A murderer's banes, in gibbet-airns;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns;
A thief, new-cutted frae the rape,
Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape;
Five tomahawks, wi' blude red-rusted;
Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted ;
A garter, which a babe had strangled;
A knife, a father's throat had mangled,
Whom his ain son of life bereft,
The gray-hairs yet stack to the heft;
Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu',
Which ev'n to name wad be unlawfu'.

As Tammie glowr'd, amaz'd and curious, The mirth and fun grew fast and furious:

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The piper loud and louder blew ;

The dancers quick and quicker flew ;

They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit,
Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,

Lowping an' flinging on a crummock,

I wonder didna turn thy stomach.

But Tam kennt what was what fu' brawlie;

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But here my Muse her wing maun cour,
Sic flights are far beyond her pow'r ;
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jade she was and strang),
And how Tam stood, like ane bewitch'd,
And thought his very een enrich'd:
Even Satan glowr'd and fidg'd fu' fain,

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And hotch'd and blew wi' might and main :

Till first ae caper, syne anither,

And roars out, "Weel done, Cutty-sark!"

Tam tint his reason a' thegither,

And in an instant all was dark :

And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,
When out the hellish legion sallied.

As bees bizz out wi' angry fyke,
When plundering herds assail their byke;
As open pussie's mortal foes,

When, pop! she starts before their nose;
As eager runs the market-crowd,
When "Catch the thief!" resounds aloud;
So Maggie runs, the witches follow,

Wi' mony an eldritch skriech and hollow.

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Ah, Tam! ah, Tam! thou'll get thy fairin!

In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin!

In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin !
Kate soon will be a woefu' woman!
Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,
And win the key-stane o' the brig:
There, at them thou thy tail may toss,
A running stream they darena cross!
But ere the key-stane she could make,
The fient a tail she had to shake!
For Nannie, far before the rest,
Hard upon noble Maggie prest,
And flew at Tam wi' furious ettle;
But little wist she Maggie's mettle

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Ae spring brought off her master hale,
But left behind her ain gray tail:
The carlin claught her by the rump,
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.

Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read,
Ilk man, and mother's son, take heed:
Whene'er to drink you are inclin'd,
Or cutty-sarks rin in your mind,
Think, ye may buy the joys o'er dear;
Remember Tam o'Shanter's mear.

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CHAPTER VII

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

1. THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY

THE new movement, though it had gained increasing force during the eighteenth century, was, to some extent, unconscious of its own aims, or, rather, unconscious of any conflict between itself and the older school. Up to the last decade of the century, poets like Cowper and Crabbe failed to realize that the spirit of their verse had broken entirely with the spirit of the verse of the earlier conventionalists. But with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798 the new movement at last came to an understanding, a realization, of its significance and aim ; and the triumph of Romantic poetry was complete. In that little book WORDSWORTH and COLERIDGE presented by the example of their poems a protest against the artificiality of Pope and his tribe. They raised a new standard for themselves and for those who were to follow. It must not be supposed that the Romantic revolution was accomplished in a day. Not only had it been preparing for nearly a hundred years: even when it arrived, its effects were so gradual as to be recognized at first by few. Other forms than the heroic couplet were more and more frequently adopted; diction became simpler, feeling more spontaneous, images more natural. A new and larger range of poetic subjects was eagerly sought and found. An indifference arose to canons of criticism hitherto held sacred. In the Classical school authority had reigned; now individuality became the watchword. Whatever men felt they wrote, and they wrote to please themselves and their readers. As a consequence, instead of the one traditional, universally approved style, artificial, because the conditions that produced it and the spirit that moved it were dead, as many styles arose as there were authors. And as a result there was now ushered in an activity of poetic creation second only to that of the Elizabethan age.

We have said that the Lyrical Ballads of Coleridge and Wordsworth marked the culmination of this Romantic movement, but that the farreaching effects of the change were not realized at once. On the appearance of Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, however, in 1805, the

charms of the new kind of poetry became apparent to everybody. It is undoubtedly true that the fame of SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771–1832) as a poet is overshadowed by the success of his inimitable prose. Yet, historically, too much cannot be made of the fact that the extreme popularity of his metrical romances did more to turn-and speedily turn the public taste in favor of the new poetry than any of the far more artistic verse of Wordsworth or Coleridge, Shelley or Keats. As a matter of fact, some of Scott's poetry reaches a very high level, according to the canons of its kind; and if his work is uneven in its excellence and some of it rather commonplace, the same is no less true of Coleridge's and of Wordsworth's. The important thing for

us to remember just here is that these three, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott, at the beginning of the nineteenth century finally established a kind of poetry which, in one form or another, has since their time held sway.

Scott was not a poet of the highest order, creative and interpretative in one. He described a vivid scene, told a good tale, and so stirred the fancy and the heart. He never presents the spectacle of his own emotion; he rarely rises in his verse, though often in his novels, to the heights of ideal creation. He reproduces for us the picture of a wholesouled muscular Christianity. He is a representative poet of a very high order. He should certainly be included in a volume of this kind; that The Lady of the Lake or the Lay does not appear here is due entirely to lack of space.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)

It is doubtless true that no other great English poet is so uneven in the quality of his productions as Wordsworth. Of the many hundreds of pages which he has written, perhaps scarcely more than a hundred can be regarded as poetry of the highest type. Yet that hundred is enough to insure his permanent esteem. Critics have, from his earliest appearance, widely diverged in their judgment of his rank; but they are nowadays coming more and more to agree that he deserves to be placed, not indeed with Shakespeare and Milton, but with those who are either great creators or great seers, yet not both at once. He was an interpreter of life, as Chaucer and Spenser were creators of its living semblance. The marked inequality of his work was due very largely to his attempts to carry out his own famous "Theory of Poetry" as published in the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, 1800. Two of his dogmas were: that poetic material may fitly be drawn from themes connected with the common life of the poor and lowly; and that the language of poetry, that is to say, its words and its diction, should be

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