Drink, weary, pilgrim, drink, and,

pray.

For the. kind. soul. of. Sybil. Grey, Who, built, this, cross, and, well, We at first apprehended that such a fountain must really have existed, and that a desire of displaying topographical knowledge had here misled the poet, but the notes do not furnish even this apology for a puerility which half destroys the effect of one of the most pleasing passages in the piece. The remainder of the dying scene is noble and character istical. Pangs of remorse for the fate of Constance, which he learns from Clara, alternate in the mind of the dying warrior with anxiety for the event of the battle, which is represented as more dubious than bably it ever was in reality. At length

pro

"The war, that for a space did fail,
Now trebly thundering swelled the gale,

And STANLEY! was the cry;~~
A light on Marmion's visage spread,
And fired his glazing eye:
With dying hand, above his head
He shook the fragment of his blade,

And shouted “ Victory!-
Charge. Chester, charge! On, Stanley,

on!

Were the last words of Marmion."

We almost grudge to a knave guilty of forgery the glorious death of a Wolfe and a Nelson. The rest of the canto relates the destruction of the scotch army, and the death of their gallant though faulty and imprudent monarch, sums up the character of Marmion, relates that his body having been stripped by plunderers, a humble peasant was buried by mistake under his monument in Lichfield cathedral, whilst "the last lord Marmion" lies beneath a hameless hillock by the side of Sybil Grey's fountain, a whimsical kind of posthumous disgrace, it clears up the fame of De Wilton, and marries him to Clara.

We have thus gone through the analysis of this original, spirited,

and entertaining poem. The space we have allotted to it, may serve in part to show our sense of its merit and importance. Of its imperfections we have spoken with the less reserve because they appear to us rather the avoidable faults of a haste and negligence at which the public has a right to be offended, than the pitiable failures of overtasked abilities, or the venial errors of an ill formed taste. It displays, we think, equal ability and vigour with the former production of its author, but certainly less care and exertion on the whole, though the last two cantos are much more highly wrought than the rest, and are more grand than any part of the Lay of the last Minstrel." We likewise consider it as an advantage on the side of Marmion, that no goblin, no spirit, no sorcery, interferes with the action of its elfin knight and the summoner adhuman personages, for both the

mit of a natural solution.

The ungrateful task remains to us of mentioning those "Introductory Epistles," that here take the place to of the "Lay." These have noof the elegant preludes to each canthing whatever to do with the prin They are familiar letters in ryhme, cipal poem, or any of its characters. addressed by Mr. Scott, from his country house in Etterick Forest, to different private friends, and like real familiar letters, ramble from subject to subject, as fancy prompts, without any particular drift or aim. This kind of writing, would have ben delightful in the hands of Cowper, but it will never answer with Mr. Scott. Sentiment must be the life of it, and he is not the poet of sentiment, but of action and manners. Carry him to the camp or the court, place before his eyes a battle, will know how to reflect back the a festival, a hunting match, and he der, with the truth, the spirit, the busy scene upon the mind of his reafine touches of life itself. but to

shape a beautiful image of inanimate nature, to dwell upon it with the eye of love and admiration till he infuses into it a soul by the warmth and activity of his own, the privilege of Pygmalion is denied to the Minstrel of the Border. He has endeavoured to give some interest to the first epistle by commemorating the two eminent statesmen we have lately lost; but though there are some happy lines characteristic of each, it appears to us that the passage is too much deformed by exaggeration, too quaint in some of its ideas, and too prolix, and negligent upon the whole, ever to be come celebrated, or popular. The

numerous allusions to the ancient romances, to old border tales, and other superstitious legends, with which these epistles are bestrown, are frigid and idle, and such a mass of notes are appended to them, that the really valuable part of these prformances, their descriptions of local scenery, though marked with all the vigour of the writer, would scarcely suffice to give currency to the rest; the author may therefore think he has done well and wisely to usher them into the world under the powerful protection of Marmion, but we believe most of his readers will be of a very different opinion.

ART. III. Metrical Legends, and other Poems. By CHARLES KIRKPATRICK SHARPE, Esq. 8vo. pp. 107.

The thistle in my mother's bower.
A stone of the wall was all her seat,

The ivy hung round her head→→
Sir Hugh drew in his courser fleet,
And thus to the lady he said:
O lady fair, why sit you there,

MR. Sharpe has already publish- She touch'd a lute of ivory small, ed some pieces of this description And sung with witching power, in the modern part of the ministrel-The grass grows in my father's hall, sy of the Scottish border. In his, and indeed in most of our modern ballads, there is a discordance between the manner and the matter. When tales of Gothic superstition are related in language of the newest fashion, it has the same sort of effect as many persons may remember to have felt at seeing Hamlet enacted in a court suit of black velvet. It is not necessary to go back to the obsolete, but it is necessary to avoid neologism.

The best specimen of these ballads is not too long to be inserted here.

Alone by the ruin'd wal!?
The evening star shines bright afar,
And chill the damp dews fall.
O, well I love this twilight hour,

When all the world is mute;
And Echo from the lonely tower

Sings sweetly to my lute.

Alight, alight, thou gentle knight,

And let thy courser rove,
While I thine eager ears delight
With lays of melting love.

For many a ditty do I know

Of love-that charm of youth,
That pleasing source of weal and woe,
Of falsehood and of truth.

O lady gay, I must not stay,

Tho' thou'rt so wondrous fair;
For much I fear these ruins drear,
Where mournful ghosts repair.

My sire that castle overthrew,
Destroy'd the owner's name :
His wife and daughter perish'd too
Unpitied in the flame.

Sad spectres oft with dismal groans

Glide ghastly o'er the green;
And through the crevice of the stones
Pale rays of light are seen.
And stil, at midnight hour I've heard,
Again the castle burns;
Tho' not one ivy leaf is sear'd

When cheerful morn returns.
Alight, alight, faint-hearted knight,
No ghost thou need'st to fear;
For I can quell the fiends of hell
With carols loud and clear.

O dame sans peer, I rest not here;
The daisy drinks the dew;

E'en now the bat, to spectres dear,

From yon dark turret flew.

But bark the thrush, in wild rose bush,
Expecting home his mate--

O stranger stay-why this delay,
When ladies bid you wait?

The nightshade shook in the gothic

nook

At her chords of magic power-
With fatal weight, on the hapless knight,
Rush'd down the crashing tower.

Ere dawn of day, his courser true
Returned home again:

And long they sought him, young Sir
Hugh,

But still they sought in vain.

Where yonder mass of ruin spreads
Its stones of mighty size,

And wall-flowers wave their golden
heads,

The slumb'ring warrior lies:

Ah, ne'er again on courser fleet

To wind his hunter's born;
Ah, ne'er to smell the breezes sweet
Breathe through the flowering thorn,

He spurr'd his steed-she struck the And still they tell, at that lone place

lute,

And sung so loud and shrill,
That Echo join'd in sweet pursuit
From ev'ry tower and hill.
The dulcet sounds, in evil hour,
Arrest the warrior's way-
Ah! who can conquer Music's pow'r
When Beauty chaunts the lay?
With luckless speed he left his steed,
And sat the lady by; /

The nightshade shook in the gothic
nook,

And the owl was heard to cry.

The female form is seen,
With silver veil, and lovely face,

And robe of velvette green.

She strikes a lute of ivory small,

And sings with Syren power; The grass grows in my father's hall, 'The thistle in my mother's bower.'

This story is prettily conceived, but it is a compleat sample of patch work phraseology.

ART. IV. Ancient Ballads; selected from Percy's Collection; with explanatory Notes, taken from different Authors, for the Use and Entertainment of young Persons, By a Lady. With Plates. Foolscap, 8vo. pp. 211.

THIS is a very foolish and paltry book. It was compiled it seems, for the benefit of some very delicate lady, who regretted that she

was

Dromore, and that it does not appear to us that his collection is likely to be at all injurious to young women of correct and really vir "under the necessity of re- tuous minds, for children indeed it fusing her daughters the pleasure was never designed; but neither is of reading Percy's Collection of this selection, in which the old Ancient Ballads, on account of the orthography is preserved, by any great number amongst them which means level to their comprehenwere unfit to meet the eye of youth." sions. Neither taste nor judgment We shall take leave to remark, that is displayed in the choice of piesuch a statement as this is ex- ces inserted: the notes are very tremely injurious to the memory trifling, and the printing is exof the late respectable bishop of tremely inaccurate.

ART. V. Edwy and Elgiva, and Sir Everhard; Two Tales. By the Rev. ROBERT BLAND, foolscap 8vo. pp. 187.

THERE are few readers of history who do not recollect how powerfully their sympathies were excited by Hume's pathetic account of the loves of Edwy and Elgiva. William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Hoveden, furnished that elegant writer with great part of his materials; but many of the embellishments were, probably, drawn froin the storehouse of his imagination. At least, he has altogether omitted to weigh the evidence of the above-mentioned chroniclers against that adduced by the Fiorilegist (Matthew of Westminster) and divers others, who tell a very different tale, making the virtuous Elgiva no better than a low and designing strumpet, and her royal lover a fainéant and debauchce. It is not impossible that his abhorrence of priestcraft (not to say of priesthood) might in this instance have weighed with Hume (as it certainly would, in a similar case, with Voltaire) to overlook all that a true catholic may have to ailege in favour of archbishop Odo, and his famous coadjutor the de-, vil's nose-puller. The poet has a much better excuse for following implicitly the narrative of the historian. In so doing, he has adopted a tale, than which the page of history does not present any more fit to excite the warmest interest and engage the softest passions of the soul.

The general objection to historical poetry, that the imagination of the writer is either confined within boundaries so close as materially to injure the spirit of the performance, or else by its indulgence can hardly fail to violate truth and consistency in a very offensive degree, does not apply to the subject which Mr. Bland has chosen as the ground work of this his first tale. The events are thrown to a

sufficient distance of time to allow most, if not all, the advantages of mere fable. The historical outline, however complete as a whole, is sufficiently general to afford room for fancy in the work, ad libitum, in the filling up of every particular part; in short, the poet is bound down to little more than a due observance of costume and character. As to this point, we shall only just observe in the present place that Mr. Bland appears to us, generally speaking, to have discharged his obliga! tion in a very masterly manner. A professed antiquarian, may undoubtedly find causes for cavilling and censure; but it is not to such critics. that a poet is strictly bound to answer, he has performed his duty if he has committed no errors that are glaringly obnoxious to common sense and sound general understanding; for ourselves, examining the poem under this impression, we can perceive no fault of greater magnitude than that the character of Clarenbert, (in itself admirably designed, and bearing the true stamp of original genius in its execution) is, as we apprehend, more suitable to the refined chivalry of the fourteenth, than the ferocious valour of the ninth, century; and the loves of Edwy and his unhappy bride more sentimental, perhaps, than we can well imagine any amour in that dark and sensual age to have been. Yet for these very faults we are little inclined to blame the author; since, in the absence of the first, we should lose the chief beauty of the work; and the second is rather to be ascribed to the historian who gave the design than to the poet who has adopted it.

We now come to the task of enquiring what advantage our author has made of the facilities which his plan afforded to the free excursions of his imagination. In what man

ner has he filled up the characters of which history has only furnished. him with the outlines? What new characters and events has he grafted upon the historyitself? How has he improved the opportunities afforded to the exercise of his descrip tive powers?

The most prominent figure in the historical groupe is, without any doubt, the gloomy prelate of Canterbury; and the colouring which Mr. Bland has bestowed on this terrible form will seem as a fair specimen of the result of our first enquiry. At the same time the pic. ture presented to our senses of the dreadful scene in which he acts so distinguished a part will afford no unfavourable evidence to our author's success in descriptive painting. It occurs very early in the poem which opens with the bedding-banquet of Edwy, and the Bard's Epithalamium. The bride and bridegroom retire from the scene of revelry; and their absence is the signal for the developement of Odo's diabolical plans of mischief. "Meanwhile the jovial lords carousing

drain

As when the serpent view'd our in-
fant earth

And Nature first exulting in her birth,
He, only he, upon the glad domain,
In his dark soul conceiv'd a rankling pain;
He, sworn the heav'n-made image to de-
stroy,

To rob creation of her hopeful joy,
Fed the black gall, and bad strange tears
to flow

From eyes unus'd to weep, from hearts
unknown to woe ;—

Thus on the pleasures of the bridal feast
Malignant scowl'd Augustine's hoary
priest.

Whatever mirth the circling cups inspire,
Whatever apture from the voice or lyre

That now its dreadful warning speaks