ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.

The Scene of this Poem is laid at Rokeby, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire, an shifts to the adjacent Fortress of Barnard Castle, and to other places in that Vicnt, The Time occupied by the Action is a space of Five Days, Three of which ar supposed to elapse between the end of the Fifth and the beginning of the Sixth Can The Date of the supposed events is immediately subsequent to the great Batte Marston Moor, 3d July, 1644. This period of public confusion has been cho without any purpose of combining the Fable with the Military or Political Ever: of the Civil War, but only as affording a degree of probability to the Fictio narrative new presented to the Public.

ROKEBY.

It was two years and a half after the publication of the "Lady of the Lake" -fore Scott gave his next poem to the world. During that interval he had moved om Ashestiel to Abbotsford, and the beginning of a great change was perceptible the aspirations of his life. He had passed his fortieth year, his family was owing up around him; already the two boys had reached an age when, both ing destined to active life, they would soon have to quit the paternal roof, and ott had begun to speculate on their future. In the Introduction which he wrote r the 1830 edition of his poetical works, he speaks as though he had in a large gree given up field-sports, and taken to the quieter and more sedate occupation planting, on account of advancing years and the absence of his sons, who used to his companions in coursing and hunting. But it is evident that his choice of a cw amusement had a deeper meaning than he then avowed or probably was onscious of.

For planting he had always, no doubt, entertained a strong partiality. Even in ldhood, he says, his sympathies were stirred by reading the account of benstone's "Leasowes," and in after life there was nothing which seemed to afford im so much pride and pleasure as in watching the naked hill-sides gradually routing with the saplings he had planted. "You can have no idea," said Scott Captain Basil Hall, "of the exquisite delight of a planter; he is like a painter ying on his colours: at every moment he sees his effects coming out. There is art or occupation comparable to this. It is full of past, present, and future joyment. I look back to the time when there was not a tree here, only bare ath; I look round, and see thousands of trees growing up, all of which, I may y almost each of which, have received my personal attention. I remember five ars ago looking forward, with the most delighted expectation, to this very hour, , as each year has passed, the expectation has gone on increasing. I do the same w: I anticipate what this plantation and that one will presently be, if only taken re of, and there is not a spot of which I do not watch the progress. Unlike ilding, or even painting, or indeed any other kind of pursuit, this has no end, d is never interrupted, but goes on from day to day, and from year to year, with perpetually augmenting interest." But he could hew as well as plant. He 1s expert with the axe, and one of the pleasantest sights of Abbotsford was to the Sheriff and Tam Purdie, in their shirt-sleeves, thinning the woods, while aida, the hound, looked gravely on.

It is not difficult to discover in this love of planting the germ of the ambition to hich he now began to yield himself to be a laird, and found a family. It was under the modest title of cottage, or farm, that he spoke of Abbotsford; but ady his plans were expanding, and the farm-house was gradually acquiring the pect and proportions of a mansion. Everything which flattered his sense of being anded proprietor was dear to him. It was not enough that he had bought an ate; he sought to make it his own in a more peculiar manner by converting the le farm into a gentleman's seat, and by calling into existence the woods which

were to cover the nakedness of the land. Both in the Introduction of 1830 and his private letters he speaks contemptuously of farming, and places planung above it as a nobler and more elevating pursuit. But one cannot but suspect th this feeling was not unconnected with the fact that farming was the occupa of the mere tenant, while planting was the business of the landlord.

Of course, as Scott's schemes assumed a grander form, so his expendi increased. That it was a feeling of necessity and not inclination that led him the composition of " Rokeby," is almost avowed in the Introduction of 1830. there speaks as though he would have been content to have devoted him entirely to his estate, and to have allowed the poetical field to lie fallow, had it r been for certain peremptory circumstances which again compelled him to take a the pen. "As I am turned improver on the earth of this every-day world, it wa under condition that the small tenement of Parnassus, which might be accesse to my labours, should not remain uncultivated." In plain words, he sat dow write a poem in order to get the money for his house and plantations. To friend Morritt, in confiding the first idea of “Rokeby," Scott was frank eno, on this point. "I want," he says, to build my cottage a little better than limited finances will permit out of my ordinary income; and although it is very t that an author should not hazard his reputation, yet, as Bob Acres says, I re think reputation should take some care of the gentleman in return."

In undertaking the work for the reasons thus explicitly avowed, Scott was gr conscious of his lack of poetic glow and impulse. The poem, apart from merits, has a peculiar interest for the reader who studies it as a piece of casă literary manufacture, and takes notice of the deliberate business-like way in wa it was produced. Three such successes as those of the "Minstrel,” "Marm and the "Lady of the Lake," might have made a vain man reckless and a man cowardly the one would have been terrified by the sound himself had as the other would have presumed upon his acknowledged powers. But Scott neither vain nor timid. He looked at the matter with a calm practical eye. thought he understood the popular taste, but he was quite aware that there been an unprecedented run of fortune in favour of his cards, and that he coal calculate on its continuance. His safety, he saw, lay in playing the game wi novel combination.

Determined not to throw away a chance, Scott was very cautious in the c of a subject, and very elaborate in working out the story which he at le decided on adopting. His first conception of a poem of which Bruce shoo the hero was discarded for the time (it afterwards appeared as the “ Lord of Isles"), even after he had written some of it, for fear the subject was not m enough to catch the public taste. Hitherto he had taken his stand on Scur. ground; he now resolved to venture southwards in search of the incidents scenery of his new poem. He was no stranger, however, to the country whic set himself to depict. Rokeby was the seat of his intimate friend Mr. Morra had visited it more than once; he returned expressly to freshen his recollect = " the district, and to note its aspect more carefully and narrowly; and his supplied him with an ample store of legendary and topographical infor Impressed with the conviction that the greater the degree of novelty be c infuse into the poem the greater would be its chances of success, he resolved: another experiment in his treatment of the story, besides transferring the # from Scotland to England. The force in the "Lay," he tells us, is thrown a style; in "Marmion, on description; in the "Lady of the Lake," on EŽERS now determined to make the portraiture of character, without excluding incident or description, the chief feature of "Rokeby."

The next point to be settled was the period in which the action should be laid. cutt was unfortunate in choosing the period of the Parliamentary Civil War. is friend, Mr. Morritt, at once detected the error, and urged him strongly to row back the date of the story to the Wars of the Roses. That would give the rd, he suggested, more freedom in the introduction of ghosts and similar perstitious effects; it would enable him to represent the district at a time when leading men, the lords of Barnard Castle and Rokeby, were playing a nobler and ore distinguished part tan in the Commonwealth; and, "civil war for civil war, e first had two poetical sides, and the last only one; for the Roundheads, though always thought them politically right, were sad materials for poetry; even Milton innot make much of them." One may not be disposed to endorse the view that ere was no poetry in the Puritans, but there can be little doubt that Scott's mpathies were warped in this respect, and that he did not catch the true spirit of e time. It might almost be assumed that he himself was conscious of this, for, cept for a chance phrase here and there, we might read the poem from beginning end without discovering in what period of English history the incidents were pposed to happen. There is nothing peculiarly characteristic of either Puritans Cavaliers in the personages introduced upon the stage; and Scott might just as ell have taken his friend's advice, and gone back to the feud of the Roses at once. hose who seek for a picture of England in the heat of the great strife between ourt and Parliament, will be disappointed. If, however, the reader is willing to ke the narrative on its own merits, without reference to its historical value, he ill find it by no means destitute of interest and beauty. An author has a right to aim that he shall be tested by the standard of what he sought to accomplish; in this instance it should be remembered that it was character and not history hch Scott applied himself to depict. Mortham and Rokeby, Bertram and Neale, must be taken (to compare small things with great) on the same terms as e take Lear and Hamlet, without reference to the exact time in which they lived as studies of that human nature, which is the same in every age.

The dedication of the work to Mr. Morritt, and the elaborate descriptions which contained of the estate and castle of Rokeby, gave rise to some sarcasm on the irt of London wits, who did not know the affectionate friendship which lent the ace an especial charm to Scott's partial eye. Moore, for instance, in his "Twoany Post-bag," has a hit at Scott as a bard who

"Having quitted the Borders to seek new renown,
Is coming by long quarto stages to town,

And begining with Rokeby (the job's sure to pay),
Means to do all the gentlemen's seats by the way."

The only way to rival the enterprising northern Ministrel is, Moore suggests :--
"To start a new poet through Highgate to meet him;
Who by means of quick proofs-no revises, long coaches-
May do a few villas before Scott approaches."

There were, however, as we have seen, many agreeable associations which gave olt a special interest in Rokeby. Nor were natural attractions wanting. Even when swarthy industry and exacting agriculture have done so much to efface e picturesque features of the country, there is much to charm the lover of natural enery, and the spirited fidelity of the poet's descriptions can still be recognised. aving outlined his characters, as it were, in the front of his poetical picture, Scott at to Rokeby to fill in the background. He had already visited the spot, and beauties had made a deep impression on his mind; brightened, doubtless, by * grateful recollections of his host's kindness and geniality. In a letter to Ellis

(July 8, 1809), he describes it as "one of the most enviable places I have ever seen it unites the richness and luxuriance of English vegetation, with the romantic varies of glen, torrent, and copse, which dignifies our Northern scenery.' Rokeby s modern mansion, on the site of an ancient castle, in the midst of a pleasant per in which two rapid and beautiful streams, the Greta and the Tees, unite their waters The scattered ruins of John Balliol's stately home, Barnard Castle, are to be for on a high bank overlooking the Tees. The castle has a chequered history. Edward took it from Balliol. It passed in succession to the Beauchamps of Warwick, the Staffords of Buckingham. Richard III. is said to have enlarged and strengthen its fortifications, and to have made it for some time his principal residence, for t purpose of holding in check the Lancastrian faction of the Northern countis. Subsequently we find it in the possession of the Nevilles, Earls of Westmoreland, it was forfeited to the crown after the insurrection against Queen Elizabeth in te eleventh year of her reign, and afterwards passed to Carr, the Earl of Somers James's the First's favourite, and Sir Harry Vane the elder. So that it was, doubti occupied in the Parliamentary interest during the civil war. Mortham Caste a now a farmhouse. It stands on the bank of the Greta, near the point where stream issues from a narrow dell into more open country. Traces of a still c time are also to be found in this neighbourhood. Not far from Greta Br there is a well-preserved Roman encampment, surrounded with a triple di lying between the River Greta and the brook called the Tutta. Roman alat and monuments have also been turned up in the vicinity.

Mr. Morritt has left an interesting account of Scott's second visit to Rokeb when he was collecting materials for his poem. The morning after he arrived, a said, "You have often given me materials for romance; now I want a good robbe cave and an old church of the right sort. So the two friends started on the cast and Scott found what he wanted in the ancient slate quarries of Brignal, and ruined abbey of Egglestone. Nor did Scott neglect even the minutest features a the scene. He took note of the little plants and ferns that grew about, saying in nature no two scenes were ever exactly alike; and that whoever copied tr what was before his eyes, would possess the same variety in his descriptions £* exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in L scenes he recorded.

Here we see Scott studying from nature-it is interesting to turn to the cou nion picture of the artificer at work. While composing "Rokeby" Scott gave occasional hour to the "Bridal of Triermain" and the "Lord of the Isles," and *** time for his planting as well. And all the while the clank of the trowel an hammer were ringing in his ears, and he was fretted with the schemes for his : " house, and the means of raising money for them. "As for the house and the por he said himself, "there are twelve masons hammering at the one, and a r noodle at the other." The building being unfinished, he had no room for hims and sat at his desk near a window looking out at the river, undisturbed by ** noise and bustle on the other side of the old bed-curtain, which separate sanctum from the rest of the only habitable portion of the house.