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designed or calculated for the stage, and that any attempt to produce it in action will be at the peril of those who make the experiment. The truth is that, like most of the higher poetical spirits of the age, he has found out a far safer and surer way to equitable judgments and fame, than trusting to the hazardous presentment of the characters he draws, by the heroes of the sock and buskin, and to the dubious and captious shouts of the pit and gallery.

richness and variety, even those who are most apt to be offended with his glare and irregularity. There is nothing in Scott's poetry of the severe and majestic style of Milton-or of the terse and fine composition of Pope-or of the elaborate elegance and melody of Campbell-or even of the flowing and redundant diction of Southey; but there is a medley of bright images and glowing words, set carelessly and loosely together a diction tinged successively with the careless richness of Shakspeare, the harshness and antique simplicity of the old romances, the homeliness of vulgar ballads and anecdotes, and the sentimental glitter of the most modern poetry-impressed with the stamp of romantic and pecupassing from the borders of the ludicrous to those of the sublime-alternately minute and energetic --sometimes artificial, and frequently negligent, but always full of spirit and vivacity-abounding in images that are striking, at first sight, to minds of every contexture- and never expressing a sentiment which it can cost the most ordinary reader any exertion to comprehend.

That HALIDON HILL is a native, heroic, and chivalrous drama-clear, brief, and moving in its story-full of pictures, living and breathing, and

liar times, and expressed in language rich and felicitous, must be felt by the most obtuse intellect; yet we are not sure that its success would be great on the stage, if for the stage it had ever been designed. The beauties by which it charms and enchains attention in the closet-those bright and innumerable glimpses of past times—those frequent allusions to ancient deeds and departed heroes- the action of speech rather than of body, would be lost in the vast London theatres, where a play is wanted, adapted to the eye rather than to the head or heart. The time of action equals, it is true, the wishes of the most limited critic; the place, too, the foot of Halidon, and its barren ascent, cannot be much more ample than the space from the further side of the stage to the upper regions of the gallery; and the heroes who are called forth to triumph and to die are native flesh and blood, who yet live in their descendants. It has all the claims which a dramatic poem can well have on a British audience; yet we always hoped it would escape the clutches of those who cut up quantities for the theatres.

Among the peculiarities of Scott, as a poet, we might notice his singular talent for description, and especially for that of scenes abounding in motion or action of any kind. In this department, indeed, he may be considered almost without a rival, either among modern or ancient bards; and the character and process of his descriptions are as extraordinary as their effect is astonishing. He places before the eyes of his readers a more distinct and complete picture, perhaps, than any other artist ever presented by mere words; and yet he does not enumerate all the visible parts of the subject with any degree of minuteness, nor confine himself by any means to what is visible. The singular merit of his delineations, on the contrary, consists in this, that, The transfer which the poet has avowedly made with a few bold and abrupt strokes, he sketches a of the incidents of the battle of Homildon to the most spirited outline, and then instantly kindles Hill of Halidon, seems such a violation of authenit by the sudden light and colour of some moral tic history, as the remarkable similarity of those affection. There are none of his fine descriptions, two disastrous battles can never excuse. It is danaccordingly, which do not derive a great part of gerous to attempt this violent shifting of heroic their clearness and picturesque effect, as well as deeds. The field of Bannockburn would never their interest, from the quantity of character and tell of any other victory than the one which has moral expression which is thus blended with their | rendered it renowned: History lifts up her voice details, and which, so far from interrupting the against it; nor can the Hill of Homildon tell the conception of the external object, very power-story of the Hill of Halidon, nor that of any other fully stimulate the fancy of the reader to com- battle but its own. plete it; and give a grace and a spirit to the whole representation, of which we do not know where to look for a similar example.

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Three other dramatic sketches have also appeared under the name of our author, during the last three years. The House of Aspen » was an early manuscript production of the poet, which was only drawn from the obscurity, to which he had most judiciously consigned it, in order to give to one of the annual publications the éclat of Scott's name as a contributor. Fortunately for him, he could afford this

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sacrifice of fame to profit. The other two were published together under the titles of The Doom of Devorgoil, a melodrama; and « Auchindrane, or the Ayrshire Tragedy.» From the preface it appears that both these pieces were written with a view to representation, and intended for the Adelphi Theatre, then under the management of the author's friend, the late MrTerry. They were not, however, found calculated to produce effect on the stage; and, though Auchindrane contains many passages of considerable poetic beauty, it would have been no injury to the author's fame had his anxiety to supply pieces for his friend's theatre not induced him to re-enter the abandoned track of poetic composition.

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We cannot take leave of Sir Walter Scott, in his poetic character, without alluding to the exquisite fragments which, under the fictitious garb of extracts from Old plays» he has prefixed as mottoes | to the different chapters of his various novels. In none of his regular poems has he displayed the depth of thought, happiness of illustration, and exquisite propriety of expression, which abound in these passages.

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It may, then, be fearlessly asserted that, since the time when Shakspeare wrote his thirty-eight plays in the brief space of his early manhood, there has been no such prodigy of literary fertility as the author of these novels. In a few brief years, he has founded a new school of invention, and embellished and endowed it with volumes of the most animated and original composition that have enriched British literature for a century-volumes that have cast into the shade all contemporary prose, and, by their force of colouring and depth of feeling, by their variety, vivacity, magical facility, and living presentment of character, have rendered conceivable to this later age the miracles of the mighty dramatist. It will scarcely be expected that, in this rapid Shakspeare is, undoubtedly, more purely origisketch, we should enter into a respective ana-nal, but it must be remembered that, in his time, lysis of those works, so well known, and so universally admired, by the appellation of the « Waverley Novels. The painful circumstances which compelled their author to disclose himself are still fresh in the recollection and the sympathy of the public: the motives, or no motives, which induced him so long and so pertinaciously to abstain from avowing himself, it is not our province to criticise, nor do we wish to make a boast of having always believed what could scarcely be ever doubted, viz. that the Great Unknown and the author of Marmion were one and indivi-vious approaches to glory, but swarm in such sible..

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there was much less to borrow-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.
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 anticipated all our bright
thoughts, and not only visibly beset all the ob-

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 deep-read antiquary, and makes out, much to his 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.

Although Sir Walter Scott is certainly in less danger from such detections than any other we have ever met with, even in him the traces of imitation are obvious and abundant; and it is impossible, therefore, to give him the same credit for absolute originality as those earlier writers, who, having no successful author to imitate, were obliged to copy directly from nature. In naming him along with Shakspeare, we mean still less to say, that he is to be put on a level with him, as to the richness and sweetness of his fancy, or that living vein of pure and lofty poetry which

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flows with such abundance through every part of his composition. On that level no other writer has ever stood, or will ever stand; though we do think that there are fancy and poetry enough in the Waverley Novels, if not to justify the comparison we have ventured to suggest, at least to save it from being altogether ridiculous. The variety stands out in the face of each of them, and the facility is attested, as in the case of Shakspeare himself, both by the inimitable freedom and happy carelessness of the style in which they are executed, and by the matchless rapidity with wihch they have been lavished on the public.

might have been a Frenchman, and Gil Blas an Englishman, because the essence of their characters in human nature, and the personal situation of the individual, are almost indifferent to the success of the object which the author proposed to himself; while, on the other hand, the characters of the most popular novels of later times are Irish, or Scotch, or French, and not, in the abstract, men. -The general operations of nature are circumscribed to her effects on an individual character, and the modern novels of this class, compared with the broad and noble style of the earlier writers, may be considered as Dutch pictures, delightful in their vivid and minute de

the close observer of peculiarities, and highly creditable to the accuracy, observation, and humour of the painter, but exciting none of those more exalted feelings, and giving none of those higher views of the human soul, which delight and exalt the mind of the spectator of Raphael, Correggio, or Murillo.

The object of WAVERLEY was evidently to present a faithful and animated picture of the man

We must now, however, for the sake of keep-tails of common life, wonderfully entertaining to ing our chronology in order, be permitted to say a word or two on the most popular of these works. The earlier novelists wrote at periods when society was not perfectly formed, and we find that their picture of life was an embodying of their own conceptions of the beau ideal. Heroes all generosity, and ladies all chastity, exalted above the vulgarities of society and nature, maintain, through eternal folios, their visionary virtues, without the stain of any moral frailty, or the de-ners and state of society that prevailed in the gradation of any human necessities. But this northern part of the island in the earlier part of high-flown style went out of fashion as the great last century; and the author judiciously fixed mass of mankind became more informed of each upon the era of the Rebellion in 1745, not only as other's feelings and concerns, and as nearer ob- enriching his pages with the interest inseparably servation taught them that the real course of hu- attached to the narration of such occurrences, but man life is a conflict of duty and desire, of virtue as affording a fair opportunity for bringing out and passion, of right and wrong: in the descrip- all the contrasted principles and habits which tion of which it is difficult to say whether uni-distinguished the different classes of people who form virtue or unredeemed vice, would be in the greater degree tedious and absurd.

The novelists next endeavoured to exhibit a general view of society. The characters in Gil Blas and Tom Jones are not individuals, so much as specimens of the human race; and these delightful works have been, are, and ever will be, popular; because they present lively and accurate delineations of the workings of the human soul, and that every man who reads them is obliged to confess to himself, that, in similar circumstances with the personages of Le Sage and Fielding, he would probably have acted in the way in which they are described to have done.

then divided the country, and formed among themselves the basis of almost all that was peculiar in the national character. That unfortunate contention brought conspicuously to light, and for the last time, the fading image of feudal chivalry in the mountains, and vulgar fanaticism in the plains; and startled the more polished parts of the land with the wild but brilliant picture of the elevated valour, incorruptible fidelity, patriarchal brotherhood, and savage habits, of the Celtic clans on the one hand,- and the dark, untractable, and domineering bigotry of the covenanters on the other. Both forms of society had indeed been prevalent in the other parts of the country, but had there been so long super

ners, that their vestiges were almost effaced, and their very memory nearly forgotten.

From this species the transition to a third was natural. The first class was theory-it was im-seded by more peaceable habits, and milder manproved into a genuine description, and that again led the way to a more particular classification a copying not of man in general, but of men of a peculiar nation, profession, or temper, or to go a step further of individuals.

Thus Alexander and Cyrus could never have existed in human society -- they are neither French, nor English, nor Italian, because it is only allegorically that they are men. Tom Jones

The feudal principalities had been extinguished in the South for near three hundred years, and the dominion of the puritans from the time of the Restoration. When the glens of the central Highlands, therefore, were opened up to the gaze of the English, it seemed as if they were carried back to the days of the Heptarchy: when they

saw the array of the West Country whigs, they might imagine themselves transported to the age of Cromwell. The effect, indeed, is almost as startling at the present moment; and one great source of the interest which the novel of Waverley possesses is to be sought in the surprise that is excited by discovering, that in our own country, and almost in our own age, manners and characters existed, and were conspicuous, which we had been accustomed to consider as belonging to remote antiquity, or extravagant romance. The way in which they are here represented must at once have satisfied every reader, by an internal tact and conviction, that the delineation had been made from actual experience and observation;-experienced observation employed perhaps only on a few surviving relics and specimens of what was' familiar a little earlier, but generalized from instances sufficiently numerous and complete to warrant all that may have been added to the portrait.

lower class of the Lowland characters, again, the vulgarity of Mrs Flockhart and of Lieutenant Jinker is perfectly distinct and original, as well as the puritanism of Gilfillan and Cruickshanks, and the slow solemnity of Alexander Saunderson. The Baron of Bradwardine, and Baillie Macwheeble, are caricatures no doubt, after the fashion of the caricatures in the novels of Smollett,-unique and extraordinary ; but almost all the other personages in the history are fair representatious of classes that are still existing, or may be reinembered at least to have existed, by many whose recollections do not extend quite so far back as the year 1745.

The successful reception of Waverley was owing not only to the author's being a man of genius, but that he had also virtue enough to be true to nature throughout, and to content himself, even in the marvellous parts of his story, with copying from actual existences, rather than from the phantasms of his own imagination. The The great traits of claunish dependence, pride, charm which this communicates to all works that and fidelity, may still be detected in many dis- deal in the representation of human actions and tricts of the Highlands, though they do not now characters is more readily felt than understood, adhere to the chieftains when they mingle in ge- and operates with unfailing efficacy even upon neral society; and the existing contentions of those who have no acquaintance with the origiburghers and antiburghers, and Cameronians, nals from which the picture has been borrowed. though shrunk into comparative insignificance, It requires no ordinary talent, indeed, to chuse and left indeed without protection to the ridicule such realities as may outshine the bright imagiof the profane, may still be referred to as com- nations of the inventive, and so to combine them plete verifications of all that is here stated about as to produce the most advantageous effect; but Gifted Gilfillan, or Ebenezer Cruickshanks. The when this is once accomplished, the result is sure traits of Scottish national character in the lower to be something more firm, impressive, and enranks can still less be regarded as antiquated or gaging, than can ever be produced by mere fictraditional; nor is there any thing in the whole tion. There is a consistency in nature and truth, compass of the work which gives us a stronger the want of which may always be detected in the impression of the nice observation and graphical happiest combinations of fancy; and the contalents of Sir Walter, than the extraordinay fi-sciousness of their support gives a confidence and delity and felicity with which all the inferior assurance to the artist, which encourages him agents in the story are represented. No one who occasionally to risk a strength of colouring, and has not lived long among the lower orders a boldness of touch, upon which he would scarceof all descriptions, and made himself familiar ly have ventured in a sketch that was purely with their various tempers and dialects, can per- ideal. The reader, too, who by these or still ceive the full merit of those rapid and charac- finer indications, speedily comes to perceive that teristic sketches; but it requires only a general he is engaged with scenes and characters that are knowledge of human nature to feel that they copied from existing originals, naturally lends a must be faithful copies from known originals; more eager attention to the story in which they and to be aware of the extraordinary facility and are unfolded, and regards with a keener interest flexibility of hand which has touched, for in- what he no longer considers as a bewildering sestance, with such discriminating shades, the varies of dreams and exaggerations, but as an inrious gradations of the Celtic character, from the structive exposition of human actions and enersavage imperturbability of Dugald Mahony, whogies, aud of all the singular modifications which stalks grimly about with his battle-ax on his our plastic nature receives from the circumstances shoulder, without speaking a word to any body, with which it is surrounded. to the lively unprincipled activity of Callum Beg, the coarse unreflecting hardihood and heroism of Evan Maccombich, and the pride, gallantry, elegance, and ambition of Fergus himself. In the

Although GUY MANNERING is a production far below Waverley, it is still a work of considerable merit. Its inferiority to Waverley is, however, very decided, not only as to general effect, but in

every individual topic of interest. The story is less probable, and is carried on with much machinery and effort; the incidents are less natural; the characters are less distinctly painted, and less worth painting; in short, the whole tone of the book is pitched in an inferior key.

Saddletree and Davie Deans, become at last rather 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 the former 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 valued file» of his productions. The trial and condemnation of Effie Deans are pathetic and beautiful in the very highest degree; and the scenes with the Duke of Argyle are equally full of spirit; and strangely compounded of perfect knowledge of life, and strong and deep feeling. But the great boast of the piece, and the great exploit of the author, is the character and history of Jeanie Deans, from the time she first reproves her sister's flirtations at St Leonard's, till she settles in the manse in Argyleshire. The singular talent with which he has engrafted, on the humble and somewhat coarse stock of a quiet and unassuming peasant girl, the powerful affection, the strong sense, and lofty purposes, which distinguish the heroine -or rather the art with which he has so tempered and modified those great qualities, as to make them appear noways unsuitable to the station or ordinary bearing of such a person, and so ordered and disposed the incidents by which they are called out, that they seem throughout adapted, and native, as it were, to her condition, is superior to any thing we can recollect in the his

The gratuitous introduction of supernatural agency in some parts of this novel is certainly to be disapproved of. Even Shakspeare, who has been called the mighty magician, was never guilty of this mistake. His magic was employed in fairy-land, as in the Tempest; and his ghosts and goblins in dark ages, as in Macbeth and Hamlet. When he introduces a witch in Henry VI, it is because, historically, his representation was true; when he exhibits the perturbed dreams of a murderer, in Richard III, it was because his representation was morally probable; but he never thought of making these fancies actual agents in an historical scene. There are no ghosts in Henry VIII, and no witches in the Merry Wives of Windsor (except the merry ladies); and when, in one of his comedies, he chuses to wander out of nature, he modestly calls his drama a dream, and mixes up fairies, witches, mythology, and common life, as a brilliant extravaganza, which affects no historical nor even possible truth, and which pretends to represent neither actual nor possible nature. Not so Guy Mannering: it brings down witchery and supernatural agency into our own times, not to be laughed at by the better informed, or credited by the vulgar; but as an active, effective, and real part of his ma-tory of invention; and must appear to any one, chinery. It treats the supernatural agency not as a superstition, but as a truth; and the result is brought about, not by the imaginations of men deluded by a fiction, but by the actual operation of a miracle, contrary to the opinion and belief of all the parties concerned.

The ANTIQUARY is not free from this blame; there are two or three marvellous dreams and apparitions, upon which the author probably intended to ground some important parts of his denouement; but his taste luckily took fright: the apparitions do not contribute to the catastrophe, and they now appear in the work as marks rather of the author's own predilection to such agency, than as any assistance to him in the way of machinery.

The HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN is remarkable for containing fewer characters, and less variety of incident, than any of Sir Walter's former productions—and it is accordingly, in some places, comparatively languid. The Porteous mob is rather heavily described; and the whole part of George Robertson, or Staunton, is extravagant or unpleasing. The final catastrophe, too, is needlessly improbable and startling; and both

who attentively considers it, as a remarkable
triumph over the greatest of all difficulties, in the
conduct of a fictitious narrative.
Jeanie Deans,
in the course of her adventurous undertaking,
excites our admiration and sympathy more pow-
erfully than most heroines, and is in the highest
degree both pathetic and sublime; and yet she
never says or does any thing that the daughter
of a Scotch cow-feeder might not be supposed to
say or to do-and scarcely any thing indeed that
is not characteristic of her rank and habitual oc-
cupations. She is never sentimental, nor refined,
nor elegant; and though always acting 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. Dumbiedikes is, however,
an admirable sketch in the grotesque way;-and
the Captain of Knockdunder is not only a very
spirited, but also a very accurate representation
of a Celtic deputy. There is less description of
scenery, and less sympathy in external nature in
this, than in any of the other tales.

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