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The BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR is more sketchy and different manner, and are full of genius and romantic than the usual vein of the author-and poetry. The whole of the scenes at Argyle's loses, perhaps, in the exaggeration that is inci- castle, and in the escape from it-though dent to the style, some of the deep and heart-felt trespassing too far beyond the bounds of probainterest that belongs to more familiar situations.bility-are given with great spirit and effect; The humours of Caleb Balderstone are, to our and the mixture of romantic incident and situataste, the least successful of this author's attempts tion, with the tone of actual business, and the at pleasantry,—and belong rather to the school real transactions of a camp, give a life and interof French or Italian buffoonery, than to that of est to the warlike part of the story, which belong English humour;-and yet, to give scope to these to the fictions of no other hand. farcical exhibitions, the poverty of the master of Ravenswood is exaggerated beyond all credibility, and to the injury even of his personal dignity. Sir William Ashton is tedious; and Bucklaw and his captain, though excellently drawn, take up rather too much room for subordinate agents. There are splendid things, however, in this work also. The picture of old Ailie is exquisite-and beyond the reach of any other living writer. The hags that convene in the church-yard 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. The catastrophe of the bride, 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 ever put together.

From the Tales of My Landlord we must pass rapidly over to the beautiful romance of IVANHOE, the story of which is entirely English, and the time laid as far back as the reign of Richard I, the Saxons and Normans of which age are less known to us than 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 do deal. Nobody now alive can have a very clear conception of the actual way of life, and manière d'être of our ancestors in the year 1194. Some of the more prominent outlines of their chivalry, their priesthood, and their villanage, may be known to antiquaries, or even to general readers; but all the filling up and details, which alone can give body and life to the picture, have been long since effaced by time. We have scarcely any notion, in short, of the private life and conversation of any class of persons in that remote period; and, in fact, know less how the men and women occupied and amused themselves

The LEGEND OF MONTROSE is also of the nature what they talked about-how they looked-or of a sketch or fragment, and is still more vigour what they actually thought or felt, at that time ous than its companion. There is too much, in England, than we know of what they did or perhaps, of Dalgetty—or, rather, he engrosses too thought at Rome in the time of Augustus, or at great a proportion of the work; for, in himself, Athens in the time of Pericles. The memorials we think he is uniformly entertaining;-and the and relics of those earlier ages and remoter naauthor has nowhere shown more affinity to that tions are greatly more abundant and more famimatchless spirit, who could bring out his Falstaffs liar to us, than those of our ancestors at the disand his Pistols, in act after act, and play after tance of seven centuries. Besides ample histories play, and exercise them every time with scenes of and copious orations, we have plays, poems, and unbounded loquacity, without either exhausting familiar letters of the former period; while of the their humour, or varying a note from its charac- latter we have only some vague chronicles, suteristic tone, than in his ample and reiterated perstitious legends, and a few fragments of fospecimens of the eloquence of the redoubted Ritt-reign romance. We scarcely know indeed what master. The general idea of the character is fa- language was then either spoken or written. Yet, miliar to our comic dramatists after the Restora- with all these helps, how cold and conjectural a tion-and may be said, in some measure, to be thing would a novel be, of which the scene was compounded of Captain Fluellen and Bobadil; laid in ancient Rome! The author might talk -but the ludicrous combination of the soldado with perfect propriety of the beauties of the Fowith the student of Mareschal College is entirely rum, and the arrangements of the circus-of the original; and the mixture of talent, selfishness, baths and the suppers, and the canvass for office, courage, coarseness, and conceit, was never so and the sacrifices, and musters, and assemblies. happily exemplified. Numerous as his speeches He might be quite correct as to the dress, furniare, there is not one that is not characteristic-ture, and utensils he had occasion to mention; and, to our taste, divertingly ludicrous. Annot and might even embody in his work various anecLyle, and the Children of the Mist, are in a very dotes and sayings preserved in contemporary au

thors. 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 frozen in among barren generalities, or engaged with modern Englishmen in the masquerade habits of antiquity.

In stating these difficulties, however, we really mean less to account for the defects, than to enhance the merits of the work we are treating of. For though the author has not worked impossibilities, he has done wonders with his subject; and though we do sometimes miss those fresh and living pictures of the characters which we know, and the nature with which we are familiar, and that high and deep interest which the home scenes of our own times and own people could alone generate or sustain, it is impossible to deny that he has made marvellous good use of the scanty materials he had at his disposal, and eked them out both by the greatest skill and dexterity in their arrangement, and by all the resources that original genius could render subservient to such a design. For this purpose he has laid his scene in a period when the rivalry of the victorious Normans and the conquered Saxons had not been finally composed; and when the courtly petulance and chivalrous and military pride of the one race might yet be set in splendid opposition to the manly steadiness and honest but homely simplicity of the other; and has, at the same time, given an air both of dignity and reality to his story, by bringing in the personal prowess of Cœur de Lion himself, and other personages of historical fame, to assist in its development. Though reduced in a great measure to the vulgar staple of armed knights, and jolly friars and woodmen, imprisoned damsels, lawless barons, collared serfs, and household fools, he has made such use of his great talents for description, and invested those traditional and theatrical persons with so much of the feelings that are of all ages and all countries, that we frequently cease to regard them (as it is generally right to regard them) as parts of a fantastical pageant; and are often brought to consider the knights who joust in panoply in the lists, and the foresters who shoot deer with arrows, and plunder travellers in the woods, as real individuals, with hearts and blood beating in their bosoms like our own-actual existences, in short, into whose views we may reasonably enter, and with whose emotions we are bound to sympathise. To all this he has added, out of the prodigality of his high and inventive genius, the grace and the interest of some lofty, and sweet, and superhuman characters, for which, though evidently fictitious, and unnatural in any stage of society, the remoteness of the

scene on which they are introduced may serve as an apology, if they could need any other than what they bring along with them in their own sublimity and beauty.

In comparing this work then with the productions which had already proceeded from the same master-hand, it is impossible not to feel that we are passing in some degree from the reign of nature and reality to that of fancy and romance, and exchanging for scenes of wonder and curiosity those more homefelt sympathies, and deeper touches of delight, that can only be excited by the people among whom we live, and the objects that are constantly around us. A far greater proportion of the work is accordingly made up of splendid descriptions of arms and dresses, moated and massive castles, tournaments of mailed champions, solemn feasts, formal courtesies, and other matters of external and visible presentment, that are only entitled to such distinction as connected with the olden times, and novel by virtue of their antiquity; while the interest of the story is maintained far more by surprising adventures and extraordinary situations, the startling effect of exaggerated sentiments, and the strong contrast of overdrawn characters, than by the sober charms of truth and reality, the exquisite representation of scenes with which we are familiar, or the skilful development of affections which we have often experienced.

These bright lights and deep shadows-this succession of brilliant pictures, addressed as often to the eyes as to the imagination, and oftener to the imagination than the heart-this preference of striking generalities to homely details, all belong more properly to the province of poetry than of prose; and Ivanhoe, accordingly, seems to us much more akin to the most splendid of modern poems, than the most interesting of modern novels; and savours much more of the author of Marmion, or the Lady of the Lake, than of Waverley or Old Mortality.

Without disputing the general verdict, which places the MONASTERY below the rest of our author's works, we shall endeavour to ascertain the grounds on which it may be supposed to be founded. We believe the principal deficiency lies in, what is usually our author's principal excellence, the female characters. In general, his men add to the boldness and animation of the scene, but his women support almost all its interest. Perhaps this must always be the case where both are equally well drawn. We sympathize more readily with simple than with compound feelings; and therefore less easily with those characters, the different ingredients of which have, by mutual subservience, been moulded into one uniform mass, than with those in

which they stand unmixed and contrasted. Courage restrained by caution, and liberality by prudence, loyalty, with a view only to the ultimate utility of power, and love, never forgetting itself in its object, are the attributes of men. Their purposes are formed on a general balance of compensatig motives, and pursued only while their means appear not totally inadequate. The greater susceptibility, which is always the charm, and sometimes the misfortune, of women, deprives them of the same accurate view of the proportion of different objects. The one upon which they are intent, whether it be a lover, a parent, a husband, a child, a king, a preacher, a ball, or a bonnet, swallows up the rest. Hence the enthusiasm of their loyalty, the devotedness of their affection, the abandonment of self, and the general vehemence of emotion, which, in fiction as well as in reality, operate contagiously on our feelings. But our author has, in the Monastery, neglected the power of representing the female character, which he possesses so eminently, and, in general, uses so liberally. The heroine is milk and water, or any thing still more insipid. Dame Glendinning and Tibbie are the common furniture of a farm-house; and Mysie Happer and poor Catherine, though beautiful, an mere sketches.

are

and stern composure of the approved soldier and skilful politician; and when, as Knight of Avenel, he sighs for birth and name, we recognize the feelings that drove him from the obscure security of a church vassal, to seek with his sword the means of ranking with those proud men who despised his clownish poverty. And when Ambrose acknowledges that, bent as he is by affliction, he has not forgotten the effect of beauty on the heart of youth-that even in the watches of the night, broken by the thoughts of an imprisoned queen, a distracted kingdom, a church laid waste and ruinous, come other thoughts than these suggest, and other feelings that belong to an earlier and happier course of life; a single allusion sends us back through the whole intervening time, and we see him again in the deep window-recess of Glendearg, and Mary's looks of simple yet earnest anxiety, watching for his assistance in their childish studies. The allusion would have been pretty, but how inferior if Ambrose had been a new character, and we had been forced to account for it by some vague theory as to his former history! The Abbot has, however, far greater advantages over its predecessor than those, great as they are, that arise from their relative situaWe escape from the dull tower of Glendearg, with its narrow valley and homely inmates, to Edinburgh, and Holyrood House, and Lochleven Castle, and the field of Langside, and to high dames and mighty earls, and exchange the obscure squabbling of the hamlet and the convent, for events where the passions of individuals decided the fate of kingdoms, and, above all, we exchange unintelligible fairyism for human actors and human feelings.

tion.

But the great merit of the Monastery is, that it
is a foundation for the ABBOT. This not only
relieves, in a great measure, the reader from the
slow detail, or the perplexing retracings and
éclaircissemens which detain or interrupt him in
a narrative that is purely fictitious, but is an im-
provement on some of the peculiar advantages
of one that is historical. In the latter, the hard
and meagre outline of his previous knowledge It is true there is a sorceress on the stage, but
seldom contains more than the names and mutual one endued with powers far greater for evil or for
relations of the principal personages, and what good than the White Lady. History has never
they had previously done, with very little of described, or fiction invented, a character more
what they had previously felt. But where one truly tragic than Queen Mary. The most fruit-
fiction is founded on another, we are introduced ful imagination could not have adorned her with
not merely to persons who are notorious to us, more accomplishments, or exposed her to greater
but to old acquaintances and friends. The extremes of fortune, or alternated them with
Knight of Avenel, the Abbot Ambrosius, and the greater rapidity. And the mystery which, after
Gardener Blinkhoolie, are the Halbert, and Ed- all the exertions of her friends and enemies, still
ward, and Boniface, into whose early associations rests on her conduct, and which our author has
and secret feelings we had been admitted. We most skilfully left as dark as he found it, prevents
meet them as we meet, in real life, with those our being either shocked or unmoved by her
whom we have known in long-past times, and in | final calamities. The former would have been
different situations, and are interested in tracing,
sometimes the resemblance, and sometimes the
contrast, between what is past and what is pre-
sent; in observing the effect of new circum-
stances in modifying or confirming their old
feelings, or in eliciting others which before lay
unperceive. We view with interest the fiery
freedom of Halbert's youth ripened into the steady

the case, if her innocence could have been esta-
blished. We could not have borne to see such a
being plunged, by a false accusation, from such
happiness into such misery. The latter would
have followed, if she could have been proved to be
guilty. Her sufferings, bitter as they were, were
less unmixed than those of Bothwell.
endured a long imprisonment, but it was in a

He too

desolate climate, without the alleviations which even Elizabeth allowed to her rival, without the hope of escape, or the sympathy of devoted attendants: such was his misery, that his reason sunk under it. And though his sufferings were greater than those of his accomplice, if such she were, his crime was less. He had not to break the same restraints of intimate connexion, and of sex. But nobody could read a tragedy of which his misfortunes formed the substance; because we are sure of his guilt, they will excite no interest. While we continue to doubt hers, Mary's will be intensely affecting.

Though KENILWORTH ranks high among our author's works, we think it inferior, as a whole, to his other tragedies, the Bride of Lammermoor, the historical part of Waverley, and the Abbot, both in materials and in execution.

degraded the silliest and most hateful of her sex.

Sir Walter has not, we think, made the most of his opportunities. He has complied with the laws of poetical consistency, without recollecting that, in this instance, the notoriety of Elizabeth's history warranted their violation. Instead of pushing to the utmost the opposing qualities that formed her character, he has softened even the incidents that he has directly borrowed. When Leicester knelt before her at Kenilworth, ere she raised him she passed her hand over his head, so near as almost to touch his long curled and perfumed hair, and with a movement of fondness that seemed to intimate she would, if she dared, have made the motion a slight caress. Listen to Sir James Melvil's account of the occurrence.

« I was required to stay till he was made Earl of Leicester, which was done at Westminster, the queen herself helping to put on his ceremonial, he sitting upon his knees (kneeling) before her with great gravity; but she could not refrain from putting her hands into his neck, smilingly tickling him, the French ambassador and I stand

When, at a later period, and under circumstances of much less aggravation, she detected his marriage with Lady Essex, she actually imprisoned him. Our author has not ventured on the full vehemence of her affection or her rage. But, after all, his picture of the lion-hearted queen, though it might perhaps have been improved by the admission of stronger contrasts, is so vivid, and so magnificent, that we can hardly wish it other than it is.

Amy Robsart and Elizabeth occupy nearly the same space upon the canvas as Catherine Seyton and Mary. But almost all the points of interest, which are divided between Amy and Elizabeth, historical recollections, beauty, talents, attractive virtues and unhappy errors, exalted ranking by. Then she turned, asking me how I liked and deep misfortune, are accumulated in Mary; him?» Again, when she discovers Leicester's and we want altogether that union of the lofty conduct, in which every cause of personal irriand the elegant, of enthusiasm and playfulness, tation is most skilfully accumulated, she punishes which enchanted us in Catherine. Amy is a him only by a quarter of an hour's restraint beautiful specimen of that class which long ago under the custody of the earl-marshal. furnished Desdemona: the basis of whose character is conjugal love, whose charm consists in its purity and its devotedness, whose fault springs from its undue prevalence over filial duty, and whose sufferings are occasioned by the perverted passions of him who is the object of it. Elizabeth owes almost all her interest to our early associations, and to her marvellous combination of the male and female dispositions, in those points in which they seem most incompatible. The representation of such a character loses much of its interest in history, and would be intolerable in pure fiction. In the former, its peculiarities are softened down by the distance, and Elizabeth appears a fine, but not an uncommon object—a great, unamiable sovereign; and the same peculiarities, shown up by the microscopic exaggeration of fiction, would, if judged only by the rules of fiction, offend as unnatural; but supported by the authority of history, would be most striking. A portrait might be drawn of Elizabeth, uniting the magnanimous courage, the persevering but governable anger, the power of weighing distant against immediate advantages, and the brilliant against the useful, and of subjecting all surrounding minds, even the most manly, to her influence, with the most craving vanity, the most irritable jealousy, the meanest duplicity, and the most capricious and unrelenting spite, that ever

The PIRATE is a bold attempt to make out a long and eventful story, from a very narrow circle of society, and a scene so circumscribed as scarcely to admit of any great scope or variety of action; and its failure, in a certain degree, must in fairness be ascribed chiefly to this scantiness and defect of the materials.

The FORTUNES OF NIGEL is of an historical character, and an attempt to describe and illustrate by examples the manners of the court, and, generally speaking, of the age, of James 1 of England.

Without asserting the high excellence of SAINT RONAN'S WELL, we may venture to affirm that it does not deserve the contempt with which it has been treated by some critics. The story, indeed, is not very probable, and there are various inconsistencies in the plot; the characters, though apparently intended to be completely modern, are

of sagacity, and very frequently an elevation of fancy, as high and as natural as can be met with among more cultivated beings. The great merit of all these delineations is their admirable truth and fidelity, the whole manner and cast of the characters being accurately moulded to their

in some instances more suitable to the last generation; the hero's portrait is feebly drawn: the moral tone of the work is less correct and legitimate than than which pervades our author's preceding productions, and the impulses of feeling and humanity are less natural and forcible; but it is still a work which bears the marks of a mas-condition; and the finer attributes, so blended and ter's hand, the interest is well sustained, the incidents are related with spirit, many of the dialogues are lively and pleasant, and not only the character of the heroine, but also that of the landlady of Touchwood, are drawn with a discriminating and powerful pencil.

In the historical novels of REDGAUNTLET, QUENTIN DURWARD, and WOODSTOCK, the author displays a truly graphic power in the delineation of characters, which he sketches with an ease, and colours with a brilliancy, and scatters about with a profusion, which but few writers, in any age, have been able to accomplish. With spells of magic potency, and with the creations of a rich and varied fancy, so skilfully has he stolen us from ourselves, with such exquisite cunning has he extracted a kind of poetry from the common incidents of life, with such an extent of legendary knowledge, he has displayed so wonderful an aptitude in drawing from historic research those minute traits of manners and modifications in social life, which, by reason of the wide range which it traverses, and the rapidity with which it moves along, are in history too general and indistinct; that it would be worse than affectation to stand aloof from the general feeling, and to refuse our humble proportion of those golden opinions he has bought from all sorts of men," and which have fixed him in so high a rank in the literature of his country.

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The TALES OF THE CRUSADERS have not been received with that enthusiasm of delight which greeted some of our author's former productions: yet they undoubtedly possess considerable merit, and, amidst much that is feeble, uninteresting, and absurd, bear evident marks of sense and talent.

To sum up our observations on the Waverley Novels, in a few words, we think their author has succeeded by far the best in the representation of rustic and homely characters, and not in the ludicrous or contemptuous representation of them --but by making them at once more natural and more interesting than they had ever been made before in any work of fiction; by showing them, not as clowns to be laughed at, or wretches to be pitied and despised,-but as human creatures, with as many pleasures, and fewer cares, than their superiors-with affections not only as strong, but often as delicate, as those whose language is smoother-and with a vein of humour, a force

harmonized with the native rudeness and simplicity of their life and occupations, that they are made interesting and even noble beings, without the least particle of foppery or exaggeration, and delight and amuse us, without trespassing at all on the province of pastoral or romance.

Next to these, we think, he has found his happiest subjects, or at least displayed his greatest powers, in the delineation of the grand and gloomy aspects of nature, and of the dark and fierce passions of the heart. The natural gaiety of his temper does not indeed allow him to dwell long on such themes; but the sketches he occasionally introduces are executed with admirable force and spirit, and give a strong impression both of the vigour of his imagination and the variety of his talent. It is only in the third rank that we would place his pictures of chivalry and chivalrous character, his traits of gallantry, nobleness, and honour, and that bewitching assemblage of gay and gentle manners, with generosity, candour, and courage, which has long been familiar enough to readers and writers of novels, but has never before been represented with such an air of truth, and so much ease and happiness of execution.

Among his faults and failures, we must give the first place to his descriptions of virtuous young ladies, and his representations of the orIdinary business of courtship and conversation in polished life. We admit that those things, as they are commonly conducted, are apt to be a little insipid to a mere critical spectator,—and that while they consequently require more heightening than strange adventures or grotesque persons, they admit less of exaggeration or ambitious ornament: yet we cannot think it necessary that they should be altogether so lame and mawkish as we generally find them in the hands of this spirited writer, whose powers really seem to require some stronger stimulus to bring them into action, than can be supplied by the flat realities of a peaceful and ordinary existence. His love of the ludicrous, it must also be observed, often betrays him into forced and vulgar exaggerations, and into the repetition of common and paltry stories; though it is but fair to add, that he does not detain us long with them, and makes amends, by the copiousness of his assortment, for the indifferent quality of some of the specimens. It is another consequence of this ex

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