be boasted by many cultivated nations. This vigorous tongue has been made the medium for science, for theology, for history, and, above all, for poetry of a very high order. "In the fourteenth century," says Campbell, himself a Scot, "Barbour celebrated the greatest royal hero of his country (Bruce) in a versified romance that is not uninteresting. James I. of Scotland; Henrysone, the author of 'Robene and Makyne,' the first known pastoral, and one of the best in a dialect rich with the favours of the Pastoral Muse; Douglas, the translator of Virgil; Dunbar, Mersar, and others, gave a poetical lustre to Scotland in the fifteenth century, and filled up a space in the annals of British poetry, after the date of Chaucer and Lydgate, that is otherwise nearly barren." Dunbar, indeed, is an imaginative poet of a very high order, and his 'Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins in Hell' is an allegory of astonishing vigour and terrific sublimity at once Dantesque and Spenserian. As a satirist and painter of comic character Sir David Lyndsay is a writer of whom any nation might well be proud; and Scotland can trace an uninterrupted succession of truly admirable poets, comic, descriptive, pathetic, or narrative, of a merit well worthy of those admirable ballads which are inseparably associated with all that is gayest, tenderest, and most humorous in sentiment, married to the sweetest music in the world.

One of the most remarkable and truly national Scottish poets is Allan Ramsay, whose Gentle Shepherd' is perhaps the only modern pastoral which can be compared to the exquisite creations of Theocritus. It is the first successful solution of that difficult problem, to represent rustic manners as they really are, and at the same time so as to make them attractive and graceful. The difficulty of the task will best be appreciated by reflecting on the innumerable failures, from Virgil down to Shenstone, which crowd the annals of literature. But the rustic pictures of Allan Ramsay breathe the freshness of real country life they have an atmosphere of nature, the breezy freshness of the fields: he has revived the magic of Theocritus, and given us a glimpse into the interior life of the real shepherds, with their artless vigour and unsophisticated feelings. The immense popularity of this poem among the people whose manners it describes (for no other readers could generally either understand its language or appreciate its delicate and local allusions) as well as the existence of a vast body of very beautiful songs, would diminish our surprise that Scotland should have produced a number of poets who devoted to the vernacular literature of their country powers of genius which would have made them immortal on a larger theatre than the one which they selected. The greatest of these was undoubtedly Robert Burns, the glory of his country, and one of the innumerable instances, in which Britain has been so prolific, of genius springing to immortality from the hum

blest origin. He was born in 1758, and passed the earlier part of his life in struggling (though with little success) against the toils and distresses of a peasant's life. Having been reduced by misfortunes in his humble career as a farmer, and also in some degree by indulgence in the passions accompanying so excitable and poetical a temperament, to the verge of ruin, he was upon the point of quitting his country in despair and emigrating to the West Indies, when the unequalled pathos, splendour, and originality of some of his lyrics struck many influential members of cultivated society, and the poet was induced to remain in Scotland. He now went to Edinburgh, where he reigned for some time the undisputed lion, the wonder of that literary capital. His conversation was as brilliant as his genius was pathetic and sublime, but, unfortunately for himself, the poet could not resist the fascinations of social indulgence, and the intoxication of universal applause. He retired again to the country, and, after fruitlessly struggling for some time as an agriculturist, he was obliged, in order to obtain bread for his family, to accept an humble situation in the office of Excise. This employment, so unfavourable both to habits of temperance and to literary occupation, only tended to precipitate the setting of this bright and comet-like intelligence: his constitution, worn out with excesses, passions, and anxieties, was completely broken up, and he died in 1796.

His works are singularly various and splendid; the greater part of them consists of songs, either completely original, or recastings of such compositions of older date: in performing this difficult task of altering and improving existing lyrics, in which a beautiful thought was often buried under a load of mean and vulgar expression, Burns exhibits a most exquisite delicacy and purity of taste, and an admirable ear for harmony. His own songs vary in tone and subject through every changing mood, from the sternest patriotism and the most agonising pathos to the broadest drollery: in all he is equally inimitable. Most of his finest works are written in his own Lowland dialect, and give a picture, at once familiar and ideal, of the feelings and sentiments of the peasant. It is the rustic heart, but glorified by passion, and elevated by a perpetual communing with nature. But he has also exhibited perfect mastery when writing pure English, and many admirable productions might be cited in which he has clothed the loveliest thoughts in the purest language. Consequently his genius was not obliged to depend upon the adventitious charm and prestige of a provincial dialect. There never perhaps existed a mind more truly and intensely poetical than that of Burns. In his verses to a Mountain Daisy, which he turned up with his plough in his reflections on destroying, in the same way, the nest of a fieldmouse, there is a vein of tenderness which no poet has ever surpassed. In the beautiful little poem 'To Mary in Heaven,' and in many

other short lyrics, he has condensed the whole history of love, its tender fears, its joys, its frenzy, its agonies, and its yet sublimer resignation, into the space of a dozen lines. No poet ever seems so sure of himself; none goes more directly and more certainly to the point; none is more muscular in his expression, encumbering the thought with no useless drapery of words, and trusting always for effect to nature, truth, and intensity of feeling. Consequently no poet more abounds in those short and picturelike phrases which at once present the object almost to our senses, and which no reflection could either imitate or improve. What can be more wonderfully condensed than his picture of a patriot warrior

"Pressing forward red-wat-shod"?

it is absolutely Shakspearian.

6

But the religion in which Burns is not perhaps the most supreme, but the most alone, is that of familiar humour, mingled with a kind of sly and quaint tenderness. Scottish external nature is in his poems represented in its every phase, in its every shade of variation; but he is yet more admirable when he delineates the interior life of his own thoughtful and moral countrymen. There have never been traced by the hand of man such full, such tender, such living picture of rustic life as Burns has left us. The half-serious halfhumorous tale of Tam o'Shanter,' with its fantastically terrific diablerie, the satiric gaiety of Holy Fair,' the 'Scotch Drink,' the Elegy on Matthew Henderson,' the Address to the De’il,' all bear witness to the wonderful diversity of his powers, to his deep sympathy with all that is noble and touching in rustic life, and to his intensely national vein of mingled tenderness and humour. The true poet is he who finds the most of beauty and of dignity in the universal feelings and interests of human life and increased wisdom and sympathy (the infallible attendant on increased wisdom) is rapidly tending to make all mankind echo the exclamation of Burns when he wept at the sight of a lovely and peasant-peopled scene: "The sight," he said, "of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure to his mind, which none could understand who had not witnessed, like himself, the happiness and the worth which they contained." One of his most admirable poems, 'The Cotter's Saturday Night,' is nothing but an amplification of this profound and beautiful sentiment.

CHAPTER XVII.

SCOTT AND SOUTHEY.

Walter Scott-The Lay of the Last Minstrel-Marmion-Lady of the Lake Lord of the Isles-Waverley-Guy Mannering-Antiquary-Tales of my Landlord-Ivanhoe-Monastery and Abbot-Kenilworth-Pirate-Fortunes of Nigel-Peveril-Quentin Durward-St. Ronan's Well-RedgauntletTales of the Crusaders-Woodstock-Chronicles of the Canongate--Anne of Geierstein. Robert Southey-Thalaba and Kehama-Madoc-Legendary Tales-Roderick-Prose Works and Miscellanies.

THERE is no author in the whole range of literature, ancient or modern, whose works exhibit so perfect an embodiment of united power and activity as is to be found in Walter Scott. He is as prolific as Lopé de Vega, as absolutely original as Homer. He was descended from one of the most powerful and ancient houses of Scotland; and though his father (a writer to the signet in Edinburgh) was rather an active and intelligent lawyer than a representative of Middle Age nobility, yet the spirit of clanship which still so strongly pervades Scottish society was enough to unite the poet in sentiment as in blood to the great and powerful family of Buccleugh. Having received in his childhood a slight injury, which rendered him during his whole life a little lame, though it did not ultimately affect the strength of a robust and athletic body, he passed some of his earliest years among the romantic scenery of his own beautiful country— scenery where every spot had been the theatre of warlike or necromantic tradition. Scott afterwards passed through a regular course of education, first at the High School and afterwards at the University of Edinburgh, where he appears, without distinguishing himself by any extraordinary triumphs, to have acquired the good opinion of his teachers, and to have become very popular among his comrades, partly by his stores of old legends, and not less by his frank, bold, and adventurous character. It is not easy to conceive a finer specimen of humanity than Scott. His frame was vigorous and manly, even surpassing the ordinary size and strength; his features, though not classically regular, were animated and attractive; and his character was an admirable union of imagination, of good sense, and of good nature. Power, in short, and goodness were stamped upon the man, both within and without. On completing his education he became a member of the Scottish bar, and was ultimately appointed, through the recommendation of the head of his clan, the Duke of Buccleugh, sheriff of Selkirk, to which appointment were afterwards

added one or two others. As a lawyer his success, though not extraordinary, was respectable. The society of Edinburgh was at that time unusually rich in men of literary and philosophical accomplishments, and it was, moreover, enlivened and diversified by many relics of the political struggles of the '45-old Jacobite gentlemen, whose manners supplied the future novelist with many of his most admirable characters, and whose adventures furnished him with many a wild tale of bravery, persecution, and escape-the traditions of a romantic age which was rapidly passing away.

Henry Mackenzie, the author of 'The Man of Feeling,' and one of the ornaments of Edinburgh literary society, had introduced into Scotland a taste for the ballad-poetry of Germany. It was from the study and admiration of Bürger and the minor lyrists that the English began to turn their attention to the Teutonic muse; and Scott translated the 'Lenore' and other small compositions, chiefly of that wild and spectral character which might have been expected to possess so much novelty for the British public. These translations, some of them executed with great spirit and fidelity (as for example the version of Goèthe's 'Erl König'), were contributed by Scott to Lewis's 'Tales of Terror,' the first attempt to give specimens of German literature in England. After having, by the exercise of reason and good sense, recovered from an early lovesorrow, Scott married a young lady of the name of Carpenter, who was possessed of a small fortune, and retired to a cottage, where, in the very flower of his youth and surrounded by domestic happiness, he prepared for future glory by steady and uninterrupted labour.

From very early youth he had exhibited a most intense passion for the ballad-poetry in which his own country is even richer than England itself; and we know that in childhood his imagination had been lighted up by the repeated perusal of Percy's 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry'-that admirable collection which was not only the germ of the great romantic revolution in literature, but which has perhaps tended more than any book since Homer to inspire the youthful writer with a passion for natural unsophisticated sentiment and vivid description. After translating 'Goetz von Berlichingen,' Scott travelled over the Border district, collecting new stores of ballads from old peasants and wandering rhapsodists, and thus rescuing from oblivion some of the finest pictures of simple pathos and heroism, and many curious documents of the history of that interesting region: these were published in three volumes, entitled the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.' Nothing could be better calculated as a preparation for the future triumphs of the romantic poet and novelist of Scotland than this task of love; and the necessary antiquarian reading and investigation must have supplied him with an immense store of the materials he so well knew how to us He afterwards published another work of a