ceases when we are told of the self-education of the by natural causes. Circumstance has been styled monster, which is disgustingly minute in detail, and an unspiritual god,' and he seldom appears to less absurd in conception; and when we consider the advantage than in the plots of Mr Maturin. Beimprobability of his being able to commit so many tween 1807 and 1820 our author published a numcrimes in different countries, conspicuous as he is in ber of works of romantic fiction-The Milesian form, with impunity, and without detection. His Chief; The Wild Irish Boy; Women, or Pour et malignity of disposition, and particularly his resent- Contre; and Melmoth the Wanderer-all works in ment towards Frankenstein, do not appear unna- three or four volumes each. 'Women' was well tural when we recollect how he has been repelled received by the public, but none of its predecessors, from society, and refused a companion by him who as the author himself states, ever reached a second could alone create such another. In his wildest edition. In 'Women' he aimed at depicting real outbursts we partly sympathise with him, and his life and manners, and we have some pictures of situation seems to justify his crimes. In depicting Calvinistic Methodists, an Irish Meg Merrilees, and the internal workings of the mind and the various an Irish hero, De Courcy, whose character is made phases of the passions, Mrs Shelley evinces skill and up of contradictions and improbabilities. Two female acuteness. Like her father, she excels in mental characters, Eva Wentworth and Zaira, a brilliant analysis and in conceptions of the grand and the Italian (who afterwards turns out to be the mother powerful, but fails in the management of her fable of Eva), are drawn with delicacy and fine effect. where probable incidents and familiar life are re- The former is educated in strict seclusion, and is quired or attempted. purity itself. De Courcy is in love with both, and both are blighted by his inconstancy. Eva dies calmly and tranquilly, elevated by religious hope. Zaira meditates suicide, but desists from the attempt, and lives on, as if spell-bound to the death-place of her daughter and lover. De Courcy perishes of remorse. These scenes of deep passion and pathos are coloured with the lights of poetry and genius. Indeed the gradual decay of Eva is the happiest of all Mr Maturin's delineations, and has rarely been surpassed. The simple truthfulness of the description may be seen in passages like the following:September, and the evenings mild and beautiful. The weather was unusually fine, though it was Eva passed them almost entirely in the garden. She had always loved the fading light and delicious tints of an evening sky, and now they were endeared by that which endears even indifferent things-an inthem. Mrs Wentworth remonstrated against this ternal consciousness that we have not long to behold indulgence, and mentioned it to the physician; but In 1823 Mrs Shelley published another work of fiction, Valperga; or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca, three volumes. The time of the story is that of the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibbelines. She is also the author of a novel upon the story of Perkin Warbeck. [Love.] It is said that in love we idolize the object, and placing him apart, and selecting him from his fellows, look on him as superior in nature to all others. We do so; but even as we idolize the object of our affections, do we idolize ourselves: if we separate him from his fellow mortals, so do we separate ourselves, and glorying in belonging to him alone, feel lifted above all other sensations, all other joys and griefs, to one hallowed circle from which all but his idea is banished: we walk as if a mist, or some more potent charm, divided us from all but him; a sanctified victim, which none but the priest set apart for that office could touch and not pollute, enshrined in a cloud of glory, made glorious through beauties not our own. REV. C. R. MATURIN. he "answered neglectingly;" said anything that amused her mind could do her no harm, &c. Then Mrs Wentworth began to feel there was no hope; and Eva was suffered to muse life away unmolested. To the garden every evening she went, and brought her library with her; it consisted of but three books The REV. C. R. MATURIN, the poetical and eccen--the Bible, Young's Night Thoughts, and Blair's tric curate of St Peter's, Dublin, came forward in 1807 as an imitator of the terrific and gloomy style of novel writing, of which Monk Lewis was the modern master. Its higher mysteries were known only to Mrs Radcliffe. The date of that style, as Maturin afterwards confessed, was out when he was a boy, and he had not powers to revive it. His youthful production was entitled Fatal Revenge, or the Family of Montorio. The first part of this title was the invention of the publisher, and it proved a good bookselling appellation, for the novel was in high favour in the circulating libraries. It is undoubtedly a work of genius-full of imagination and energetic language, though both are sometimes carried to extravagance or bombast. There was, however, as has been justly remarked, 'originality in the conception, hideous as it was, of the hero employing against the brother who had deceived him the agency of that brother's own sons, whom he persuades to parricide, by working on their visionary fears, and by the doctrines of fatalism; and then, when the deed is done, discovering that the victims whom he had reasoned and persecuted into crime were his own children!' The author made abundant use of supernatural machinery, or at least what appears to be such, until the unravelling of the plot discloses that the whole has been effected, like the mysteries of the Castle of Udolpho, I Grave. One evening the unusual beauty of the sky made her involuntarily drop her book. She gazed upward, and felt as if a book was open in heaven, where all the lovely and varying plienomena presented in living characters to her view the name of the Divinity. There was a solemn congeniality be tween her feelings of her own state and the view of the declining day-the parting light and the approaching darkness. The glow of the western heaven was still resplendent and glorious; a little above, the blending hues of orange and azure were softening into a mellow and indefinite light; and in the upper region of the air, a delicious blue darkness invited the eye to repose in luxurious dimness: one star alone showed its trembling head-another and another, like infant births of light; and in the dark east the half-moon, like a bark of pearl, came on through the deep still ocean of heaven. Eva gazed on; some tears came to her eyes; they were a luxury. Suddenly she felt as if she were quite well; a glow like that of health pervaded her whole frame-one of those indescribable sensations that seem to assure us of safety, while, in fact, they are announcing dissolution. She imagined herself suddenly restored to health and to happiness. She saw De Courcy once more, as in their early hours of love, when his face was to her as if it had been the face of an angel; thought after thought came back on her heart like gleams of paradise. She trembled at the felicity that filled her whole soul; it was one of those fatal illusions, that disease, when it is connected with strong emotions of the mind, often flatters its victim with-that mirage, when the heart is a desert, which rises before the wanderer, to dazzle, to delude, and to destroy.' Melmoth,' another of Mr Maturin's works, is the wildest of his romances. The hero'gleams with demon light,' and owing to a compact with Satan, lives a century and a-half, performing all manner of adventures, the most defensible of which is frightening an Irish miser to death. Some of the details in Melmoth' are absolutely sickening and loathsome. They seem the last convulsive efforts and distortions of the Monk Lewis school of romance. In 1824 (the year of his premature death) Mr Maturin published The Albigenses, a romance in four volumes. This work was intended by the author as one of a series of romances illustrative of European feelings and manners in ancient, in middle, and in modern times. Laying the scene of his story in France, in the thirteenth century, the author connected it with the wars between the Catholics and the Albigenses, the latter being the earliest of the reformers of the faith. Such a time was well adapted for the purposes of romance; and Mr Maturin in this work presented some good pictures of the crusaders, and of the Albigenses in their lonely worship among rocks and mountains. He had not, however, the power of delineating varieties of character, and his attempts at humour are wretched failures. In constructing a plot, he was also deficient; and hence 'The Albigenses,' wanting the genuine features of a historical romance, and destitute of the supernatural machinery which had imparted a certain degree of wild interest to the author's former works, was universally pronounced to be tedious and uninteresting. Passages, as we have said, are carefully finished and well drawn, and we subjoin a brief specimen. [A Lady's Chamber in the Thirteenth Century.] 'I am weary,' said the lady; 'disarray me for rest. But thou, Claudine, be near when I sleep; I love thee well, wench, though I have not shown it hitherto. Wear this carkanet for my sake; but wear it not, I charge thee, in the presence of Sir Paladour. Now read me my riddle once more, my maidens.' As her head sunk on the silken pillow-How may ladies sink most sweetly into their first slumber?' 'I ever sleep best,' said Blanche, when some withered crone is seated by the hearth fire to tell me tales of wizardry or goblins, till they are mingled with my dreams, and I start up, tell my beads, and pray her to go on, till I see that I am talking only to the dying embers or the fantastic forms shaped by their flashes on the dark tapestry or darker ceiling.' 'And I love,' said Germonda, 'to be lulled to rest by tales of knights met in forests by fairy damsels, and conducted to enchanted halls, where they are assailed by foul fiends, and do battle with strong giants; and are, in fine, rewarded with the hand of the fair dame, for whom they have periled all that knight or Christian may hold precious for the safety of body and of soul.' Peace and good rest to you all, my dame and maidens,' said the lady in whispering tones from her silken couch. None of you have read my riddle. She sleeps sweetest and deepest who sleeps to dream of her first love-her first-her last-her only. A fair good night to all. Stay thou with me, Claudine, and touch thy lute, wench, to the strain of some old ditty -old and melancholy-such as may so softly usher sleep that I feel not his downy fingers closing mine eyelids, or the stilly rush of his pinions as they sweep my brow.' Claudine prepared to obey as the lady sunk to rest amid softened lights, subdued odours, and dying melodies. A silver lamp, richly fretted, suspended from the raftered roof, gleamed faintly on the splendid bed. The curtains were of silk, and the coverlet of velvet, faced with miniver; gilded coronals and tufts of plumage shed alternate gleam and shadow over every angle of the canopy; and tapestry of silk and silver covered every compartment of the walls, save where the uncouthly-constructed doors and windows broke them into angles, irreconcilable alike to every rule of symmetry or purpose of accommodation. Near the ample hearth, stored with blazing wood, were placed a sculptured desk, furnished with a missal and breviary gorgeously illuminated, and a black marble tripod supporting a vase of holy water: certain amulets, too, lay on the hearth, placed there by the care of Dame Marguerite, some in the shape of relics, and others in less consecrated forms, on which the lady was often observed by her attendants to look somewhat disregardfully. The great door of the chamber was closed by the departing damsels carefully; and the rich sheet of tapestry dropt over it, whose hushful sweeping on the floor seemed like the wish for a deep repose breathed from a thing inanimate. The castle was still, the silver lamp twinkled silently and dimly; the perfumes, burning in small silver vases round the chamber, began to abate their gleams and odours; the scented waters, scattered on the rushes with which the floor was strewn, flagged and failed in their delicious tribute to the sense; the bright moon, pouring its glories through the uncurtained but richly tinted casement, shed its borrowed hues of crimson, amber, and purple on curtain and canopy, as in defiance of the artificial light that gleamed so feebly within the chamber. Claudine tuned her lute, and murmured the rude song of a troubadour, such as follows: Song. Sleep, noble lady! They sleep well who sleep in warded castles. If the Count de Monfort, the champion of the church, and the strongest lance in the chivalry of France, were your foe as he is your friend, one hundred of the arrows of his boldest archers at their best flight would fail to reach a loophole of your towers. Sleep, noble lady! They sleep well who are guarded by the valiant. Five hundred belted knights feast in your halls; they would not see your towers won, though to defend them they took the place of your vassals, who are tenfold that number; and, lady, I wish they were more for your sake. Valiant knights, faithful vassals, watch well your lady's slumbers; see that they be never broken but by the matin bell, or the sighs of lovers whispered between its tolls. Sleep, noble lady! Your castle is strong, and the brave and the loyal are your guard. Then the noble lady whispered to me through her silken curtain, A foe hath found his way to me, though my towers are strong, and the valiant are my guard, and the brave and the beautiful woo me in song, and with many kissings of their hands.' And I asked, what foe is that? The lady dropt her silken curtain, and slept; but methought in her dreams she murmured-That foe is Love!" SIR WALTER SCOTT. We have already touched on the more remarkable and distinguishing features of the Waverley novels, and the influence which they exercised not only on this country, but over the whole continent of Europe. That long array of immortal fictions can only be are marked by the same universal and genial sympathies, allied to every form of humanity, and free from all selfish egotism or moral obliquity. In painting historical personages or events, these two great masters evinced a kindred taste, and not dissimilar powers. The highest intellectual traits and imagination of Shakspeare were, it is true, not approached by Scott: the dramatist looked inwardly upon man and nature with a more profound and searching philosophy. He could effect more with his five acts than Scott with his three volumes. The novelist only pictured to the eye what his great prototype stamped on the heart and feelings. Yet both were great moral teachers, without seeming to teach. They were brothers in character and in genius, and they poured out their imaginative treasures with a calm easy strength and conscious mastery, of which the world has seen no other examples. So early as 1805, before his great poems were produced, Scott had entered on the composition of Waverley, the first of his illustrious progeny of tales. He wrote about seven chapters, evidently taking Fielding, in his grave descriptive and ironical vein, for his model; but, getting dissatisfied with his attempt, he threw it aside. Eight years afterwards he met accidentally with the fragment, and determined to finish the story. In the interval between * the commencement of the novel in 1805 and its resumption in 1813, Scott had acquired greater freedom and self reliance as an author. In Marmion and The Lady of the Lake he had struck out a path for himself, and the latter portion of 'Waverley' partook of the new spirit and enthusiasm. A large part of its materials resembles those employed in the Lady of the Lake-Highland feudalism, military bravery and devotion, and the most easy and exquisite description of natural scenery: He added also a fine vein of humour, chaste yet ripened, and peculiarly his own, and a power of uniting history with fiction, that subsequently became one of the great sources of his strength. His portrait of Charles Edward, the noble old Baron of Bradwardine, the simple faithful clansman Evan Dhu, and the poor fool Davie Gellatley, with his fragments of song and scattered gleams of fancy and sensibility, were new triumphs of the author. The poetry had projected shadows and outlines of the Highland chief, the gaiety and splendour of the court, and the agitation of the camp and battle-field; but the humorous contrasts, homely observation, and pathos, displayed in Waverley,' disclosed far deeper observation and more original powers. The work was published in July 1814. Scott did not as a novelist, to preserve his mask, desirous to obviate all personal discussions respecting his own productions, and aware also of the interest and curiosity which his secrecy would impart to his subsequent productions. In February 1815-seven months after Waverley' -Scott published his second novel, Guy Mannering. It was the work of six weeks about Christmas, and marks of haste are visible in the construction of the plot and development of incidents. Yet what length of time or patience in revision could have added to the charm or hilarity of such portraits as that of Dandy Dinmont, or the shrewd and witty Counsellor Pleydell-the finished, desperate, seadevotion of that gentlest of pedants, poor Dominie beaten villany of Hatteraick-the simple uncouth Sampson-or the wild savage virtues and crazed superstition of the gipsy-dweller in Derncleugh? The astrological agency and predictions so marvellously fulfilled are undoubtedly excrescences on the story, though suited to a winter's tale in Scotland. Mannering himself, seem also allied to the Minerva The love scenes and female characters, and even Press family, but the Scotch characters are all adyouthful feeling and spirit in the description of the mirably filled up. There is also a captivating wanderings and dangers of Bertram, and the events, improbable as they appear, which restore him to his patrimony; while the gradual decay and death of the old Laird of Ellangowan-carried out to the green as his castle and effects are in the hands of the auctioneer-are inexpressibly touching and natural. The interest of the tale is sustained throughout with dramatic skill and effect. mantic and bustling in incidents than either of its In May 1816 came forth The Antiquary, less ropredecessors, but infinitely richer in character, dialogue, and humour. In this work Scott displayed his thorough knowledge of the middle and lower He confined his story ranks of Scottish life. chiefly to a small fishing town and one or two country mansions. His hero is a testy old Whig laird and bachelor, and his dramatis persona are little better than this retired humorist-the family old barber-and a few other humble landward and of a poor fisherman-a blue-gown mendicant-an burrows town' characters. The sentimental Lord Glenallan, and the pompous Sir Arthur Wardour, with Lovel the unknown, and the fiery Hector M'Intyre (the latter a genuine Celtic portrait), are necessary to the plot and action of the piece, but they constitute only a small degree of the reader's pleasure or the author's fame. These rest on the inimitable delineation of Oldbuck, that model of black-letter and Roman-camp antiquaries, whose oddities and conversation are rich and racy as any of the old crusted port that John of the Girnel might have held in his monastic cellars-on the restless, garrulous, kind-hearted gaberlunzie, Edie Ochiltree, who delighted to daunder down the burnsides and green shaws-on the cottage of the Mucklebackets, and the death and burial of Steenie-and on that scene of storm and tempest by the sea-side, which is described with such vivid reality and ap prefix his name to it, afraid that he might compromise his poetical reputation by a doubtful experiment in a new style (particularly by his copious use of Scottish terms and expressions); but the un-palling magnificence. The amount of curious readmingled applause with which the tale was received was, he says, like having the property of a hidden treasure, not less gratifying than if all the world knew it was his own.' Henceforward Scott resolved, ing, knowledge of local history and antiquities, power of description, and breadth of humour in the Antiquary,' render it one of the most perfect of the excelled Scott in the novel (he is unapproached in author's novels. If Cervantes and Fielding really * He had put the chapters aside, as he tells us, in a writing- romance), it must be admitted that the Antidesk wherein he used to keep fishing-tackle. The desk-a quary' ranks only second to Don Quixote and Tom substantial old mahogany cabinet-and part of the fishing-Jones. In none of his works has Scott shown tackle are now in the possession of Scott's friend, Mr William greater power in developing the nicer shades of feeling and character, or greater felicity of phrase Laidlaw, at Contin, in Ross-shire. and illustration. A healthy moral tone also per-like the widow of Zarephath,' in her poor and vades the whole-a clear and bracing atmosphere solitary cottage! The dejection and anxiety of of real life; and what more striking lesson in prac- Morton on his return from Holland are no less tical benevolence was ever inculcated than those strikingly contrasted with the scene of rural peace words of the rough old fisherman, ejaculated while and comfort which he witnesses on the banks of the he was mending his boat after returning from his Clyde, where Cuddie Headrigg's cottage sends up son's funeral-What would you have me do, unless its thin blue smoke among the trees, showing that I wanted to see four children starve because one is the evening meal was in the act of being made drowned? It's weel wi' you gentles, that can sit in ready,' and his little daughter fetches water in a the house wi' handkerchers at your een, when ye pitcher from the fountain at the root of an old oak. lose a freend, but the like of us maun to our wark tree! The humanity of Scott is exquisitely illusagain, if our hearts were beating as hard as my trated by the circumstance of the pathetic verses, hammer.' wrapping a lock of hair, which are found on the slain body of Bothwell-as to show that in the darkest and most dissolute characters some portion of our higher nature still lingers to attest its divine origin. In the same sympathetic and relenting spirit, Dirk Hatteraick, in Guy Mannering,' is redeemed from utter sordidness and villany by his one virtue of integrity to his employers. I was always faithful to my ship-owners-always accounted for cargo to the last stiver.' The image of God is never wholly blotted out of the human mind. The year 1818 witnessed two other coinages from the Waverley mint, Rob Roy and The Heart of MidLothian, the latter forming a second series of the Tales of My Landlord. The first of these works revived the public enthusiasm, excited by the 'Lady of the Lake' and 'Waverley,' with respect to Highland scenery and manners. The sketches in the novel are bold and striking-hit off with the careless freedom of a master, and possessing perhaps more witchery of romantic interest than elaborate and finished pictures. The character of Bailie Nicol Jarvie was one of the author's happiest conceptions, and the idea of carrying him to the wild rugged In December of the same year Scott was ready with two other novels, The Black Dwarf, and Old Mortality. These formed the first series of Tales of My Landlord, and were represented, by a somewhat forced and clumsy prologue, as the composition of a certain Mr Peter Pattieson, assistant-teacher at Gandercleuch, and published after his death by his pedagogue superior, Jedediah Cleishbotham. The new disguise (to heighten which a different publisher had been selected for the tales) was as unavailing as it was superfluous. The universal voice assigned the works to the author of 'Waverley,' and the second of the collection, Old Mortality,' was pronounced to be the greatest of his performances. It was another foray into the regions of history which was rewarded with the most brilliant spoil. Happy as he had been in depicting the era of the Forty-five, he shone still more in the gloomy and troublous times of the Covenanters. To reproduce a departed age,' says Mr Lockhart, with such minute and life-like accuracy as this tale exhibits, demanded a far more energetic sympathy of imagination than had been called for in any effort of his serious verse. It is indeed most curiously instruc-mountains, among outlaws and desperadoes—at the tive for any student of art to compare the Roundheads of Rokeby with the Blue-bonnets of Old Mortality. For the rest, the story is framed with a deeper skill than any of the preceding novels; the canvass is a broader one; the characters are contrasted and projected with a power and felicity which neither he nor any other master ever surpassed; and notwithstanding all that has been urged against him as a disparager of the Covenanters, it is to me very doubtful whether the inspiration of chivalry ever prompted him to nobler emotions than he has lavished on the reanimation of their stern and solemn enthusiasm. This work has always appeared to me the Marmion of his novels.' He never surpassed it either for force or variety of character, or in the interest and magnificence of the train of events described. The contrasts are also managed with consummate art. In the early scenes Morton (the best of all his young heroes) serves as a foil to the fanatical and gloomy Burley, and the change effected in the character and feelings of the youth by the changing current of events, is traced with perfect skill and knowledge of human nature. The two classes of actors-the brave and dissolute cavaliers, and the resolute oppressed Covenantersare not only drawn in their strong distinguishing features in bold relief, but are separated from each other by individual traits and peculiarities, the result of native or acquired habits. The intermingling of domestic scenes and low rustic humour with the stormy events of the warlike struggle, gives vast additional effect to the sterner passages of the tale, and to the prominence of its principal actors. How admirably, for example, is the reader prepared, by contrast, to appreciate that terrible encounter with Burley in his rocky fastness, by the previous description of the blind and aged widow, intrusted with the secret of his retreat, and who dwelt alone, same time that he retained a keen relish of the comforts of the Saltmarket of Glasgow, and a due sense of his dignity as a magistrate-completed the ludicrous effect of the picture. None of Scott's novels was more popular than Rob Roy,' yet, as a story, it is the most ill-concocted and defective of the whole series. Its success was owing to its characters alone. Among these, however, cannot be reckoned its nominal hero, Osbaldiston, who, like Waverley, is merely a walking gentleman. Scott's heroes, as agents in the piece, are generally inferior to his heroines. The Heart of Mid-Lothian' is as essentially national in spirit, language, and actors, as Rob Roy,' but it is the nationality of the Lowlands. No other author but Scott (Galt, his best imitator in this department, would have failed) could have dwelt so long and with such circumstantial minuteness on the daily life and occurrences of a family like that of Davie Deans, the cowfeeder, without disgusting his high-bred readers with what must have seemed vulgar and uninteresting. Like Burns, he made rustic life and poverty' Grow beautiful beneath his touch. Duchesses, in their halls and saloons, traced with interest and delight the pages that recorded the pious firmness and humble heroism of Jeanie Deans, and the sufferings and disgrace of her unfortunate sister; and who shall say that in thus uniting different ranks in one bond of fellow-feeling, and exhibiting to the high and wealthy the virtues that often dwell with the lowly and obscure, Scott was not fulfilling one of the loftiest and most sacred missions upon earth? A story of still more sustained and overwhelming pathos is The Bride of Lammermoor, published in 1819 in conjunction with The Legend of Montrose, and both forming a third series of Tales of My Landlord. The Bride is one of the most finished of Scott's tales, presenting a unity and entireness of plot and action, as if the whole were bound together by that dreadful destiny which hangs over the principal actors, and impels them irresistibly to destruction. In this tale,' says Macaulay, 'above other modern productions, we see embodied the dark spirit of fatalism-that spirit which breathes in the writings of the Greek tragedians when they traced the persecuting vengeance of Destiny against the houses of Laius and of Atreus. Their mantle was for a while worn unconsciously by him who showed to us Macbeth: and here again, in the deepening gloom of this tragic tale, we feel the oppressive influence of this invisible power. From the time we hear the prophetic rhymes, the spell has begun its work, and the clouds of misfortune blacken round us; and the fated course moves solemnly onward, irresistible and unerring as the progress of the sun, and soon to end in a night of horror. We remember no other tale in which not doubt, but certainty, forms the groundwork of our interest.' If Shakspeare was unconscious of the classic fatalism he depicted with such unrivalled power, Scott was probably as ignorant of any such premeditation and design. Both followed the received traditions of their country, and the novelist, we know, composed his work in intervals of such acute suffering, allayed only by the most violent remedies, that on his recovery, after the novel had been printed, he recollected nothing but the mere outline of his story, with which he had been familiar from his youth. He had entirely forgot what he dictated from his sickbed. The main incident, however, was of a nature likely to make a strong impression on his mind, and to this we must impute the grand simplicity and seeming completeness of art in the management of the fable. The character of the old butler, Caleb Balderston, has been condemned as a ridiculous and incongruous exaggeration. We are not sure that it does not materially heighten the effect of the tragic portion of the tale, by that force of contrast which we have mentioned as one of Scott's highest attributes as a novelist. There is, however, too much of the butler, and some of his inventions are mere tricks of farce. As Shakspeare descended to quibbles and conceits, Scott loved to harp upon certain phrases-as in Dominie Sampson, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, and the dowager lady of Tullietudlem -and to make his lower characters indulge in practical jokes, like those of old Caleb and Edie Ochiltree. The proverbs of Sancho, in Don Quixote, may be thought to come under the same class of inferior resources, to be shunned rather than copied by the novelist who aims at truth and originality; but Sancho's sayings are too rich and apposite to be felt as mere surplusage. The Legend of Montrose' is a brief imperfect historical novel, yet contains one of the author's most lively and amusing characters, worthy of being ranked with Bailie Jarvie; namely, the redoubted Ritt-master, Dugald Dalgetty. The union of the soldado with the pedantic student of Mareschal college is a conception as original as the Uncle Toby of Sterne. tation of chivalry in all its pomp and picturesqueness, the realisation of our boyish dreams about Coeur-de-lion, Robin Hood, and Sherwood Forest, with its grassy glades, and sylvan sports, and impenetrable foliage. We were presented with a series of the most splendid pictures, the canvass crowded with life and action-with the dark shades of cruelty, vice, and treason, and the brightness of heroic courage, dauntless fortitude, and uncorrupted faith and purity. The thrilling interest of the story is another of the merits of Ivanhoe'-the incidents all help on the narrative, as well as illustrate ancient manners. In the hall of Cedric, at the tournament or siege, we never cease to watch over the fate of Rowena and the Disinherited Knight; and the steps of the gentle Rebecca-the meek yet high-souled Jewess-are traced with still deeper and holier feeling. The whole is a grand picturesque pageant, yet full of a gentle nobleness and proud simplicity. The next works of Scott were of a tamer cast, though his foot was on Scottish ground. The Monastery and Abbot, both published in 1820, are defective in plot, and the first disfigured by absurd supernatural machinery. The character of Queen Mary in the Abbot' is, however, a correct and beautiful historical portrait, and the scenery in the neighbourhood of the Tweed-haunted glens and woods-is described with the author's accustomed felicity. A counterpart to Queen Mary, still more highly finished, was soon afforded in the delineation of her great rival, Elizabeth, in the romance of Kenilworth. This work appeared in January 1821, and was ranked next to Ivanhoe.' There was a profusion of rich picturesque scenes and objects, dramatic situations, and a well-arranged, involved, yet interesting plot. None of the plots in the Waverley novels are without blemish. None,' as Mr Macaulay remarks, have that completeness which constitutes one of the chief merits of Fielding's Tom Jones: there is always either an improbability, or a forced expedient, or an incongruous incident, or an unpleasant break, or too much intricacy, or a hurried conclusion; they are usually languid in the commencement, and abrupt in the close; too slowly opened, and too hastily summed up.' The spirit and fidelity of the delineations, the variety of scenes, and the interest of particular passages bearing upon the principal characters, blind the reader to these defects, at least on a first perusal. This was eminently the case with Kenilworth;' nor did this romance, amidst all its courtly gaieties, ambition, and splendour, fail to touch the heart: the fate of Amy Robsart has perhaps drawn as many tears as the story of Rebecca. The close of the same year witnessed another romantic, though less powerful tale-The Pirate. In this work Scott painted the wild sea scenery of Shetland, and gave a beautiful copy of primitive manners in the person and household of the old Udaller, Magnus Troil, and his fair daughters Minna and Brenda. The latter are flowers too delicate for such a cold and stormy clime, but they are creations of great loveliness, and are exquisitely discriminated in their individual characters. The novel altogether opened a new * Rebecca was considered by Scott himself, as well as by the public, to be his finest female character. Mr Laidlaw, to whom part of the novel was dictated, speaks of the strong interest which Sir Walter evinced in filling up his outline. I shall make something of my Jewess,' said he one day in a tone of unusual exultation. You will indeed,' replied his friend; and I cannot help saying that you are doing an immense good, Sir Walter, by such sweet and noble tales, for the young people now will never bear to look at the vile trash of novels that used to be in the circulating libraries.' Sir Walter's eyes The historical romance of Ivanhoe appeared in 1820. It is the most brilliant of all his pure romances, indeed the most splendid in any literature. The scene being laid in England, and in the England of Richard I., the author had to draw largely on his fancy and invention, and was debarred those attractive auxiliaries of every-day life, speech, and manners, which had lent such a charm to his Scottish novels. Here we had the remoteness of antiquity, the old Saxon halls and feasts, the resusci-filled with tears. |