story, and the strange dumb dancing-girl who is made the instrument of his long-cherished revenge. These mysterious figures harmonise but ill with the gay and profligate court of Charles II. and with the somewhat prosaic details of the Popish conspiracy and the intrigues of Buckingham. The old cavalier Peveril is well contrasted with the gloomy and brooding republican Major Bridgenorth, but Scott, in this novel, has retained too much of his naturally chivalrous and medieval tone, which is discordant when recurring amid the trivialities and Frenchified debauchery of a period which was in all essentials the very reverse of chivalric. The antithetical and epigrammatic mode in which Buckingham is described, though admirable in Dryden's satire, is quite contrary to the spirit of narrative fiction: and the dwarf, Geoffrey Hudson, is an unnatural excrescence on the story.

The striking and picturesque scenes and manners of the time of Louis XI., and the opposition of the two strongly-contrasted personages of that perfidious tyrant and Charles the Bold of Burgundy, render Quentin Durward a most fascinating story, in spite of the anachronisms and falsifications of historical truth; and many of the scenes, as the revelry of the Boar of Ardennes in the Bishop's palace at Liège, are executed with wonderful force and animation. The reception of the Burgundian declaration of war by Louis in the midst of his court, and the supper at which he receives Crevecœur, while the archer is secretly posted with his loaded musket behind the screen, are examples of Scott's peculiar power of delineation.

In St. Ronan's Well the principal plot is of so gloomy, painful, and hopeless a character that the reader follows it with reluctance. The general cloud of sorrow and suffering is perhaps not darker in this novel than in the Bride of Lammermoor; but in the latter that sorrow is elevated by dignity and picturesque association, while in this almost all the persons are as odious as they are commonplace. The Earl of Etherington, the villain of the story, is less of a nobleman than of a swindler and a blackguard, and the hopeless persecution of Clara is never relieved by a single gleam of sunshine. Nevertheless the story contains, among the twaddling and prosaic crowd which is assembled at the Spa, one of those characteristic and perfectly-drawn Scottish figures in which this great author had no rival. Meg Dods is more than enough to compensate for the coarse brutality of some of the characters, and the frivolity of the others. Scott's peculiar powers seem to have deserted him when he attempted to delineate the affectations and absurdities of contemporary fashionable or would-be fashionable society.

Redgauntlet is the only novel in which Scott has adopted the epistolary form of narration. The letters in which the narrative is couched express very agreeably the strongly-opposed character of

the two young friends; and in the portions supposed to be written by Alan Fairford, the young Edinburgh advocate, we find many charming recollections of the author's early life. The old Writer, his father, is, in all probability, a portrait of Scott's own father; and his adventures, when wandering in search of his friend, bring him in contact with things and persons delineated with extraordinary force; old Summertrees, with his story of his escape, and above all Nanty Ewart, the smuggling captain, and his narrative of his own life, are masterpieces. I may also mention the admirable ghost-story related by the old fiddler, than which nothing was ever more impressive. Darsie Latimer, like most of Scott's heroes, is rather too much of the walking gentleman, little more than a mere tool in the hands of more powerful plotters.

§ 11. The two novels the Betrothed and the Talisman constitute the series entitled Tales of the Crusaders. In them the author returns to those feudal times of which he was so unrivalled a painter. The Betrothed is far inferior to its companion: perhaps the scene of the action-the Marches of the Welsh Border-and the conflict between the wild Celts and the Norman frontier garrison-was in itself less attractive both to reader and writer: true it is, that with the exception of some vigorous and stirring scenes, as for example the desperate sally and death of Raymond Berenger amid the swarms of the Celtic savages who are beleaguering his castle, this tale is read with less pleasure and returned to with less avidity than any except the latest productions of Scott's pen. The Talisman, on the contrary, is one of the most dazzling and attractive of them all: the heroic splendour of the scenery, personages, and adventures, the admirable contrast between Cœur de Lion and Saladin, and the magnificent contrast of the chivalry of Europe with the heroism and civilisation of the East-all this makes the Talisman a book equally delightful to the young and to the old. The introduction of familiar and even of comic details, with which Scott, like Shakspeare, knew how to relieve and set off his heroic pictures, renders this story peculiarly delightful. We seem to be brought near to the great and historic characters, and admitted as it were into their private life; we see that they are men like ourselves. The incidents in which the noble hound so picturesquely figures show how deep was Scott's sympathy with and knowledge of animal nature. There are few of his novels in which by some exquisite touch of description or some pathetic stroke of fidelity he does not interest us in the fate and character of dogs as profoundly as in the human persons. Fangs in Ivanhoe, Bevis in Woodstock, the Peppers and Mustards of Charlie's Hope, even the pointer Juno who runs away with the Antiquary's buttered toast, every one of these animals has its distinctive physiognomy; and we cannot wonder that Scott himself

was as fond of real dogs as he makes us interested in his imaginary

canine personages.

The action of Woodstock is placed just after the fatal defeat at Worcester; and Cromwell and Charles II. both appear in the action, The interest, however, is really concentrated upon the noble figure of the chivalrous old royalist gentleman Sir Henry Lee. The lofty qualities of this cavalier patriarch are so well and so naturally tempered with weaknesses and foibles, that the character is truly living and real. Many of the subordinate scenes and characters, too, as Jocelyn the ranger, Wildrake, the plotting Dr. Rochecliffe, even Phoebe and the old woman, are ever fresh and interesting. The euthanasia of the old knight, amid the full triumph of the Restoration, is a scene powerfully and pathetically conceived, and may bear a comparison with that almost sublime passage, the description of the death of Mrs. Witherington in the Surgeon's Daughter. Cromwell and Charles have not been so successfully treated: the one has been unduly lowered, the other as unduly elevated, by the strong political partialities of the author.

§ 12. The Chronicles of the Canongate contain the short tales of the Highland Widow, the Two Drovers, and the novels of the Surgeon's Daughter and the Fair Maid of Perth. By a fiction like that of Peter Pattieson, the imaginary author of the Tales of My Landlord, these were supposed to be the production of Chrystal Croftangry, a retired Scottish gentleman, whose life had been full of agitation. The introductory portion, describing the life of this person, and the causes which led him to try his skill in authorship, are very agreeably written, and contain one most pathetic incident; but we see throughout in this part, as well as in the tales, a somewhat melancholy and desponding tone of thought, which may partly be ascribed to the approach of old age, but still more probably to the influence of Scott's personal calamities. The two first stories are comparatively insignificant, but the Surgeon's Daughter is in its general incidents and characters so sombre and gloomy that the impression it leaves is far from agreeable. The hero, Richard Middlemas, is a villain of such mean and ignoble calibre, and the innocent are throughout pursued by such hopeless and unmitigated misfortune, that the effect of the whole is unpleasing. The latter portion of the incidents takes place in India, in which country Scott does not appear at home: the descriptions read as if they had been got up out of books.

The Fair Maid of Perth is a romantic and half-historical picture from an interesting period of the early Scottish annals. The great defect of the story is the hazardous and unsuccessful novelty of representing the hero Conachar—or rather one of the heroes, for perhaps the Smith is the real protagonist-as a coward; an expedient

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that has more of novelty than felicity to recommend it. Novelists have indeed succeeded tolerably well with a plain, nay, even with an ugly heroine; but a cowardly hero-even though his poltroonery. be represented as a sort of congenital disease or weakness-is what never did and never can be made interesting. And this is the more unfortunate when we think of the period of the story, the nation, the age, and the position of Conachar: the young chief of a Highland Clan, in the wildest and most warlike age of Scottish history. The Smith is, however, one of Scott's happy characters, and the scene of the combat between the two clans is painted with something of the same fire that glows in Marmion and in the Lady of the Lake. Henbane Dwining, the potticarrier, though powerfully conceived, is a sort of anachronism in the story, and the assassination of the Duke of Rothsay, as a scene of horror, is not to be compared with the murder of old Trapbois in Nigel.

Anne of Geierstein afforded the opportunity of contrasting the wild nature and simple manners of the Swiss patriots with the feudal splendour of the Court of Burgundy. The reception of the Shepherd ambassador by Charles in his cour plenière is a piece of magnificent painting; the execution of de Hagenbach and the rout of Nancy are also very powerfully given: but we confess that the scene of the Vehm-tribunal, though carefully worked up, has something of an artificial and theatrical effect.

In the two last novels written by this mighty creator, Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous, we see, with pity and respect, the last feeble runnings of this bright and abundant fountain, soon to be choked up for ever. The scenes and descriptions have the air of being painfully worked up from books, the characters are conventional and without individuality, the dialogues are long and pointless, and nothing remains of the great master's manner but that free, honest, pure, and noble spirit of thought and feeling which never deserted him.

In the delineation of character, as well as in the painting of external nature, Scott proceeds objectively: his mind was a mirror that faithfully reflected the external surfaces of things. He does not show the profound analysis which penetrates into the internal mechanism of the passions and anatomises the nature of man, nor does he communicate, like Richardson and Byron, his own personal colouring to the creations of his fancy; but he sets before you so brightly, so transparently, so vividly, all that is necessary to give a distinct idea, that his images remain indelibly in the memory.

CHAPTER XXI.

BYRON, MOORE, SHELLEY, KEATS, CAMPBELL, LEIGH HUNT, AND WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

§ 1. LORD BYRON. His life and writings. § 2. Childe Harold. § 3. Romantic Tales: The Giaour, Siege of Corinth, Corsair, &c. § 4. Beppo and the Vision of Judgment. The Island and other poems. § 5. Dramatic works: Manfred and Cain. Marino Faliero. The Two Foscari. Sardanapalus. Werner. § 6. Don Juan. § 7. THOMAS MOORE. His life and writings. § 8. Translation of Anacreon. Thomas Little's Works. Odes

and Epistles. Irish Melodies. National Airs. Sacred Songs. § 9. Political lampoons: the Fudge Family in Paris. § 10. Lalla Rookh and the Loves of the Angels. § 11. Prose works: the Epicurean, and Biographies of Sheridan, Byron, and Lord Edward Fitzgerald. § 12. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. His life. § 13. Queen Mab. Alastor. Revolt of Islam. Hellas. The Witch of Atlas. Prometheus Unbound. The Cenci. § 14. Rosalind and Helen. The Sensitive Plant. § 15. JOHN KEATS. His life and writings. § 16. THOMAS CAMPBELL. His life and writings. § 17. LEIGH HUNT. His life and writings. § 18. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. His life and writings.

§ 1. THE immense influence exerted by Byron on the taste and sentiment of Europe has not yet passed away, and though far from being so supreme and despotic as it once was, is not likely to be ever effaced. He called himself, in one of his poems, "the grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme;" and there is some similarity between the suddenness and splendour of his literary career and the meteoric rise and domination of the First Buonaparte. They were both, in their respective departments, the offspring of revolution; and both, after reigning with absolute power for some time, were deposed from their supremacy, though their reign will leave profound traces in the history of the nineteenth century. GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON (1788-1824), was born in London in 1788, and was the son of an unprincipled profligate and of a Scottish heiress of ancient and illustrious extraction, but of a temper so passionate and uncontrolled that it reached, in its capricious alternations of fondness and violence, very nearly to the limit of insanity. Her dowry was speedily dissipated by her worthless husband; and the lady, with her boy, was obliged to retire to Aberdeen, where they lived for several years in very straitened circumstances. The future poet inherited from his mother a susceptibility almost morbid, which such a kind of early training must have still further aggravated. His personal beauty