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LETTER XL.

COLIN MACKENZIE, Esq. of Edinburgh.

Lichfield, June 2, 1799.

FROM the time your priceless packet came, I have been, at frequent intervals, absorbed in Mr Scott's wonderfully fine epic ballad. Not one of the beautiful ballads in Percy's Collection is so interesting. I instantly committed it to memory. As Antony says of Cleopatra, it is of all hours. Glenfinlas* is for the initiated, but the Eve of St John agitates the dull dead-calm of unpoetic bosoms, while, to spirits rightly touched, infinite is its power to thrill and to impress.

You know there are two St Johns; but I conclude this is the Eve of the winter, rather than the summer saint, as the season so much better harmonizes with the finely obscure horrors of the scene, than would the softer hours of a summer night.

The dreary flame of the beacon on the wild

* See latter part of the letter to the same gentleman, dated Feb. 3d 1799, for mention of that very fine poem.-Ş.

lone hill, flaring to the wind, is a feature wholly new in poetic scenery. Its fierce red light, amid the solitude which surrounds it, is dismal " as the darkness visible" of Pandemonium itself: and charming in their lovely locality, are the landscapes of Melrose, and afterwards of Tiviotdale. The last, so totally unexpected, is the " island in the stormy main," so much is its selfbeauty increased by the contrasted objects and feelings which precede and succeed to it.

sunny

The only circumstance not original in this impressive poem, is the grasp of the apparition, and the ribbon thereafter worn on the scorched and withered wrist. That is taken from the awful tradition of Lord Tyrone's spectre in the chamber of Lady Berresford.

There appears one little oversight in this ballad:

"Who spilleth life shall forfeit life,
So bid thy lord believe,"

says the spirit. The baron's destiny does not accomplish that prediction. The silence of the severe monastic order, La Trappe, is not death. At the time the scene is laid, I conclude the feudal power of the barons was above the laws; but his suicide would fulfil the pro

phecy; and if committed on the beacon-hill, would allow a recurrence of that novel object in the close, which might have a fine effect. The lady's criminal infidelity to her husband is justly punished in her expiatory darkness; but suppose the two* concluding stanzas were thus extended to four :

In three more years the rage of war
The beacon hills relight,

The rain falls fast, the wild winds roar
Loud on yon guilty height+.

Whose on the death-tree, scath'd and bare,'
Whose is that perish'd form,

Reveal'd, at times, by the red flare,
Unquench'd by rain or storm?

* There is a nun in Melrose bower
That never sees the sun;

There is a monk in Dryburgh tower,
That speaketh word to none.

The nun that never sees the day,
The monk that speaks to none:
That nun is Smaylhome's lady gay,
That monk the bold baron."

+ The beacon-hill had been the place of assignation between the baron's lady and the knight he murdered in his jealousy.—S

And whose the moan, which oft the gales

From Melrose towers convey?

That is a nun, who never hails

The blessed light of day.

"The nun that never sees the day :'

The tree-hung corse abhorr'd;
That nun was Smaylhome's lady gay,

That corse her murderous lord.

Do you not wonder at the effrontery, when a female hand attempts to shoot in the strong bow of your poetic Ulysses?

I remain, with high sense of poetic obligation, Sir, &c.

LETTER XLI.

REV. T. S. WHALLEY,

Lichfield, June 7, 1799.

I CONGRATULATE you on the success of your play*. Many of my acquaintance have spoken to me of it as charming. My curiosity of perusal is I trust it is in blank verse.

extreme.

It would

*The Castle de Montval.-S.

be difficult for me to be pleased with a tragedy in prose, which yet I never was. Its advocates say it is more like real life; wax-work is more like real life than painting, but is it therefore better? From the quotations given in the newspapers, I fear Mr Sheridan's is of the degenerate class*; and if so, with all the advantages that buskined prose may receive from his glorious talents, I shall think of Shakespeare, of Beaumont and Fletcher, Otway, Lee, Rowe, Young, Thomson, and Jephson-and sigh.

It is great injustice that you may not be allowed to reap a part of the golden harvest you sowed; but pecuniary emolument was not your stimulus, and, thank God, is not essential to the delight of your success as a tragic writer.

You say I must read Mrs Siddons's part in your tragedy, as written for her manner of speaking, and for her's alone. I have always thought it her highest praise that she is no mannerist; but the warm, glowing, graceful creature who speaks, and looks, and moves by no other impulses but those of nature and passion, co-operating with beauty, elegance, and majesty. If she had any other singularity, except that of being the most perfect speaker that can be heard, she would not be the transcendent

* Pizarro.-S.

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