many traits in them with which their enemies' palliation: and the bloodthirstiness of Dalzell, have reason to quarrel. If any person can and the brutality of Lauderdale, are repreread his strong and lively pictures of military sented in their true colours. In short, if this insolence and oppression, without feeling his author has been somewhat severe upon, the blood boil within him, we must conclude the Covenanters, neither has he spared their opfault to be in his own apathy, and not in any pressors; and the truth probably is, that never softenings of the partial author;-nor do we dreaming of being made responsible for hisknow any Whig writer who has exhibited the torical accuracy or fairness in a composition baseness and cruelty of that wretched gov- of this description, he has exaggerated a little ernment, in more naked and revolting de- on both sides, for the sake of effect-and been formity, than in his scene of the torture at carried, by the bent of his humour, most frethe Privy Council. The military executions quently to exaggerate on that which afforded of Claverhouse himself are admitted without the greatest scope for ridicule.

(February, 1818.)

Rob Roy. By the author of Waverley, Guy Mannering, and The Antiquary. 12mo. 3 vols. pp. 930. Edinburgh: 1818.

THIS is not so good, perhaps, as some others | ed-the same dramatic vivacity-the same of the family;-but it is better than any thing deep and large insight into human natureelse; and has a charm and a spirit about it and the same charming facility which distinthat draws us irresistibly away from our graver guish all the other works of this great master; works of politics and science, to expatiate and make the time in which he flourished an upon that which every body understands and era never to be forgotten in the literary history agrees in; and after setting us diligently to of our country. read over again what we had scarce finished reading, leaves us no choice but to tell our readers what they all know already, and to persuade them of that of which they are most intimately convinced.

Such, we are perfectly aware, is the task which we must seem to perform to the greater part of those who may take the trouble of accompanying us through this article. But there may still be some of our readers to whom the work of which we treat is unknown;-and we know there are many who are far from being duly sensible of its merits. The public, indeed, is apt now and then to behave rather unhandsomely to its greatest benefactors; and to deserve the malison which Milton has so emphatically bestowed on those impious persons, who,

One novelty in the present work is, that it is thrown into the form of a continued and unbroken narrative, by one of the persons principally concerned in the story-and who is represented in his declining age, as detailing to an intimate friend the most interesting particulars of his early life, and all the recollections with which they were associated. We prefer, upon the whole, the communications of an avowed author; who, of course, has no character to sustain but that of a pleasing writer-and can praise and blame, and wonder and moralise, in all tones and directions, without subjecting himself to any charge of vanity, ingratitude, or inconsistency. The thing, however, is very tolerably managed on the present occasion; and the hero contrives to let us into all his exploits and perplexities, without much violation either of heroic modesty or general probability;-to which ends, indeed, it conduces not a little, that, like most of the other heroes of this ingenious author, his own character does not rise very notably above the plain level of mediocrity-being, like the rest of his brethren, a well-conditioned, reasonable, agreeable young gentleman-not particularly likely to do any thing which it would be very boastful to speak of, and much better fitted to be a spectator and historian of strange doings, than a partaker in them.

with senseless base ingratitude, Cram, and blaspheme their feeder." -nothing, we fear, being more common, than to see the bounty of its too lavish providers repaid by increased captiousness at the quality of the banquet, and complaints of imaginary fallings off-which should be imputed entirely to the distempered state of their own pampered appetites. We suspect, indeed, that we were ourselves under the influence of this illaudable feelin when he wrote the first line of this paper: For, except that the subject seems to us somewhat less happily This discreet hero, then, our readers will chosen, and the variety of characters rather probably have anticipated, is not Rob Roy— less than in some of the author's former pub- though his name stands alone in the title-but lications, we do not know what right we had a Mr. Francis Osbaldistone, the only son of to say that it was in any respect inferior to a great London Merchant or Banker, and them. Sure we are, at all events, that it has nephew of a Sir_Hildebrand Osbaldistone, a the same brilliancy and truth of colouring-worthy Catholic Baronet, who spent his time the same gaiety of tone, rising every now in hunting, and drinking Jacobite toasts in and then into feelings both kindly and exalt- Northumberland, some time about the year

1714. The young gentleman having been played the extraordinary taient of being true educated among the muses abroad, testifies to nature, even in the representation of im a decided aversion to the gainful vocations in possible persons. which his father had determined that he The serious interest of the work rests on should assist aud succeed him;-and as a Diana Vernon and on Rob Koy; the comic punishment for this contumacy, he banishes effect is left chiefly to the ministrations of him for a season to the Siberia of Osbaldistone Baillie Nicol Jarvie and Andrew Fairservice, Hall, from which, he himself had been es- with the occasional assistance of less regular tranged ever since his infancy. The young performers. Diana is, in our apprehension, a exile jogs down on horseback rather merrily, very bright and felicitous creation-though it riding part of the way with a stout man, who is certain that there never could have been was scandalously afraid of being robbed, and any such person. A girl of eighteen, not meeting once with a sturdy Scotchman, whose only with more wit and learning than any resolute air and energetic discourses make a man of forty, but with more sound sense, deep impression on him.-As he approaches and firmness of character, than any man the home of his fathers, he is surrounded by whatever-and with perfect frankness and a party of fox hunters, and at the same mo- elegance of manners, though bred among ment electrified by the sudden apparition of boors and bigots-is rather a more violent a beautiful young woman, galloping lightly fiction, we think, than a king with marble at the head of the field, and managing her legs, or a youth with an ivory shoulder. In sable palfrey with all the grace of an Angelica. spite of all this, however, this particular fieMaking up to this etherial personage, he tion is extremely elegant and impressive; soon discovers that he is in the heart of his and so many features of truth are blended kinsfolks that the tall youths about him are with it, that we soon forget the impossibility, the five sons of Sir Hildebrand; and the virgin and are at least as much interested as by a huntress herself, a cousin and inmate of the more conceivable personage. The combinafamily, by the name of Diana Vernon. She tion of fearlessness with perfect purity and is a very remarkable person this same Diana. delicacy, as well as that of the inextinguishThough only eighteen years of age, and ex- able gaiety of youth with sad anticipations quisitely lovely, she knows all arts and sci- and present suffering, are all strictly natural, ences, elegant and inelegant-and has, more- and are among the traits that are wrought out over, a more than masculine resolution, and in this portrait with the greatest talent and more than feminine kindness and generosity effect. In the deep tone of feeling, and the of character-wearing over all this a playful, capacity of heroic purposes, this heroine bears free, and reckless manner, more characteristic a family likeness to the Flora of Waverley; of her age than her various and inconsistent accomplishments. The rest of the household are comely savages; who hunt all day, and drink all night, without one idea beyond those heroic occupations-all, at least, except Rashleigh, the youngest son of this hopeful family -who, having been designed for the church, and educated among the Jesuits beyond seas, had there acquired all the knowledge and the knavery which that pious brotherhood was so ong supposed to impart to their disciples.Although very plain in his person, and very epraved in his character, he has great talents nd accomplishments, and a very insinuating address. He had been, in a good degree, the instructor of Diana, who, we should have mentioned, was also a Catholic, and having lost her parents, was destined to take the veil in a foreign land, if she did not consent to marry one of the sons of Sir Hildebrand, for all of whom she cherished the greatest aversion and contempt.

Mr. Obaldistone, of course, can do nothing but fall in love with this wonderful infant; for which, and some other transgressions, he incurs the deadly, though concealed, hate of Rashleigh, and meets with several unpleasant adventures through his means. But we will not be tempted even to abridge the details of a story with which we cannot allow ourselves to doubt that all our readers have long been familiar and indeed it is not in his story that this author's strength ever lies; and here he has lost sight of probability even in the conception of some of his characters; and dis

but her greater youth, and her unprotected situation, add prodigiously to the interest of these qualities. Andrew Fairservice is a new, and a less interesting incarnation of Cuddie Headrigg; with a double allowance of selfishness, and a top-dressing of pedantry and conceit-constituting a very admirable and just representation of the least amiable of our Scottish vulgar. The Baillie, we think, is an original. It once occurred to us, that he might be described as a mercantile and townish Dandie Dinmont; but the points of resemblance are really fewer than those of contrast. He is an inimitable picture of an acute, sagacious, upright, and kind man, thoroughly low bred, and beset with all sorts of vulgarities. Both he and Andrew are rich mines of the true Scottish language; and afford, in the hands of this singular writer, not only an additional proof of his perfect familiarity with all its dialects, but also of its extraordinary copiousness, and capacity of adaptation to all tones and subjects. The reader may take a brief specimen of Andrew's elocution in the following characteristic account of the purgation of the Cathedral Church of Glasgow, and its consequent preservation from the hands of our Gothic reformers.

"Ah! it's a brave kirk-nane o' yere whigmaleeries and curlie-wurlies and open-steek hems about it—a' solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, that will stand as long as the warld, keep hands and gunpowther aff it. It had amaist a doun-come lang kirks of St. Andrews and Perth, and thereawa, syne at the Reformation, when they pu'd doun the to cleanse them o' Papery, and idolatry, and image

worship, and surplices, and sic like rags o' the muckle hoor that sitteth on seven hills, as if ane was na braid aneugh for her auld hinder end. Sae the commons o' Renfrew, and o' the Barony, and the Gorbals, and a' about, they behooved to come into Glasgow ae fair morning to try their hand on purging the High Kirk o' Popish nick-nackets. But the townsmen o' Glasgow, they were feared their auld edifice might slip the girths in gaun through siccan rough physic, sae they rang the common bell, and assembled the train bands wi' took o' drum-By good luck, the worthy James Rabat was Dean o' Guild that year-(and a gude mason he was himsell, made him the keener to keep up the auld bigging), and the trades assembled, and offered downright battle to the commons, rather than their kirk should coup the crans,

as they had done elsewhere. It was na for luve o' Paparie-na, na!-nane could ever say that o' the trades o' Glasgow-Sae they sune cam to an agreement to take a' the idolatrous statutes of sants (sorrow be on them) out o' their neuks- And sae the bits o' stane idols were broken in pieces by Scripture warrant, and flung into the Molendinar Burn, and the auld kirk stood as crouse as a cat when the fleas are caimed aff her, and a body was alike pleased. And I hae heard wise folk say, that if the same had been done in ilka kirk in Scot. land, the Reform wad just hae been as pure as it is e'en now, and we wad had mair Christian like kirks; for I hae been sae lang in England, that naething will drive it out o' my head, that the dogkennell at Osbaldistone-Hall is better than mony a house o' God in Scotland.'''

(January, 1820.)

1. Ivanhoe. A Romance. By the Author of Waverley, &c. 3 vols. Edinburgh, Constable & Co. 2. The Novels and Tales of the Author of Waverley; comprising Waverley, Guy Mannering, Antiquary, Rob Roy, Tales of My Landlord, First, Second, and Third Series; New Edition, with a copious Glossary. Edinburgh, Constable & Co.: 1820.

own satisfaction, that heaven knows how many of these busy bodies have been beforehand with us, both in the genus and the species of our invention!

SINCE the time when Shakespeare wrote his thirty-eight plays in the brief space of his early manhood-besides acting in them, and drinking and living idly with the other actors -and then went carelessly to the country, The author before us is certainly in less and lived out his days, a little more idly, and danger from such detections, than any other apparently unconscious of having done any we have ever met with; but, even in him, the thing at all extraordinary-there has been no traces of imitation are obvious and abundant; such prodigy of fertility as the anonymous and it is impossible, therefore, to give him the author before us. In the period of little more same credit for absolute originality as those than five years, he has founded a new school earlier writers, who, having no successful of invention; and established and endowed it author to imitate, were obliged to copy directwith nearly thirty volumes of the most ani- ly from nature. In naming nim along with mated and original compositions that have Shakespeare, we meant still less to say that enriched English literature for a century- he was to be put on a level with Him, as to volumes that have cast sensibly into the shade the richness and sweetness of his fancy, or all contemporary prose, and even all recent that living vein of pure and lofty poetry which poetry-(except perhaps that inspired by the flows with such abundance through every part Genius or the Demon, of Byron)-and, by of his compositions. On that level no other their force of colouring and depth of feeling-writer has ever stood-or will ever standby their variety, vivacity, magical facility, and living presentment of character, have rendered conceivable to this later age the miracles of the Mighty Dramatist.

though we do think that there is fancy and poetry enough in these contemporary pages, if not to justify the comparison we have ventured to suggest, at least to save it, for the first time for two hundred years, from being altogether ridiculous. In saying even this,

view the prodigious variety and facility of the modern writer-at least as much as the quality of his several productions. The variety stands out on the face of each of them; and the facility is attested, as in the case of Shakespeare himself, both by the inimitable freedom and happy carelessness of the style in which they are executed, and by the matchless rapidity with which they have been lavished on the public.

Shakespeare, to be sure, is more purely original; but it should not be forgotten, that, in his time, there was much less to borrow-however, we wish to observe, that we have in and that he too has drawn freely and largely from the sources that were open to him, at least for his fable and graver sentiment;-for his wit and humour, as well as his poetry, are always his own. In our times, all the higher walks of literature have been so long and so often trodden, that it is scarcely possible to keep out of the footsteps of some of our precursors; and the ancients, it is well known, have stolen most of our bright thoughts-and not only visibly beset all the patent approaches to glory-but swarm in such ambushed multitudes behind, that when we think we have gone fairly beyond their plagiarisms, and honestly worked out an original excellence of our own, up starts some deepread antiquary, and makes it out, much to his

Such an author would really require a review to himself-and one too of swifter than quarterly recurrence; and accordingly we have long since acknowledged our inability to keep up with him, and fairly renounced the task of keeping a regular account of his successive publications; contenting ourselves with gree:

ing him now and then in the pauses of his brilliant career, and casting, when we do meet, a hurried glance over the wide field he has traversed since we met before.

valued file" of his productions. The trial and condemnation of Ethe Deans are pathetic and beautiful in the very highest degree; and the scenes with the Duke of Argyle are equally We gave it formerly, we think, as our reason full of spirit; and strangely compounded of for thus passing over, without special notice, perfect knowledge of life and of strong and some of the most remarkable productions of deep feeling. But the great boast of the the age, that they were in fact too remarkable piece, and the great exploit of the authorto need any notice of ours-that they were as perhaps the greatest of all his exploits—is the soon, and as extensively read, as we could character and history of Jeanie Deans, from hope our account of them to be—and that in the time she first reproves her sister's flirtareality all the world thought just what we tions at St. Leonard's, till she settles in the were inclined to say of them. These reasons manse in Argyleshire. The singular talent certainly remain in full force; and we may with which he has engrafted on the humble now venture to mention another, which had and somewhat coarse stock of a quiet unasin secret, perhaps, as much weight with us as suming peasant girl, the heroic affection, the all the rest put together. We mean simply, strong sense, and lofty purposes, which disthat when we began with one of those works, tinguish this heroine-or rather, the art with we were conscious that we never knew how which he has so tempered and modified those to leave off; but, finding the author's words great qualities, as to make them appear noso much more agreeable than our own, went ways unsuitable to the station or ordinary on in the most unreasonable manner copying bearing of such a person, and so ordered and out description after description, and dialogue disposed the incidents by which they are after dialogue, till we were abused, not alto- called out, that they seem throughout adapted, gether without reason, for selling our readers and native as it were, to her condition,—is in small letter what they had already in large, superior to any thing we can recollect in the --and for the abominable nationality of filling history of invention; and must appear, to any up our pages with praises of a Scottish author, one who attentively considers it, as a remarkand specimens of Scottish pleasantry and pa- able triumph over the greatest of all difficulthos. While we contritely admit the justice ties in the conduct of a fictitious narrative. of these imputations, we humbly trust that Jeanie Deans, in the course of her adventurous our Southern readers will now be of opinion undertaking, excites our admiration and symthat the offence has been in some degree ex-pathy a great deal more powerfully than most piated, both by our late forbearance, and our present proceeding: For while we have done violence to our strongest propensities, in passing over in silence two very tempting publications of this author, on Scottish subjects and in the Scottish dialect, we have at last recurred to him for the purpose of noticing the only work he has produced on a subject entirely English; and one which is nowhere graced either with a trait of our national character, or a (voluntary) sample of our national speech.

Before entering upon this task, however, we must be permitted, just for the sake of keeping our chronology in order, to say a word or two on those neglected works, of which we constrained ourselves to say nothing, at the time when they formed the subject of all other disceptation.

"The Heart of Mid-Lothian" is remarkable for containing fewer characters, and less variety of incident, than any of the author's former productions:-and it is accordingly, in some places, comparatı, ly languid. The Porteous mob is rather heavily described; and the whole part of George Robertson, or Stanton, is extravagant and unpleasing. The final catastrophe, too, is needlessly improbable and startling; and both Saddletrees and Davie Deans become at last somewhat tedious and unreasonable; while we miss, throughout, the character of the generous and kindhearted rustic, which, in one form or another, gives such spirit and interest to most of the other stories. But with all these defects, the work has both beauty and power enough to vindicate its title to a legitimate descent from its mighty father—and even to a place in "the

heroines, and is in the highest degree both pathetic and sublime and yet she never says or does any one thing that the daughter of a Scotch cowfeeder might not be supposed to say-and scarcely any thing indeed that is not characteristic of her rank and habitual occupations. She is never sentimental, nor refined, nor elegant; and though acting always, and in very difficult situations, with the greatest judgment and propriety, never seems to exert more than that downright and obvious good sense which is so often found to rule the conduct of persons of her condition. This is the great ornament and charm of the work. Dumbiedykes, however, is an admirable sketch in the grotesque way;—and the Captain of Knockdunder is a very spirited, and, though our Saxon readers will scarcely believe it, a very accurate representation of a Celtic deputy. There is less description of scenery, and less sympathy with external nature, in this, than in any of the other tales.

"The Bride of Lammermoor" is more sketchy and romantic than the usual vein of the author-and loses, perhaps, in the exag geration that is incident to that style, some of the deep and heartfelt interest that belongs to more familiar situations. The humours of Caleb Balderstone, too, are to our taste the least successful of this author's attempts at pleasantry-and belong rather to the school of French or Italian buffoonery, than to that of English humour; and yet, to give scope to these farcical exhibitions, the poverty of the Master of Ravenswood is exaggerated be yond all credibility, and to the injury even of his personal dignity. Sir W. Ashton is tedious

and Bucklaw and his Captain, though excel- | productions of which we have been prevented lently drawn, take up rather too much room from speaking in detail, we proceed, without for subordinate agents.-There are splendid further preface, to give an account of the things, however, in this work also.-The pic- work before us. ture of old Ailie is exquisite-and beyond the reach of any other living writer.-The hags that convene in the churchyard, have all the terror and sublimity, and more than the nature of Macbeth's witches; and the courtship at the Mermaiden's well, as well as some of the immediately preceding scenes, are full of dignity and beauty. There is a deep pathos indeed, and a genuine tragic interest in the whole story of the ill-omened loves of the two victims. The final catastrophe of the Bride, however, though it may be founded on fact, is too horrible for fiction.-But that of Ravenswood is magnificent-and, taken along with the prediction which it was doomed to fulfil, and the mourning and death of Balderstone, is one of the finest combinations of superstition and sadness which the gloomy genius of our fiction has ever put together.

The story, as we have already stated, is entirely English; and consequently no longer possesses the charm of that sweet Doric dialect, of which even strangers have been made of late to feel the force and the beauty. But our Southern neighbours will be no great gainers, after all, in point of familiarity with the personages, by this transference of the scene of action-For the time is laid as far back as the reign of Richard I.-and we suspect that the Saxons and Normans of that age are rather less known to them than even the Highlanders and Cameronians of the present. This was the great difficulty the author had to contend with, and the great disadvantage of the subject with which he had to deal. Nobody now alive can have a very clear or complete conception of the actual way of life and manière d'être of our ancestors in the year 1194. Some "The Legend of Montrose" is also of the of the more prominent outlines of their chivnature of a sketch or fragment, and is still alry, their priesthood, and their villenage, more vigorous than its companion.-There is may be known to antiquaries, or even to gentoo much, perhaps, of Dalgetty-or, rather, he eral readers; but all the filling up, and deengrosses too great a proportion of the work, tals, which alone could give body and life to -for, in himself, we think he is uniformly the picture, have been long since effaced by entertaining;-and the author has nowhere time. We have scarcely any notion, in short, shown more affinity to that matchless spirit of the private life and conversation of any who could bring out his Falstaffs and his Pis- class of persons in that remote period; and, tols, in act after act, and play after play, and in fact, know less how the men and women exercise them every time in scenes of un- occupied or amused themselves-what they bounded loquacity, without either exhausting talked about-how they looked-or what they their humour, or varying a note from its char- habitually thought or felt, at that time in Engacteristic tone, than in his large and reiterated land, than we know of what they did or specimens of the eloquence of the redoubted thought at Rome in the time of Augustus, or Rittmaster. The general idea of the charac-at Athens in the time of Pericles. The meter is familiar to our comic dramatists after morials and relics of those earlier ages and the Restoration-and may be said in some remoter nations are greatly more abundant measure to be compounded of Captain Fluel- and more familiar to us, than those of our anlen and Bobadil;-but the ludicrous combi-cestors at the distance of seven centuries. nation of the soldado with the Divinity student of Marischal college, is entirely original; and the mixture of talent, selfishness, courage, coarseness, and conceit, was never so happily exemplified. Numerous as his speeches are, there is not one that is not characteristic and, to our taste, divertingly ludicrous. Annot Lyle, and the Children of the Mist, are in a very different manner-and, though extravagant, are full of genius and poetry. The whole scenes at Argyle's Castle, and in the escape from it-though trespassing too far beyond the bounds of probability-are given with great spirit and effect; and the mixture of romantic incident and situation, with the tone of actual business and the real transactions of a camp, give a life and interest to the warlike part of the story, which belong to the fictions of no other hand. There is but little made of Montrose himself; and the wager about the Candlesticks-though said to be founded in fact, and borrowed from a very well known and entertaining book, is one of the few things in the writings of this author, to which we are constrained to apply the epithets of stupid and silly.

Having thus hastily set our mark on those

Besides ample histories and copious orations, we have plays, poems, and familiar letters of the former periods; while of the latter we have only some vague chronicles, some superstitious legends, and a few fragments of foreign romance. We scarcely know, indeed, what language was then either spoken or written. Yet, with all these helps, how cold and conjectural a thing would a novel be, of which the scene was laid in ancient Rome The author might talk with perfect propriety of the business of the Forum, and the amusements of the Circus-of the baths and the suppers, and the canvass for office-and the sacrifices, and musters, and assemblies. He might be quite correct as to the dress, furni ture, and utensils he had occasion to mention; and might even engross in his work various anecdotes and sayings preserved in contemporary authors. But when he came to represent the details of individual character and feeling, and to delineate the daily conduct, and report the ordinary conversation of his persons, he would find himself either frozer. in among naked and barren generalities, c engaged with modern Englishmen in the mas querade habits of antiquity.