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 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 pre-merit of all these delineations is their admirable ceding 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 master'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. 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 truth and fidelity, the whole manner and cast of the characters being accurately moulded to their condition; and the finer attributes, so blended and 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 ordinary 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 d He is treme abundance in which he revels and riots, and versed with the living and the dead, and let them of the fertility of the imagination from which it is tell their story their own way; and by borrowing supplied, that he is at all times a little apt to overdo of others, has enriched his own genius with evereven those things which he does best. His most lasting variety, truth, and freedom. He has taken striking and highly-coloured characters appear his materials from the original, authentic sources, rather too often, and go on rather too long. It is in large concrete masses, and has not tampered astonishing, indeed, with what spirit they are sup-with, or too much frittered them away. ported, and how fresh and animated they are to the only amanuensis of truth and history. It is the very last; but still there is something too impossible to say how fine his writings in consemuch of them, and they would be more waited for quence are, unless we could describe how fine and welcomed, if they were not quite so lavish of nature is. All that portion of the history of his their presence. It was reserved for Shakspeare country that he has touched upon (wide as the alone to leave all his characters as new and un- scope is), the manners, the personages, the events, worn as he found them, and to carry Falstaff the scenery, lives over again in his volumes. Nothrough the business of three several plays, and thing is wanting-the illusion is complete. There leave us as greedy of his sayings as at the moment is a hurtling in the air, a trampling of feet upon of his first introduction. It is no light praise to the the ground, as these perfect representations of author before us, that he has sometimes reminded human character, or fanciful belief, come throngus of this, and, as we have before observed, of ing back upon the imagination. We will merely other inimitable excellencies in that most gifted of recal a few of the subjects of his pencil to the all inventors. reader's recollection, for nothing we could add He is above all things national and Scottish, by way of note or commendation, could make the and never seems to feel the powers of a giant ex-impression more vivid. cept when he touches his native soil. His countrymen alone, therefore, can have a full sense of his merits, or a perfect relish of his excellencies; and those only, indeed, of them, who have mingled, as he has done, pretty freely with the lower orders, and made themselves familiar not only with their language, but with the habits and traits of character of which it then only becomes expressive. It is one thing to understand the meaning of words, as they are explained by other words in a glossary or dictionary, and another to know their value, as expressive of certain feelings and humours in the speakers to whom they are native, and as signs both of temper and condition among those who are familiar with their import. There is (first and foremost, because the earliest of our acquaintance), the Baron of Bradwardine, stately, kind-hearted, whimsical, and pedantic; and Flora Mac-Ivor (whom even we forgive for her jacobitism), the fierce Vich Ian Vohr, and Evan Dhu, constant in death, and Davie Gellatley, roasting his eggs, or turning his rhymes with restless volubility, and the two stag-hounds that met Waverley, as fine as ever Titian painted, or Paul Veronese: - then there is old Balfour of Burley, brandishing his sword and his Bible with fire-eyed fury, trying a fall with the insolent, gigantic Bothwell, at the 'change-house, and vanquishing him at the noble battle of Loudon-hill; there is Bothwell himself, drawn to the life, proud, cruel, selfish, profligate-but with the love-letters of the gentle Alice (written thirty years before), and his verses to her memory, found in his pocket after his death; in the same volume « Sir Walter,» says this writer, « has found out of Old Mortality, is that lone figure, like one in that facts are better than fiction; that there is no Scripture, of the woman sitting on the stone, at romance like the romance of real life; and that the turning to the mountain, to warn Burley that can we but arrive at what men feel, do, and say, there is a lion in his path; and the fawning Clain striking and singular situations, the result will | verhouse, beautiful as a panther, smooth-looking, be more lively, audible, and full of vent, than blood-spotted: and the fanatics, Macbriar and the fine-spun cobwebs of the brain. Our author | Mucklewrath, crazed with zeal and sufferings: has conjured up the actual people he has to deal with, or as much as he could get of them, in 'their habits as they lived.' He has ransacked old chronicles, and poured the contents upon his page; he has squeezed out musty records; he has consulted way-faring pilgrims, bed-rid sibyls; he has invoked the spirits of the air; he has con We shall make no apology to our readers for introducing here, the following animated deline- | ation of the author of Waverley, from the pen of an acute critic.1 1 Mr Hazlitt, in the « Spirit of the Age.» and the inflexible Morton, and the faithful Edith, who refused to 'give her hand to another, while her heart was with her lover in the deep and dead sea.' In The Heart of Mid-Lothian, we have Effie Deans (that sweet faded flower), and Jeanie, her more than sister, and old David Deans, the patriarch of St Leonard's Crags, and Butler, and Dumbiedikes, eloquent in his silence, and Mr Bartoline Saddletree, and his prudent helpmate, historic pen levels our bristling prejudices, and sees fair play between roundheads and cavaliers between protestant and papist. He is a writer reconciling all the diversities of human nature to the reader. He does not enter into the hostile distinctions of sects and parties, but treats of the strength or the infirmity of the human mind, of the virtues and vices of the human breast, as they are to be found blended in the whole race of mankind. Nothing can show more handsomely, or be more gallantly executed.» and Porteous, swinging in the wind, and Madge Wildfire, full of finery and madness, and her ghastly mother. Again, there is Meg Merrilies, standing on her rock, stretched on her bier with 'her head to the east,' and Dirk Hatteraick (equal to Shakspeare's Master Barnardine), and Glossin, the soul of an attorney, and Dandie Dinmont, with his terrier-pack and his pony Dumple, and the fiery Colonel Mannering, and the modish old counsellor Pleydell, and Dominie Sampson: and Rob Roy (like the eagle in his eyrie), and Bailie Nicol Jarvie, and the inimitable Major Galbraith, The Waverley novels were highly admired by Rashleigh Osbaldistone, and Die Vernon, the best Byron; he never travelled without them. «They of secret-keepers; and in the Antiquary, the inge-are," said he to Captain Medwin one day, nious Mr Oldbuck, and the old bedesman, Edie library in themselves—a perfect literary treaOchiltree, and that preternatural figure of old sure. I could read them once a year with new Elspeth, a living shadow, in whom the lamp pleasure.» During that morning he had been of life had been long extinguished, had it not reading one of Sir Walter's novels, and delivered been fed by remorse and thick-coming' re- the following criticism: «How difficult it is to collections; and that striking picture of feudal say any thing new! Who was that voluptuary of tyranny and fiendish pride, the unhappy Earl of antiquity who offered a reward for a new pleaGlenallan; and the Black Dwarf, and his friend, sure? Perhaps all nature and art could not supHobbie of the Heughfoot (the cheerful hunter), ply a new idea. This page, for instance, is a and his cousin Grace Armstrong, fresh and laugh- brilliant one; it is full of wit. But let us see how ing like the morning; and the Children of the much is original. This passage,» continued his Mist, and the baying of the blood-hound, that lordship, «comes from Shakspeare; this bon mot tracks their steps at a distance (the hollow echoes from one of Sheridan's comedies; this observaare in our ears now), and Amy and her hapless tion from another writer; and yet the ideas are love, and the villain Varney, and the deep voice new moulded, and perhaps Scott was not aware of George of Douglas-and the immoveable Bala- of their being plagiarisms. It is a bad thing to fré, and Master Oliver, the barber, in Quentin have a good memory.» « I should not like to Durward—and the quaint humour of the Fortunes have you for a critic,» observed Captain Medwin. of Nigel, and the comic spirit of Peveril of the << Set a thief to catch a thief," was the reply. Peak and the fine old English romance of Ivan- On the death of the illustrious Byron, Sir Walhoe. What a list of names! What a host of as-ter Scott evinced his candour and liberality of sociations! What a thing is human life! What a mind in the following tribute to his lordship's power is that of genius! What a world of thought memory :— and feeling is thus rescued from oblivion! How many hours of heartfelt satisfaction has our author given to the gay and thoughtless! How many sad hearts has he soothed in pain and so-something approaching to terror, as if we knew litude! It is no wonder that the public repay, with lengthened applause and gratitude, the pleasure they receive. He writes as fast as they can read, and he does not write himself down. He is always in the public eye, and we do not tire of him. His worst is better than any other person's best. His back-grounds (and his latter works are little else but back-grounds capitally made out), are more attractive than the principal and most complicated figures of other writers. His works (taken together) are almost like a new edition of human nature. This is indeed to be an author! That mighty genius, which walked amongst men as something superior to ordinary mortality, and whose powers were beheld with wonder, and not whether they were of good or of evil, is laid as soundly to rest as the poor peasant whose ideas never went beyond his daily task. The voice of just blame, and that of malignant censure, are at once silenced; and we feel almost as if the great luminary of heaven had suddenly disappeared from the sky, at the moment when every telescope was levelled for the examination of the spots which dimmed its brightness. It is not now the question what were Byron's faultswhat his mistakes: but how is the blank which he has left in British literature to be filled up? Not, we fear, in one generation, which, among many highly-gifted persons, has produced none who approach Byron in originality, the first attribute of genius. Only thirty-seven years old—so much already done for immortality-—so much time remaining, as it seemed to us short-sighted mortals, to maintain and to extend his fame, and to atone for errors in conduct and levities in composition: who will not grieve that such a race has been shortened, though not always keeping the straight path—such a light extinguished, though somtimes flaming to dazzle and to bewilder? One word on this ungrateful subject ere we quit it for ever. « The errors of Lord Byron arose neither from depravity of heart,-for Nature had not committed the anomaly of uniting to such extraordinary talents an imperfect moral sense,—nor from feelings dead to the admiration of virtue. No man had ever a kinder heart for sympathy, or a more open hand for the relief of distress; and no mind was ever more formed for the enthusiastic admiration of noble actions, provided he was convinced that the actors had proceeded on disinterested principles. But his wonderful genius was of a nature which disdained restraint, even when restraint was most wholesome. When at school, the tasks in which he excelled were those only which he undertook voluntarily; and his situation as a young man of rank, with strong passions, and in the uncontrolled enjoyment of considerable fortune, added to that impatience of strictness or coercion which was natural to him as an author; he refused to plead at the bar of criticism. As a man, he would not submit to be morally amenable to the tribunal of public opinion. Remonstrances from a friend, of whose intentions and kindness he was secure, had often great weight with him; but there were few who could venture on a task so difficult. Reproof he endured with impatience, and reproach hardened him in his error; so that he often resembled the gallant war-steed, who rushes forward on the steel that wounds him. In the most painful crisis of his private life, he evinced this irritability and impatience of censure in such a degree, as almost to resemble the noble victim of the bull-fight, which is more maddened by the squibs, darts, and petty annoyances of the unworthy crowds beyond the lists, than by the lance of his nobler, and (so to speak) his more legitimate antagonist. In a word, much of that in which he erred was in bravado and scorn of his censors, and was done with the motive of Dryden's despot, 'to show his arbitrary power.' It is needless to say that his was a false and prejudicial view of such a contest; and, if the noble bard gained a sort of triumph, by compelling the world to read poetry, though mixed with baser matter, because it was his, he gave in return an unworthy triumph to the unworthy, beside deep sorrow to those whose applause, in his cooler moments, he most valued. << It was the same with his politics, which on several occasions assumed a tone menacing and contemptuous to the constitution of his country; while, in fact, he was in his own heart sufficiently sensible, not only of his privileges as a Briton, but of the distinction attending his high birth and rank, and was peculiarly sensitive of those shades which constitute what is termed the manners of a gentleman. Indeed, notwithstanding his having employed epigrams, and all the petty war of wit, when such would have been much better abstained from, he would have been found, had a collision taken place between the different parties in the state, exerting all his energies in defence of that to which he naturally belonged. "We are not Byron's apologists, for now, alas! he needs none. His excellencies will now be universally acknowledged, and his faults (let us hope and believe) not remembered in his epitaph. It will be recollected what a part he has sustained in British literature since the first appearance of Childe Harold, a space of nearly sixteen years. There has been no reposing under the shade of his laurels, no living upon the resource of past reputation; none of those petty precautions which little authors call taking care of their fame. Byron let his fame take care of itself. His foot was always in the arena, his shield hung always in the lists; and although his own gigantic renown increased the difficulty of the struggle, since he could produce nothing, however great, which exceeded the public estimate of his genius, yet he advanced to the honourable contest again and again, and came always off with distinction, almost always with complete triumph. As various in composition as Shakspeare himself (this will be admitted by all who are acquainted with his Don Juan), he has embraced every topic in human life, and sounded every string on the divine harp, from its slightest to its most powerful and heart-astounding tones. There is scarce a passion or a situation which has escaped his pen; and he might be drawn, like Garrick, between the weeping and the laughing muse, although his most powerful efforts have certainly been dedicated to Melpomene. His genius seemed as prolific as various. The most prodigal use did not exhaust his powers, but seemed rather to increase their vigour. Neither Childe Harold, nor any of the most beautiful of his earlier tales, contain more exquisite morsels of poetry than are to be found scattered through the cantos of Don Juan, amidst verses which he appears to have thrown off with an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning its leaves to the wind. But that noble tree will never more bear fruit or blossom! It has been cut down in its strength, and the past is all that remains to us of Byron. All that's bright must fade, The brightest still the fleetest. with whom it appears he spends many an hour, but I was just thirty minutes too late! Sir Walter had been there, had told the painter some anecdotes which he assured me threw him into convulsions, and that he had been laughing ever since; and I believed him, for he was hardly out of a convṛlsion when I entered. DisappointedI proceeded to the Parliament-house (where Sir Walter sits as chief clerk to the Lord Commission "With a strong feeling of awful sorrow, we ers), and as soon as I found out my way into take leave of the subject. Death creeps upon court, I had the good luck to find the object of our most serious as well as upon our most idle my pursuit. I needed no monitor to point him employments; and it is a reflection solemn and out-I knew him instantly. I had never seen gratifying, that he found our Byron in no mo- him before in my life; but I had read some of ment of levity, but contributing his fortune, and his works, and, from the pictorial and ideal togehazarding his life, in behalf of a people only en-ther, I had formed in my mind his face exactly— deared to him by their past glories, and as fellow- and had I seen him hobbling in his favourite creatures suffering under the yoke of a heathen 'Prince's-street,' I should have known him to oppressor. To have fallen in a crusade for free-be Sir Walter Scott. I pushed on to the advodom and humanity, as in olden times, it would have been an atonement for the blackest crimes, and may in the present be allowed to expiate greater follies than even exaggerated calumny has propagated against Byron.»> The first person on whom his Majesty George IV conferred a baronetage, was Sir Walter Scott; and in August, 1822, when the king honoured Edinburgh with a visit, Sir Walter acted as croupier, or vice-president, at a dinner given by the Lord Provost and corporation, to the royal guest. In the summer of 1825, Sir Walter paid a visit to Ireland, where he was most hospitably received by the sons of the Shamrock. During his stay in Dublin, he frequently visited the library adjoining St Patrick's cathedral; on one of these occasions the deputy librarian, who happened to be a collegian, having got into conversation with the (then) « Great Unknown,» wished to take him by surprise, and thereby prove his own dexterity. With this view he exclaimed, « Oh, Sir Walter, do you know that it is only lately I have had time to get through your Redgauntlet.» «Sir," replied Sir Walter, «I never met with such a book. The librarian stood rebuked, and said nothing. The following lively description of Sir Walter's personal appearance was written by a gentleman who visited Edinburgh in 1825. " My departure from ➖➖➖➖was so sudden that I had no time to seek letters of introduction; and the Scotch are not naturally fond of introductions which only give them trouble; but I had resolved upon seeing Sir Walter Scott before I left Edinburgh, and, had Constable been open, I could have been at no loss, but his door was unfortunately shut. I contrived, however, to get an introduction to Mr the historical painter, with whom I knew the poet was acquainted, and cates' bench (a place reserved exclusively for the |