the interest which we take in the contemplation of the chivalrous era, arises from the dangers and virtues by which it was distinguished,from the constant hazards in which its warriors passed their days, and the mild and generous valour with which they met those hazards,joined to the singular contrast which it presented between the ceremonious polish and gallantry of the nobles, and the brutish ignorance of the body of the people :-if these are, as we conceive they are, the sources of the charm which still operates in behalf of the days of knightly adventure, then it should follow, that nothing should interest us, by association with that age, but what serves naturally to bring before us those hazards and that valour, and gallantry, and aristocratical superiority. Any description, or any imitation of the exploits in which those qualities were signalized, will do this most effectually. Battles,-tournaments,-penances,-deliverance of damsels,-instalments of knights, &c.-and, intermixed with these, we must admit some description of arms, armorial bearings, castles, battlements, and chapels but the least and lowest of the whole certainly is the description of servants' liveries, and of the peaceful operations of eating, drinking, and ordinary salutation. These have no sensible connexion with the qualities or peculiarities which have conferred certain poetical privileges on the manners of chivalry. They do not enter either necessarily or naturally into our conception of what is interesting in those manners; and, though protected, by their strangeness, from the ridicule which would infal libly attach to their modern equivalents, are substantially as unipoetic, and as little entitled to indulgence from impartial criticism. We would extend this censure to a larger proportion of the work before us than we now choose to mention-certainly to all the stupid monkish legends about St Hida and St Cuthbert-to the ludicrous description of Lord Gifford's habiliments of divination and to all the various scraps and fragments of antiquarian his tory and baronial biography, which are scattered profusely through the whole narrative. These we conceive to be put in purely for the sake of displaying the erudition of the author; and poetry, which has no other recommendation, but that the substance of it has been gleaned from rare or obscure books, has, in our estimation, the least of all possible recommendations. Mr Scott's great talents, and the novelty of the style in which his romances are written, have made even these defects acceptable to a considerable part of his readers. His genius, seconded by the omnipotence of fashion, has brought chivalry again into temporary fa vour; but he ought to know, that this is a taste too evidently unnatural to be long prevalent in the modern world. Fine ladies and gentlemen now talk, indeed, of donjons, keeps, tabards, scutcheons, tressures, caps of maintenance, portcullisses, wimples, and we know not what besides; just as they did, in the days of Dr Darwin's popularity, of gnomes, sylphs, oxygen, gossamer, polygynia, and polyandria. That fashion, however, passed ra pidly away; and if it be now evident to all the world, that Dr Darwin obstructed the extension of his fame, and hastened the extinction of his brilliant reputation, by the pedantry and ostentatious learning of his poems, Mr Scott should take care that a different sort of pedantry does not produce the same effects. The world will never be long pleased with what it does not readily understand; and the poetry which is destined for immortality, should treat only of feelings and events which can be conceived and entered into by readers of all descriptions. What we have now mentioned, is the cardinal fault of the work before us; but it has other faults, of too great magnitude to be passed altogether without notice. There is a debasing lowness and vulgarity in some passages, which we think must be offensive to every reader of delicacy, and which are not, for the most part, redeemed by any vigour or picturesque effect. The venison pasties, we think, are of this description; and this commemoration of Sir Hugh Heron's troopers, who Have drunk the monks of St Bothan's ale, Harried the wives of Greenlaw's goods, And given them light to fet their hoode. ' p. 41. The The long account of Friar John, though not without merit, offends in the same sort; nor can we easily conceive, how any one could venture, in a serious poem, to speak of the wind that blows, And warms itself against his nose.' The speeches of squire Blount, too, are a great deal too unpolished for a noble youth aspiring to knighthood. On two occasions, to specify no more, he addresses his brother squire in these cacophonous lines And, St Anton' fire thee! wilt thou ftand And liften to our Lord's behest.' thou'dst best, Neither can we be brought to admire the simple dignity of Sir Hugh the Heron, who thus encourageth his nephew, By my fay, Well haft thou spoke-fay forth thy fay.' There are other passages in which the flatness and tediousness of the narrative is relieved by no sort of beauty, nor elegance of - diction, and which form an extraordinary contrast with the more animated and finished portions of the poem. We shall not afflict our readers with more than one specimen of this falling off. We select it from the Abbess's explanation to De Wilton. • De Wilton and Lord Marmion wooed Clara de Clare, of Glofter's blood; And had made league with Martin Swart, But when his meffenger returned, Judge how De Wilton's fury burned! For in his packet there were laid Letters that claimed disloyal aid, And proved King Henry's caufe betrayed. p. 272-274 In some other places, Mr Scott's love of variety has betrayed VOL. XII. NO. 23. C him him into strange imitations. This is evidently formed on the school of Sternhold and Hopkins. Of all the palaces fo fair, Built for the royal dwelling, In Scotland, far beyond compare, The following is a sort of mongrel between the same school, and the later one of Mr Wordsworth, And Bishop Gawain, as he rose, Said-Wilton, grieve not for thy woes, For H, who honour best bestows, There are many other blemishes, both of taste and of dietion, which we had marked for reprehension, but now think it unnecessary to specify; and which, with some of those we have mentioned, we are wiling to ascribe to the haste in which much of the poem seems evidently to have been composed. Mr Scott 'knows too well what is due to the public, to make any boast of the rapidity with which his works are written; but the dates and the extent of his successive publications show sufficiently how short a time could be devoted to each; and explain, though they do not apologize for, the many imperfections with which they have been suffered to appear. He who writes for immortality should not be sparing of time; and if it be true, that in every thing which has a principle of life, the period of gestation and growth bears some proportion to that of the whole future existence, the author now before us should tremble when he looks back on the miracles of his own facility. We have dwelt longer on the beauties and defects of this poem, than we are afraid will be agreeable either to the partial or the indifferent; not only because we look upon it as a misapplication, in some degree, of very extraordinary talents, but because we cannot help considering it as the foundation of a new school, which may hereafter occasion no little annoyance both to us and to the public. Mr Scott has hitherto filled the whole stage himself; and the very splendour of his success has probably operated, as yet, rather to deter, than to encourage, the herd of rivals and imitators: but if, by the help of the good parts of his poem, he succeeds in suborning the verdict of the public in favour of the bad parts also, and establishes an indiscriminate taste for chivalrous legends and romances in irregular rhime, he may depend upon having as many copyists as Mrs Radcliffe or Schiller, and upon becoming the founder of a new schism in the catholic poetical church, for which, in spite of all our exertions, thee will probably be no cure, but in the extravagance of the last and lowest of its followers. It is for this reason that we conceive |