fatigues it by the too near repetition of the same syllable. It might be altered easily. There are a few other little neglects of the same sort; but, to readers of sensibility, they are lost in the poetic blaze of the poem. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth stanzas, are original description, and beautiful in the very first degree.

I ought to have observed, on my earliest mention of this poem, that it makes fortunate use of the Highland superstition, second-sight.

The picture drawn by Lord Ronald, and afterwards by the huntress of the then stern and melancholy seer, when he was gay and enamoured, forms another fine contrast. The thirty-first verse is supremely fine. The abrupt departure of Lord Ronald, in contempt of the warning, is striking,—

"And call'd his dogs and gay withdrew."

The return of the dogs, their howl of lament and crouching position, is an exquisite picture. I think I have seen something like it in Ossian, but the symptoms of their change from sorrow to terror, are original description, and we shudder beneath it; and the self-awakened harp!-how it thrills us!

The half-opened door, and stealing-tip-toe entrance of the seeming beauteous huntress, has a

sweet effect. She is the most natural beauty that poetry has painted, with her chilled complexion and drenched garments. By the simple action of bending to wring her wet hair over the embers, she is brought distinctly to the eye. Her transformation from a fair huntress to a fiend of witchcraft, on the temptation being resisted, is grandly sublime-and so is the remainder of the poem, till the three last stanzas, which are sweetly pathetic.

Three times has the name of Scott adorned the poetic annals of England, since the year 1757. At that period, a Mr Scott of Amwell published four beautiful elegies on the four seasons ;-of moral elegies they stand next in merit to Gray's Country Churchyard. Another Scott published a poem, much admired on its first appearance, entitled, The Day of Judgment; and also a monody on the death of his wife, that passed not away without its fame. I confess, however, that neither of them impressed or became dear to me like the writings of his namesake; they enrich the supplementary volumes to Dodsley's Collection. This verse is from the earlier Scott's poetry:

“O, human life, how mutable, how vain!
How thy wide sorrows circumscribe thy joy!
A sunny island in a stormy main!

A speck of azure in a cloudy sky!"

The powers of this third Scott rise a bolder flight than those of his first namesake, and wholly eclipse those of his second.

I remain, Sir, &c.

LETTER XXXIII.

REV. T. S WHALLEY.

Lichfield, March 7, 1799.

I FIND your tragedy is announced for speedy representation. It would give me great pleasure to see it performed before an audience sensible of its merit, and liberal of applause; but my health and strength are too unequal to the hurries of London, for me to dare encountering them. My next pleasure would be to learn its success, and quietly to explore its pages. Even of that pleasure I fear the enjoyment is remote. I have every trust in your powers; but the present age is an Egyptian taskmaster to the tragic dramatist. It calls for Shakespearean viands, yet will not allow the use of those poetic ingredients which composed them. Thus plays Thus plays are produced, of which may be said what Madam Sevigné has recorded of her

son's disposition and talents, that they had made him completely an orange gourd soused in snow: by which I understand, that, with pretensions to enthusiasm and glow, he was, in reality, like that apparently flaming plant, watery and cold by nature. Of this coldness, generated by the restraints and the fastidiousness of modern taste and periodical public criticism, they are each unjust enough to complain, and to reproach the author for the productions of their own ice-house.

This consciousness has always repressed in my mind every idea of writing tragedy; but if I were obliged to assume the buskin, I would make a large dramatis personæ, people the stage well; endeavour to inspirit the representation by complicated business, and by numerous and contrasted characters. I would disdain to assume the fetters of the unities as to time and place, invented with a design to create a deception, which never did, never will, never can exist, for a single moment, in a rational mind, as Johnson has finely demonstrated in his preface to Shakespeare. It is by other means than the insane belief that the actors are really Cæsar and Antony, and the stage Rome, or Pharsalia, that the drama interests and affects. The mind readily accommodates itself to change of place, be the distance ever so wide; and as to time, if it extends beyond that of the re

presentation, an elapse must be supposed; and the elapse of years is as easily supposed as of weeks, or even of a single day or night. A boundless latitude, as to time, enables the author to exhibit the persons of his drama in various and contrasted situations.

In Shakespeare, we find the dramatic felicity which results from such emancipation—and, therefore I would emulate the freedom he asserted.

While I would avoid long declamation, my style should be impassioned, and consequently metaphoric, for metaphor is the natural language of a raised imagination and agitated heart.

Thus would I attempt the Shakespearean charac teristics rather than those of the Grecian, the French, or the modern English drama. Therefore, whatever my audience might do as to groaning, hissing, and cat-calling, at least they should not sleep. I verily believe, had Richard III., Cymbeline, Hamlet, or any other of Shakespeare's most admired plays been written and presented now, they would be hissed, groaned, and cat-called: so completely has modern criticism vitiated and depraved the taste and feelings of the age. It is no wonder that the tragic muse has sunkshe is not permitted to soar; but, at every hazard,