first decision respecting the Last Minstrel was, that he was evidently the production of a strong and vivid mind, and not quite unworthy the author of Glenfinlas and the Eve of St John; but that it was difficult to eke out so long a poem with uniform spirit; that success generally emboldens writers to become more careless in a second production; that- in short, months elapsed, before one-tenth of our wise critics had discovered that a long poem which no one reader could bring himself to lay down till he had arrived at the last line, was a composition destined perhaps to suggest new rules of criticism, but certainly not amenable to the tribunal of a taste formed on the previous examination of models of a perfectly different nature. That Minstrel is now in its turn become a standard; Marmion will therefore be compared with this metre, and will most probably be in the first instance pronounced too long, or too short, or improperly divided, or &c. &c. &c., till the sage and candid critics are compelled, a second time, by the united voice of all who can read at all, to confess that aut prodesse aut delectare' is the only real standard of poetical merit. One of my reasons for liking your Minstrel was, that the subject was purely and necessarily poetical; whereas my sincere and sober opinion of all the epic poems I have ever read, the Odyssey perhaps excepted, is that they ought to have been written in prose; and hence, though I

think with Mackintosh, that 'forte epos acer ut nemo Varius scribit,' I rejoice in your choice of a subject which cannot be considered as epic, or conjure up in the memory a number of fantastic rules, which, like Harpies, would spoil the banquet offered to the imagination. A few days, however, will, I hope, enable me to write avec connaissance de cause."

I have, I believe, alluded, in a former Chapter of this narrative, to a remark which occurs in Mr Southey's Life of Cowper, namely, that a man's character may be judged of even more surely by the letters which his friends addressed to him, than by those which he himself penned; and I cannot but think that-freely as Scott's own feelings and opinions were poured from his head and heart to all whom he considered as worthy of a wise and good man's confidence the openness and candour with which the best and most sagacious of his friends wrote to him about his own literary productions, will be considered hereafter (when all the glories of this age shall, like him, have passed away), as affording a striking confirmation of the truth of the biographer's observation. It was thus, for example, that Mr Southey himself, who happened to be in London when Marmion came out, expressed himself to the author, on his return to Keswick. "Half the poem I had read at Heber's before my

own copy arrived. I went punctually to breakfast with him, and he was long enough dressing to let me devour so much of it. The story is made of better materials than the Lay, yet they are not so well fitted together. As a whole, it has not pleased me so much-in parts, it has pleased me more. There is nothing so finely conceived in your former poem as the death of Marmion: there is nothing finer in its conception any where. The introductory epistles I did not wish away, because, as poems, they gave me great pleasure; but I wished them at the end of the volume, or at the beginning

any

where except where they were. My taste is perhaps peculiar in disliking all interruptions in narrative poetry. When the poet lets his story sleep, and talks in his own person, it has to me the same sort of unpleasant effect that is produced at the end of an act. You are alive to know what follows, and lo down comes the curtain, and the fiddlers begin with their abominations. The general opinion, however, is with me, in this particular instance.

I have no right to quote the rest of Mr Southey's letter, which is filled chiefly with business of his own; but towards its close, immediately after mentioning a princely instance of generosity on the part of his friend Mr Walter Savage Landor to a brother poet, he has a noble sentence, which I hope to be pardoned for extracting, as equally applicable to his

own character and that of the man he was addressing."Great poets," says the author of Thalaba, "have no envy; little ones are full of it! I doubt whether any man ever criticised a good poem maliciously, who had not written a bad one himself." I must not omit to mention, that on his way from London down to Keswick, Mr Southey had visited at Stamford the late industrious antiquary Octavius Gilchrist, who was also at this time one of Scott's frequent correspondents. Mr Gilchrist writes (May 21) to Scott" Southey pointed out to me a passage in Marmion, which he thought finer than any thing he remembered."

Mr Wordsworth knew Scott too well not to use the same masculine freedom. "Thank you," he says, "for Marmion. I think your end has been attained. That it is not the end which I should wish you to propose to yourself, you will be well aware, from what you know of my notions of composition, both as to matter and manner. In the circle of my acquaintance, it seems as well liked as the Lay, though I have heard that in the world it is not so. Had the poem been much better than the Lay, it could scarcely have satisfied the public, which has too much of the monster, the moral monster, in its composition. The spring has burst out upon us all at once, and the vale is now in exquisite beauty; a gentle shower has fallen this

morning, and I hear the thrush, who has built in

my orchard, singing amain. be to see you here again! your sincere friend,

How happy we should Ever, my Dear Scott, W. W."

I pass over a multitude of the congratulatory effusions of inferior names, but must not withhold part of a letter on a folio sheet, written not in the first hurry of excitement, but on the 2d of May, two months after Marmion had reached Sunninghill.

"I have," says Ellis, "been endeavouring to divest myself of those prejudices to which the impression on my own palate would naturally give rise, and to discover the sentiments of those who have only tasted the general compound, after seeing the sweetmeats picked out by my comrades and myself. I have severely questioned all my friends whose critical discernment I could fairly trust, and mean to give you the honest result of their collective opinions; for which reason, inasmuch as I shall have a good deal to say, besides which, there seems to be a natural connexion between foolscap and criticism, I have ventured on this expanse of paper. In the first place, then, all the world are agreed that you are like the elephant mentioned in the Spectator, who was the greatest elephant in the