offer.

battle of Flodden. Lord Marmion

The warriors on the turrets high,
Moving athwart the evening sky,

of Scottish, English, obsolete, and Then up the hero rose full manfully, antiquated. Mr. Scott may well in- And whether he could overcome the foe, dulge in an exuberance of rimes, resolved to go and try when he has pressed into his service The first canto opens with the arthe liege subjects of all countries, rival of Lord Marmion, a fictitious and even evoked the dead. We character, at the castle of Norliam, shall leave, however, these general in his way to Scotland, upon a ficremarks, and proceed to lay before titious embassy to James IV. from our readers a succinct analysis of each Henry VIII. of England. The period canto, including at the same time, in which the narrative of the poem whatever strictures we may have to is comprised, is from about the com mencement of August, to the 4th of The poem is comprised in six September, 1513, the day of the cantos, and to each of them is pre-arrives at Norham Castle at sun set, fixed a metrical introduction to six different friends of the author, and and the following lines from the which we look upon as capital ble- first stanza, if so we may call the mishes. They are as incongruous divisions of Mr. Scott's irregular as though we were to place a mo- rhythm, we thought somewhat happy. dern opera hat upon the statue of King Charles at Charing Cross. They are principally political, and contain fulsome eulogies upon Pitt, Fox, Nelson, Miss Joanna Baillie, and the several persons to whom they are addressed. We call them fulAfter this follows a tedious poetical some eulogies, not because the per- description of the retinue of Lord sons just mentioned were or are un- Marmion, in which Mr. Scott disdeserving of praise: but there is a plays a considerable knowledge of his dignity in praising which only a feel- subject; but inspiration itself could ing mind can know. The mere not give interest to topics of antiquaaccumulation of applauding epithets, rian reseach. After a little bustle without delicacy and without strict in the castle, occasioned by the arapplication, should no more please rival of so great a personage, Lord a refined mind, than the daubings of Marmion enters, and Mr. Scott proan inferior artist should a refined eye. ceeds to describe his hero; but in Added to this, there is an aukward sober truth, Butler himself could and violent transition from the man- scarcely have depicted his knight ners of ancient chivalry, tales of more ludicrously. In one part, inbarons, damsels, nuns, and goblins, deed, he had evidently Milton's to modern events and the author's Beelzebub in view, of whom that opinions upon them. This is such poet thus speaks:

a mixture of the new and the old, or rather such an intervention of the

Seem'd forms of giant height; Their armour as it caught the rays Flash'd back again the western blaze, In lines of dazzling light.

"Deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat, and public care:"

author in propria persona, as can but Mr. Scott, fettered by rime, or never please. The introductions misled by a vicious taste, transfers the themselves are pretty enough; but "lines of thought" from the forehead here they are misplaced, and their to the cheek:

prettiness is forgotten.

Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum. We have hinted at Mr. Scott's variety of rime; but the following couplet defies the power of scansion: The world defrauded of the high design, Prophaned the God given strength and marred the lofty line.

p. 18.

It reminded us strongly of two lines in an old poet...

Yet lines of thought upon his cheek
Did deep design and counsel speak.

Now we have seen the brow of youth furrowed by thought and wrinkled by the hand of time; but meditation, and the cheek of age

such a lusus nature as Mr. Scott here
These
lines, however, were but a prelude
gives, we have never seen.
to more matter of mirth, in the re-
maining description of Lord Mar-
mion. If any person can read the

following picture of a martial knight, astrous conflict at Flodden. A cer without thinking of a brewer's dray- tain Palmer, who happened to arrive man, it will be wonderful; if with- at Norham Castle on the preceding out laughing, we envy him his rigid- evening, is deemed a fit person, and ity of muscle.

His forehead by his casque worn bare,
His thick mousta he and curly hair,
Coal black, and grizzled here and there,

But more thio' toil than age:
His square turn'd joints and strength of limb
Shew'd him no carper Knight so trim,
But, in close fight, a champion grim,

In camps, a leader sage.

But how a grizzled beard, square joints, and strength of limb, can be regarded as indicative of wisdom in the camp, Mr. Scott must inform us. We agree to his first induction, that they may make their possessor (the first attribute excepted) a "champion grim," but we utterly deny the second.

he is thus described:

"Let pass," quoth Marmion, “by my

fay,

This man shall guide me on my way,
Although the great arch fiend and he
Had sworn themselves of company;
So please you, gentle youth, to call
This Palmer to the castle hall."
The summoned Palmer came in place;
His sable cowl o'erhung his face;

In his black mantle was he clad,
With Peter's keys, in cloth of red,

On his broad shoulders wrought;
The scallop shell his cap did deck;
The crucifix around his neck

Was from Loretto brought;
His sandels were with trayel tore,
Staff, budget, bottle, scrip, he wore;
The faded palm branch in his hand,
Shewed pilgrim from the Holy Land.
When as the Palmer came in hall,

Or had a statelier step withal,

Nor lord, nor knight, was there more tall,

Or looked more high and keen;
For no saluting did he wait,
But strode across the hall of state,
And fronted Marmion where he sate,

As he his peer had been.
But his gaunt frame was worn with toil;
His cheek was sunk, alas the while!
And when he struggled at a smile,

His eye looked haggard wild.

Poor wretch! the mother that him bare, in his wan face, and sun burned hair, If she had been in presence there,

She had not known her child.

Danger, long travel, want, or woe,
Soon change the form that best we know→→
For deadly fear can time outgo,

Lord Marmion and his suite being regaled, his host makes some enquiry respecting a page that he once bad. This page was in fact a nun, Constance de Beverly, whom love for Marmion induced to follow him in the capacity of his page. But Marmion, satiated with her charms, wished to marry Clara, of the noble house of Gloucester, who was betrothed to Lord de Wilton. To get rid of this prior suitor, Marmion attaints him (falsely) of treason, and by certain forged papers, gives colour to the accusation: De Wilton challenges Marmion to single combat: they meet, and De Wilton falls; his estates are accordingly confiscated. Clara, however, remains inflexible, and refuses to give her hand to Marmion, who now, to get rid of the importunities of Constance de Beverly, has this last confined in a monastery on the island of Lindisfarne, on the coast of Northumberland. Thus much we have stated, that our readers may better understand our abridge- Lord Marmion then his boon did ask ; The Palmer took on him the task, Marmion now solicits of his host So he would march with morning tide, some guide who may conduct him To Scottish court to be his guide. and his train to the court of the king -"But I have solemn vows to pay, of Scotland, being unacquainted with the country. The supposed object of his mission is to know for what object those numerous troops are levied, which it was in fact James's intention to employ against England, and the flower of which, fell in the dis

ment.

And blanch at once the hair;
Hard toil can roughen form and face,
And want can quench the eye's bright grace,
Nor does old age a wrinkle trace,

More deeply than despair.
Happy whom none of these befall,
But this poor Palmer knew them all.

And may not linger by the way,
Within the ocean-cave to pray,
To fair Saint Andrew's bound,
Where good Saint Rule his holy lay,
From midnight to the dawn of day,

Sung to the billows' sound;
Thence to Saint Fillan's blessed well,
Whose spring can frenzied dreams dispel,

And the crazed brain restore:Saint Mary grant, that cave or spring Could back to peace my bosom bring, Or bid it throb no more!"

This is a fair specimen of Mr. Scott's manner: it is pleasingly written, and serves to prepare the mind for something more from this palmer. The first canto closes with the description of the departure of Lord Marmion and his holy guide.

canto

The "Introduction" to second contains a piece of ineffable

nonsense.

Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth,
When thought is speech, and speech is truth!
What period of human existence
can possibly be designated by such
unmeaning language we know not.
But there is some reparation for this
in the concluding lines of the Intro-
duction, beginning at p. 69.

Was, by the prelate Sexhelm, made
A place of burial, for such dead
As, having died in mortal sin,
Might not be laid the church within.ˆ

Twas now a place of punishment;
Where, if so loud a shriek were sent,
The hearers blessed themselves, and said,
As reached the upper air,
Th spirits of the sinful dead

Bemoaned their torments there.

But though, in the monastic pile,
Did of this penitential aisle

Some vague tradition go,
Few only, save the Abbot, knew
Where the place lay; and still more few
Where those, who had from him the clew
To that dread vault to go.
Victim and executioner
were blind fold when transported there.
From the rude rock the side-walls sprung ;
In low dark rounds the arches hung,
The grave stones, rudely sculptured o'er,
Half sunk in earth, by time half wore,
Were all the pavement of the floor;
The ni dew drops fell one by one,
With tinkling plash, upon the stone.

The second canto opens with the
description of a vessel approaching
the island of Lindisfarn, on board A cresset, in an iron chain,
of which is the abbess of St. Hilda,
and Clara, who has resolved to enter
the church now that De Wilton is
The cause of this voyage

no more.

is thus told:

"Sad was this voyage to the dame;
Summon'd to Lindisfarn, she came,
There with Saint Cuthbert's Abbot old,
And Tynemouth's prioress, to hold
A chapter of Saint Benedict,
For inquisition stern and strict,
On two apostates from the faith,
And, if need were, to doom to death."

Which served to light this drear domain,
With damp and darkness seemed to strive,
As if it scarce might keep alive;
The awful conclave met below.
And yet it dimly served to shew

There, me to doom in secrecy,

Were placed the heads of convents three:
All servants of Saint Benedict,
The statutes of whose order strict

On iron table lay;

In long black dress, on seats of stone,
Behind were these three judges shown,

By the pale cresset's ray:
The Abbess of Saint Hilda's, there,
Sate for a space with visage bare,
Until, to hide her bosom's swell,
And tear-drops that for pity fell,

And she with awe looks pale:

The objects of this solemn inquisition are Constance de Beverley, and a monk whom she had suborned to poison Clare, her rival in the affec- She closely drew her veil : tions of Marmion. The gloomy dun- You shrouded figure, as I guess, geon in which they met to decide By her proud mien and flowing dress, upon their fate, and the attending Is Tynemouth's haughty Prioress, circumstances, are forcibly described. While round the fire such legends go, Far different was the scene of woe, Where, in a secret aisle beneath, Council was held of life and death. It was more dark and lone, that vault, Than the worst dungeon cell; Old Colwulf built it for his fault, In penitence to dwell,

When he, for cowl and beads, laid down
The Saxon battle-axe and crown.
This den, which, chilling every sense
Of feeling, hearing, sight,
Was called the Vault of Penitence,
Excluding air and light,

And he, that Ancient Man, whose sight
Pas long been quenched by age's night,
Upon whose wrinkled brow alone,
Nor ruth, nor mercy's trace is shown,
Whose look is hard and stern,-
Saint Cuthbert's Abbot is his stile;
For sanctity called, hrough the isle,
The Saint of Landisfarn.

Before them stood a guilty pair;
But, though an equal fate they share,
Yet one alone deserves our care.
Her sex a page's dress belied;

Antique Chandelier.

UNIVERSAL MAG. VOL. IX.

3 D

The cloak and doublet, loosely tied,
Obscured her charms, but could not hide.
Her cap down o'er her face she drew;
And on her doublet breast,

She tried to hide the badge of blue,
Lord Marmion's falcon crest.
But, at the Prioress' command,
A Monk undid the silken band,
That tied her tresses fair,

And raised the bonnet from her head,
And down her slender form they spread
In ringlets rich and rare.
Constance de Beverley they know,
Sister professed of Fontevraud,
Whom the church numbered with the dead,
For broken vows and convent fled."

And in the next stanza is a couplet worthy of Mr. Wordsworth.

And come he slow, or come he fast,
Iti but death that comes at last.

What mere namby pamby stuff is this: but we do not wonder Mr. Scott should write such, when he has not hesitated to quote worse from his friend Mr. Wordsworth, in the notes to canto second.

The swans on sweet St. Mary's lake
Float double, swan and shadow!

If such lines be not contemptibly absurd, there is nothing in man that is so. This is not the place to exThis is entitled to higher praise amine Mr. Wordsworth's inanity; than the usual strain of Mr. Scott's his poems are a tissue of emptiness: poetry; but he can rarely continue but if Mr. Scott's taste led him to above a few pages without falling quote the above couplet, we must into absolute silliness, or betraying think humbly of it indeed. The stanza all the inflated emptiness of modern of Johnson, at three years old, is versifiers of the former here is an Homeric compared to such silliness; exanaple immediately following the Here lies good master duck above; describing the motionless position of Constance, thus exposed, he says, did not her heaving bosom

warrant

That neither sense nor pulse she lucks,
You might have thought a form of wax,
Wrought to the very life was there,
So still she was, so pale, so fair!

told

And in the next page we are that the guilty monk, whom she suborned to poison Clare, was one Whose brute feeling ne'er aspires Beyond his own more brute desires. Such tools the templer ever needs To do the saragest of deeds.

The first two lines have no meaning; and the last two are vulgar.

Whom Samuel Joluson trod oa:
Had it lived, it had been god luck,
There then had been an odd one.

We pass over the introduction to canto third, though it is by far the best of the whole; and proceed to its contents. It is entitled the "Hostel or Inn," and represents Lord Marmion as arrived, under the guidance of the palmer, at a Scotish inn, there to pass the night. The first stanzą contains a grammatical error, in making the verb to wind, regular in its participial termination.

By glen and streamis #inded still We do not attribute this to Mr. Scott's ignorance of the right; but to The sentence passed upon these some idle predilection for the wrong: wretched beings was that living for we have observed, in several other death," which the Romans inflicted parts of the work, an improper muupon those vestals who had violated tation of irregular into regular verbs. their vow of chastity; and with its In the present instance, we suppose infliction the second canto closes. the verse forced him into it; in the others, probably the same cause, (as Before, however, we dismiss it, we will notice two or three errors that at page 134, where he uses the obstruck us. solete preterite wan instead of won ;) In the twenty-seventh stanza, Constance designates the or a partiality for antique usage. wealth of her rival Clara, by a col- But whatever may be the motive, the loquial and vulgar epithet. thing itself is wrong, and Mr. Scott would have shown his judgment by He saw young Clara's face more fair, avoiding it. He knew her of broad lands the heir.

In the twenty-ninth stanza we have a line so rough and so unmusical, that no trick of oratory could pronounce it even with decent grace: But ill the dastard kept his oath Whose cowardice has undone us both?

In this canto Mr. Scott shews Lord Marmion to us in rather a better light, than when he celebrated his square joints. Describing the mirthful group of his followers round the fire of the inn, he says,

Which thus had quell'd their hearts, who homely language of Pitscottie, than

Fitz-Eustace, know'st thou not some lay, get no support of him for that time, made

him, with forty days victual, and to meet at For lack of other amusement to the Burrow-muir of Edinburgh, and there pass away the evening the host is to pass forward where he pleased. now made to tell a goblin story, of proclamations were hastily obeyed, cona certain haunted place in the neigh- trary the Council of Scotland's will; but