that we are without good reasons for our present peremptory affirmation; the very different moral as well as intellectual complexion of the works in question, is of itself sufficient proof, if others were wanting. Much injury is sometimes done by these unauthorised filiations of the foundlings of literature. We were assured at one time that Lord Byron was the author of the Vampire, in the same manner as we are now required to believe that he is the author of the Dogs, and that he is not the author of the Age of Bronze (they who believe one may believe the other); and we have ourselves been convicted, in a biographical dictionary of living authors, of writing an execrable tragedy, which we have not even read; a circumstance which has very much contributed to increase our disapprobation of such impertinent proceedings. In the present instance, the error is partly accounted for by the manner in which the two names we allude to have been habitually associated in men's minds, for good and for evil, from circumstances to which we need not refer; so that the idea of the one inevitably suggests that of the other, and the public, seldom very discriminating in such cases, has been in the habit of ascribing, not merely the good deeds, but the offences, of one partner to his coadjutor, on the same principle, we suppose, on which one head of an amphisbona might be impeached for the murders committed by the other. There is, too, a partial resemblance of manner, sufficient to deceive superficial observers, owing to the author of Adam Blair having unconsciously adopted some of the mannerism of his associate.

The works before us are already so generally known, and have been so repeatedly criticised and commented on in reviews and magazines, as well as at tea-tables and conversaziones, as to render any very minute or elaborate survey of their contents unnecessary. We shall therefore confine ourselves to a general view of the characters and capacities of these two writers, as far as we comprehend them, and a correction of certain misconceptions into which some of our elder brethren appear to us to have fallen, in regard to the last of these volumes. We give the precedency to the author of Lights and Shadows, as being the worthier of the two, and because, in our examination of Adam Blair, we may probably have occasion to moralize, an office for which we have no great inclination, and which we naturally wish to put off as long as possible.

The author of Lights and Shadows is certainly a man of uncommon powers, though of a species which it is not very easy to define, from the difficulty of distinguishing between what is natural and what is superinduced; for some of his most prominent peculiarities, both of manner and matter, are purely the result of circumstances. When we speak of him as a follower of Sir Walter Scott, we refer merely to his choice of subjects; for in all his acquired modes of thinking and writing-in all that distinguishes an individual writer from others of the same class, to a greater degree than he would otherwise be distinguished by the peculiarity of nature, he is essentially of the Lake School, and more especially a follower of Wordsworth although strong traces of Coleridge

are likewise discoverable. We mention not this as detracting from his true and proper originality, which we do not consider as at all disparaged by such a statement; but because the above remark will materially assist us in comprehending the nature and scope of the remarkable productions before us.

With this writer's earlier works we are but little acquainted, if such an avowal is pardonable in a critic. His first poem, which we never saw, and know only by the extracts given in the reviews, seems to have been a wild, aimless, incoherent narrative, deficient, like many works of very young writers, in human interest, but containing many luxuriant plays of fancy, and many touches of domestic sweetness. His second work, a dramatic poem, we had not the courage to read-this, indeed, was before we were fully initiated in our profession. We were scared by its physiognomy at first sight. It appeared to be a long, cheerless, dismal, interminable series of dialogues, full of sickness, and death, and sepulchres, and monotonous misery, and sickly religious sentiment; and the effect of reading it must have been similar to that of traversing the cemeteries of Scutari, so admirably described in Anastasius. We cannot doubt, however, that it contained a great deal of poetry, and much natural beauty; and, at all events, it was decidedly Wordsworthian. With his smaller poems we are better acquainted; several of them are of the purely imaginative class, and are strongly marked by a passion for ideal beauty, and a propensity to sport amidst fairy worlds of his own creation, which has since found another channel, and one more in unison with the sympathies of general readers. One of the poems, subjoined to the work last alluded to, was remarkable, as exhibiting the rude outlines of his present form of writing. Had it been written in prose, it might (with the exception of the localities) have been published as one of the Lights and Shadows.

The tales before us are an attempt to delineate the more striking traits of ordinary Scottish life, in a series of insulated sketches, which, however, may almost be considered as one work, from the unity of character and purpose which pervades them, and which in a great measure supplies the want of a combining story. Each feature is complete in itself, but we feel it to be part of a corresponding whole, separate from which it could never have existed. They are short, and simple in structure, being founded, for the most part, on a single incident-some one of the ordinary or extraordinary casualties of rural life, such as place the disposition and habits of a people in an advantageous point of view, or draw forth the interesting peculiarities of their situation. Nor can it be denied that the life of the Scottish people in general, and more especially of the peasantry, with whom our author is principally concerned, is rich in materials of moral and poetical interest. The sedate and austere character of their religion, the heroic recollections with which it is associated, and the intimate manner in which it mingles itself with their daily thoughts and feelings, and even their phraseology-their familiarity with the noblest scenes of nature, producing

an elevation and refinement of character peculiar to such situations, and tempering natural simplicity with habitual thoughtfulness-the plainness of living, and the regular and unceasing routine of exertion to which they are accustomed, and the self-respect and homely independence thus produced-combine to form a character singularly adapted to the purposes of impressive delineation. We think, too, that there is something in the subject remarkably fitted to the author's peculiar capacities. His genius is rather of the reflective than of the active kind. He takes no delight in the bustle of incidents, or in striking contrasts of character. He has a fine and delicate eye for beautiful objects in nature or in human life; but it is to the " something far more deeply interfused," the spirit which lives in them, and the emotions they are calculated to excite, that his attention is instinctively directed. He cannot rest in externals; he regards them chiefly as introductory to an "inner court" of deeper and more enduring beauty. His descriptions always either terminate in, or are pervaded by, reflection; and, in the narration of events, he is less intent on relating what was said or done, than on tracing the secret impulses which led to the action, and the feelings which accompanied it. It is not so much a history of his hero, as of his hero's mind. His study is the inner man. Of this feature, which is more especially observable in his later publications, we shall have to speak more at large when we examine the scope and tendency of his writings. In the meantime we may take occasion to notice another point of resemblance between him and his master-one indeed which is in him more marked and more prominent than in Wordsworth; we mean the leaning which is manifest in his mind towards subjects of a mild and tranquil nature. And this remark will serve to limit and qualify some of our preceding observations. In the selection of his subjects, as well as in his management of them, he is guided almost exclusively by this principle. He dwells with fondness on all the gentler affections, and in every thing that either directly or indirectly ministers to them; and, accordingly, all his stories are either such as in themselves possess this tendency, or are capable of being made subservient to it by the tempering hand of genius. Nothing turbulent or impure, no restless speculations or unregulated fancies, can exist within this sphere; or, if admitted, it is only as the "dark materials" out of which he may create something beautiful and happy. He loves to tell a gentle and heartsoothing tale-a tale of reconcilement, or brotherly affection, or innocent love, or repentant guilt, or quiet endurance. Even in his darkest pictures there is always something which redeems them from utter gloom. A mild charm is spread over all his delineations; scenery, characters, incidents, and reflections, are transmitted to us through a certain calm and softening medium, distinct alike from the dazzling frosty clearness of one writer, the stormy gloom of another, the cheerful vernal sunshine of a third, and the sultry glare of a fourth. Such a style of writing, however, has a tendency to mawkishness and cant, as the disposition of mind

which corresponds to it has to effeminacy; and we are far from saying that our author's good sense always keeps pace with his feelings and imagination. Some remains of the morbid sentimentality of his early writings are still visible. We do not mean that this is a prominent or obtrusive fault; it would indeed be difficult to specify any one individual passage in which it occurs; but its effect is not the less perceptible in the general impression which is left on the mind by the book. A more glaring error is the mixture of fact with metaphysics, which too often produces a most incongruous combination. The author overlays his descriptions with reflection, marring the simple beauty of the objects, and interrupting the pleasure of the reader, by philosophical suggestions which he superinduces upon them. His history and his comment jostle each other. Each would be good by itself, but the two do not harmonize. Speaking accurately, indeed, this error is more perceptible in the style than in the matter; the phraseology of reflection does not coalesce kindly with that of action, and the result is sometimes unpleasing, and sometimes even ludicrous. We fear we have not made our meaning so clear to our readers as we could wish; and we refer them, as the best illustration of our remarks, to the volume itself.

His characters (to resume the thread of our observations, which has been for a moment interrupted) are exactly such as might have been expected from an author writing under such prepossessions, and for such a purpose. They are for the most part simplehearted, affectionate, uncalculating creatures, guided only by the instinct of natural piety, combined with the influences of a simple religion, which, being implanted in infancy, has interwoven itself with the whole frame of the mind, so that its dictates are not distinguishable from the voice of nature. They belong to the class of beings described by the poet, in his Ode to Duty:

66

It never occurs to them to inquire into the expediency of what they are doing. Instead of stopping at every third step, to consider the consequences of their proceedings, they follow the light within them, and require no better guide. They are the very reverse of sophisters, economists, and calculators." They manifest throughout a culpable ignorance of Paley's Moral Philosophy. If they were required to give a reason for any one of their actions, they would probably be as much at a loss as the little girl of Miss Edgeworth, when her mamma (a disciple of the school of utility) asked her why her birth-day should be a day of rejoicing, rather than any other in the year-a perplexity which the poor thing would probably have felt in an equal degree, had she been called upon to give a reason for her preference of a

plum-cake or a wax-doll. They never speculate on their own internal sensations, after the fashion of many modern heroes and heroines, who seem to have little to do but to describe themselves, and to trace the sources of their own actual emotions-emotions of which, if they really existed, the individual could not possibly be sensible, except in their effects; a mode of proceeding which suggests the idea of a man anatomizing himself. They leave all this to the author. They think no more of defining what they are, what they are not, and how they came to be what they are, than a nightingale thinks of writing a treatise on music. We make no apology for such characters. They are at war with the " spirit of the age;" the "march of intellect" has not reached them. In these thinking and enlightened times, when every thing is handled, and examined, and subjected to the test of palpable experiment; when an attachment to, or reverence for, any object beyond the sphere of the five senses is justly regarded as enthusiasm, and morality itself has been rendered intelligible, and reduced to a sober business-like calculation of profit and loss, it must be a little provoking to our well-founded self-satisfaction, to hear of beings who are good without being conscious of it, and happy without knowing why; who find their account in transgressing the commonest rules of expediency, and persist in drawing fortitude, and comfort, and moral renovation, from sources which our stronger reason has long since discovered to be nonentities. It is, we own, mortifying-but there is no help for it. Such beings are made for poetry-and poetry is too wilful and obstinate a thing to be easily divorced from its favourite subjects. Speaking seriously, indeed, we doubt whether this scheme of heart, head, and conduct, which we have been describing-this systematic unconsciousness (to use a word which expresses our meaning better than perhaps any other) is compatible with the state of things as it at present exists; whether, however natural it may have been in other and simpler times, and however indispensable some of its elements may be to the formation of a truly good character, it is, as a whole, either right or (to speak more properly) practicable in the present age. This, however, is matter for abler and more prepared pens; and all that we have to do, with regard to the characters before us, is to trace their general lineaments, and to point out their subserviency to the author's prevailing purpose.

It may be supposed, from the above definition, that there are certain lights and situations in which he is more especially fond of contemplating the human heart. He delights in pourtraying the unconscious graces of childhood, its sportiveness, its engaging simplicity, and those occasional gleams of thought and feeling which betray the mysterious depth of the yet undeveloped soul beneath― the joyous season of youth, luxuriating in its own life, and in the flow of natural affections; but he is most in his element when describing the female character. It is the subject which, of all others, accords with his peculiar style of painting. Those qualities, by