well applied. On the whole, the second and third of these epistles are, in our estimation, the best.

We now proceed to make a few comments on the chief poem of this volume. Marmion is a fictitious personage; the imaginary descendant of a family of that name, which became extinct in the reign of Edward IV. His adventures in this poem are grafted on a pretended mission, which he undertakes by order of Henry VIII, to James IV king of Scotland, to demand the cause of the immense preparations for war, which he was making, apparently with the view of invading England. The poem opens with the arrival of Lord Marmion and his train at Norham Castle, on the borders ; in the course of the following cantos he proceeds to the Scotish camp and capital, where he has an interview with James at a ball, receives an answer of defiance, returns toward England, and joins the army under the Earl of Surrey just marching to battle against the Scots at Flodden Field... They fight-he falls. This journey affords the author a series of scenes, in which he displays, with his wonted skill and vivacity, the manners and characters of the rival nations, particularly of the Scotch, in that ferocious age of declining chivalry. But had this been all, the progress of Lord Marmion" would have been more worthy to be celebrated by John Nicholls than Walter Scott. Out of the private history of the hero arises a deep, mysterious, and impassioned interest, which gives warmth, colouring, and animation, to what would otherwise have been a frigid and frivolous chronicle. Marmion is a hero of the highest order in war; a villain of the darkest turpitude in private life. He seduces and debauches a nun named Constance; afterwards he falls in love with the rich inheritance of Clara, a lady of splendid connexions, who is previously betrothed to De Wilton, a young and noble knight. Marmion by forged letters atraints the character of De Wilton, as a traitor; fights with him and overcomes him in single combat. Though supposed to be slain, De Wilton, on being carried from the field of tournament to the cottage of his old beadsman, recovers and is healed of his wounds. Then assuming the garb of a Palmer, he travels from shrine to shrine on the continent, for several years, and returns to England at the commencement of Lord Marmion's mission. Meeting with the latter accidentally at Norham Castle, and being perfectly secure in his disguise, De Wilton consents to be his conductor to Edinburgh. Meanwhile Clara, supposing De Wilton dead, has taken refuge from Lord Marmion's persecuting addresses in the convent of St. Hilda at Whitby, from whence Constance had been seduced by him. Constance knowing her asylum, conspires with a monk to poison her rival. The plot is discovered, and Con

stance, is surrendered by her seducer, for whose sake she had attempted the atrocious deed, into the hands of the spiritual powers. While Marmion is on his journey to Scotland, Constance and the monk are prisoners at Holy Island, whither they are followed by the Abbess of Whitby, Clara, and some of the sisters of St. Hilda. Constance and the monk are tried, condemned, and immured alive within the wall of St. Cuthbert's abbey in Holy Island. The Abbess, Clara, and their companions, on their return to Whitby, are captured at sea by a Scotish vessel, and carried to Edinburgh, while Lord Marmion is there. The Abbess obtains an interview with De Wilton, disguised as a Palmer, and places in his hands certain papers, delivered to her by the condemned Constance, in which his own innocence and Marmion's treachery are fully exposed. On the marching of the Scotish army, the Abbess and her companions are sent back under safeguard to England, but Clara is committed, or rather betrayed, to the protection of Lord Marmion, to be by him delivered to her kindred, instead of being restored to the convent, in which she was only a novice. Meanwhile De Wilton casts away his Palmer's weeds, is knighted anew by Douglas, earl of Angus, and suddenly quits Tantallon castle, after being recognized by Clara. Having joined the English army, and performed

miracles at the battle of Flodden, he finds Clara, after the death of Marmion; they are, of course, married, and the poem ends.

After this sketch of the fable, we shall not pretend to follow the poet through his details. The first canto presents little beside descriptions of barbarian pageantry and magnificence, in ceremony, feasting, and arms; but the imagination of the reader is filled, and his mind is prepared to expect high entertainment from a story that opens under such splendid auspices. The person and appearance of Lord Marniion are spiritedly pourtrayed in the following passage.

VOL. IV.

Along the bridge Lord Marmion rode,
Proudly his red-roan charger trod,

His helm hung at the saddle bow;
Well, by his visage, you might know
He was a stalworth knight, and keen,
And had in many a battle been ;
The scar on his brown cheek revealed
A token true of Bosworth field;
His eye-brow dark, and eye of fire,
Shewed spirit proud, and prompt to ire;
Yet lines of thought upon his cheek,
Did deep design and counsel speak.
His forehead, by his casque worn bare,
His thick moustache, and curly hair,
Ii

Coal-black, and grizzled here and there,
But more through toil than age;
His square turned joints, and strength of limb,
Shewed him no carpet knight so trim,
But, in close fight, a champion grim,
In camps, a leader sage.

Well was he armed from head to heel,
In mail, and plate, of Milan steel ;
But his strong helm, of mighty cost,
Was all with burnish'd gold emboss'd;
Amid the plumage of the crest,
A falcon hovered on her nest,

With wings outspread, and forward breast;
E'en such a falcon, on his shield,
Soared sable in an azure field:
The golden legend bore aright,

IS DIGHT."

"WHO CHECKS AT ME, TO DEATH
Blue was the charger's broidered rein,
Blue ribbons decked his arching mane;
The knightly housing's ample fold

Was velvet blue, and trapp'd with gold.'-pp. 26-28.

In the second canto, the ghostly tribunal, before which Constance and the monk are tried, and sentenced to be buried alive in the Abbey walls, though it reminds us of Mrs. Radcliffe's Inquisition, has features of strange horror, and a gloomy sublimity peculiarly its own. The scene is wrought up to the highest pitch of agony that can be borne by a reader of romance: and though it is marked with all the minuteness that characterizes the author, we confess that in none of his former poems have we met with any passage that struck us with a more powerful conviction of his talents: the distress is so awful, and the interest so excruciating, that we forgot both the Minstrel and the Mannerist, which rarely happens in reading Mr. Scott's artificial verse, and were entranced for a while in the realised presence of the merciless judges, and the despairing criminals. When we recovered our recollection, we felt as the latter might be supposed to feel, had they escaped by miracle from the dungeon, and found themselves breathing at liberty beyond the walls that were to have been their grave. We can present our readers with no abstract of this terrific scene. The following picture of Constance will however be a proof of the extraordinary merit of this part of the poem.

• When thus her face was given to view,
(Although so pallid was her hue,
It did a ghastly contrast bear,
To those bright ringlets glistering fair,)
Her look composed, and steady eye,
Bespoke a matchless constancy;

And there she stood so calm and pale,
That, but her breathing did not fail,
And motion slight of eye and head,
And of her bosom, warranted,
That neither sense nor pulse she lacks,
You might have thought a form of wax,
Wrought to the very life, was there;
So still she was, so pale, so fair.' p. 100.

And now that blind old Abbot rose,

To speak the Chapter's doom,

On those the wall was to inclose,

Alive, within the tomb ;

But stopped, because that woeful maid,
Gathering her powers, to speak essayed;
Twice she essayed, and twice, in vain,
Her accents might no utterance gain!
Nought but imperfect murmurs slip
From her convulsed and quivering lip
'Twixt each attempt all was so still,
You seemed to hear a distant rill-

'Twas ocean's swells and falls;
For though this vault of sin and fear
Was to the sounding surge so near,
A tempest there you scarce could hear, -
So massive were the walls.

At length, an effort sent apart
The blood that curdled to her heart,
And light came to her eye,

And colour dawned upon her cheek,
A hectic and a fluttered streak,
Like that left on the Cheviot peak,
By Autumn's stormy sky;

And when her silence broke at length,
Still as she spoke, she gathered strength,
And arm'd herself to bear.

It was a fearful sight to see

Such high resolve and constancy,

In form so soft and fair.. pp. 103-105.

The third canto "the Hostel or Inn" is very entertaining and miscellaneous. Lord Marmion's midnight adventure is fearfully imagined; but in this, as in all those apparently supernatural events, which abound in modern romance, when the secret is explained, the interest ceases, and can never be renewed: a riddle can only please so long as it puzzles. The song of Constance, in the same canto, has a much more natural and enduring charm; it is as sweetly wild, as if it had been sung by the unfortunate victim of seduction to the spontaneous music of the Eolian harp, on an autumnal evening.

Where shall the traitor rest,

He, the deceiver,

Who could win maiden's breast,

Ruin, and leave her?

In the lost battle,

Borne down by the flying,

Where mingles war's rattle,

With groans of the dying,

CHORUS. Eleu loro, &c. There shall he be lying.

Her wing shall the eagle flap,

O'er the false-hearted;

His warm blood the wolf shall lap,

Ere life be parted.

Shame and dishonour sit

By his grave ever;

Blessings shall hallow it,

Never, O never.

CHORUS. Eleu loro, &c. Never, O never.'pp. 141.—143.

The fourth and fifth cantos consist chiefly of curious delineations of the camp, the army and the clans that composed it, the city, the court, and in a word the whole costume of the age: the eye of the imagination is gloriously entertained, but the heart and the affections meanwhile are utterly unengaged. The ball-scene, in the fifth canto, is very lively and amusing. The gallant deportment and fiery volatile disposition of James IV. are characterized with great spirit. The midnight conversation piece between the abbess of St. Hilda and the Palmer (De Wilton) is tolerably dull and prosaic, but it is indispen sable toward the developement of the plot. The mysterious rewarning of the fatal issue of the expedition against England,