harvest-home, like an author in many instances admirable, in some unique, but palpably mistaken in this particular, the Ettrick Shepherd: nor, on the contrary, do they put humanity out of countenance with those demure, gracefullybowing, languidly-smiling, old-maidish automatons, which lady-novelists delight in as the beau idéal of princely gallantry; or with the quaint, moody, striding, motioning, cloudy-fronted fantoccini that domineer at Hookham's and Colburn's, under the names of renowned sovereigns, sages, captains, and politicians. In the tales now before us, historical characters do not appear, as in other works of the kind, perpetually fluttered with a consciousness of their own importance, and oppressed with anticipations of the figure they are to make in Froissart or Monstrelet, in Brantome or Davila or Thuanus. They are not, in short, represented conformably to the instructions of M. De Piles to portraitpainters, in a passage which appears to have been assiduously studied by many of our historical romance-writers.

Il faut que les portraits semblent nous parler d'eux 'mêmes, et nous dire, par exemple: Tien, regarde moi, 'je suis ce Roi invincible environné de majesté. Je suis ce ' valeureux Capitaine qui porte la terreur par tout, ou bien 'qui ai fait voir par ma bonne conduite tant de glorieux suc'cès: je suis ce grand Ministre qui ai connu tous les ressorts 'de la politique je suis ce Magistrat d'une sagesse et d'une ' integrité consommée: je suis cet homme de lettres tout ab'sorbé dans les sciences: je suis cet homme sage et tran'quille que l'amour de la philosophie a mis au dessus des • désirs et de l' ambition: je suis ce Prélat pieux, docte, vigilant: je suis ce Protecteur des beaux arts, cet amateur de la vertu je suis cet artisan fameux, cet unique dans 6 ma profession, &c. Et pour les femmes: je suis cette sage • Princesse dont le grand air inspire du respect et de la con

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'fiance: je suis cette Dame fière, dont les manières grandes "attirent de l'estime, &c. Je suis cette Dame vertueuse, douce, modeste, &c. Je suis cette Dame enjouée qui 'n' aime que les ris, la joie, &c. Ainsi du reste.'-Cours de Peinture par Principes. Composé par M. De Piles. Paris.

1708. P. 279.

I have now pointed out all the instances that appear to me most remarkable, of a correspondence between the style and sentiments of these novels, and the known habits, circumstances, and qualities, of the author of Marmion. There remains, however, one fact to be noticed, which, even if unconnected with any point in the poet's individual character, would yet, on the general principles of human action, accord so precisely with the supposition of his being the unknown novelist, that I cannot forbear adding it to the already adduced proofs. How is it to be explained, that the author of Waverley has taken occasion in his writings to make honourable mention of almost every distinguished contemporary poet, except the Minstrel of the Border? The answer is obvious; he could not do so, because he was himself that author: and a man of ingenuous mind will shrink from publishing a direct commendation of his own talent, although he may feel confident that the eulogy will never be traced home. It would be endless to enumerate particularly the extracts from living poets, and the allusions to their writings, which abound in almost all the novels: Campbell, the Bard of Hope*," is frequently quoted; Lord Byron, more than once+; honest Crabbe,' our moral

* Mentioned by that name in the Bride of Lammermoor, vol. i. ch. 8.

+ Heart of Mid Lothian, vol. iii. ch. 3; Old Mortality, last vol. ch. 7.

'teacher,'' our English Juvenal*,' is perpetually appealed to, and with manifest fondness; James Hogg contributes a stanza +; several verses are borrowed from Wordsworth, and one passage in his Ballads is pointed out as containing a beautiful expression of feeling; Coleridge is often cited, and is distinguished by name as the most imaginative of ' our modern bards §;' he of the laurel wreath ||,' receives a tribute of deserved admiration, and Joanna Baillie, our 'immortal Joanna Baillie ¶,' is spoken of with a mixture of literary and national enthusiasm, as honourable to the man of taste and feeling, as characteristic of the true-hearted Caledonian **. Yet, strange to say, neither national affection, nor admiration of a genius, at least not inferior to the brightest our generation has produced, nor the necessary sympathy between two minds exactly similar in constitution and habits, engrossed with the same objects, and devoted to the same pursuits, has induced the novelist in any part of his works to bestow a single complimentary phrase upon the author of Marmion. Once, indeed, in the title-page of Guy Mannering, we are presented with four uninteresting lines, said to be taken from the Lay of the Last Minstrel;

* Heart of Mid Lothian, vol. i. ch. 1; Monastery, vol. iii. ch. 3; Waverley, vol. iii. ch. 22; Guy Mannering, vol. i. + Antiquary, vol. iii. ch. 16.

c. 20.

Ibid. vol. i. ch. 10; and see Heart of Mid Lothian, vol. iii. ch. 2. § Monastery, vol. i. ch. 11.

|| Heart of Mid Lothian, vol. iv. ch. 4.

¶ Bride of Lammermoor, vol. ii. ch. 8. **I do not know who is the poet so highly complimented in Guy Mannering (vol. i. ch. 3), since our author has in this, as in some other instances, lent his countenance to the modern bad practice of using quotations without furnishing refer

ences.

and once in the same novel, and again in the Introduction to the Monastery †, that poem is drily, not to say ungraciously, alluded to; but the writer is never mentioned by name. This is the more remarkable, as there does not exist a poet whose works would have supplied quotations more congenial to the spirit, and germane to the business of almost every chapter in these novels. Surely, Marmion, and Rokeby, and Don Roderick, and the Lady of the Lake, might occasionally have contributed, a verse, if it had been only to save the too frequent draught upon that wellwritten, but very didactic Old Play,' which appears to be (as M. Brisac says in Fletcher's Elder Brother),

"A general collection

Of all the quiddits from Adam to this time."

Act. I. Sc. 2.

The same shy or fastidious feeling seems to prevail with the author of Paul's Letters, when, after obtaining from his great poetical contemporary a translation of the insipid Romance of Dunois, he cavalierly designates him as "one of our Scottish men of rhyme ‡:" a mode of description scarcely less improper than if, in relating the conflict at Quatre Bras, he had mentioned the 42d Highlanders, as 'some Scotch foot in blue and green draperies.'

This cautious and reserved spirit may again be traced in the observations which were prefixed to the Bridal of Triermain, when its author was desirous of concealment. It is not in this place,' he says, that an examination of the works of the master whom he has here adopted as his model can, with propriety, be introduced, since his gene

* Vol. ii. ch. 5.

+ Letter from Captain Clutterbuck. Ninth Letter.

'ral acquiescence in the favourable suffrage of the public 'must necessarily be inferred from the attempt he has now 'made.' He offers some remarks on Romantic Poetry, 'the popularity of which has been revived in the present day, under the auspices, and by the unparalleled success, of one individual.'

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In the Epistle Dedicatory to Ivanhoe, Mr. Lawrence Templeton speaks with yet greater coolness of the novelist in whose steps he professes to tread; observing, that he has supplied his own indolence or poverty of invention' by incidents which have actually taken place; and pronouncing him to have derived from his works fully more credit and 'profit than the facility of his labours merited.' But Jedediah Cleishbotham was a still bolder man; for he, when willing to dissemble his identity with the author of Waverley, at once denounced that writer as I know not what inditer of vain fables; who hath cumbered the world with his devices, but shrunken from the responsibility thereof*. Truly, as the sapient Bridoison says, ' On peut se dire à soi❝ même ce-es sortes de choses là, mais-i-ils ne sont pas polis 'du tout da-ans cet endroit ci.'-Mariage de Figaro, Acte III. Sc. 20.

I think, then, that in the deportment of our mysterious novelist toward his honoured contemporary, we may discover the natural, and (as appears from the instances I have given), accustomed policy of an author forsaking an old cháracter, and provoking public curiosity in a new. One, who is thus situated, may innocently, nay becomingly, treat his other self with a cynical indifference, which, if manifested toward a brother in literature, would be justly blamed as harsh and uncandid.

* Prolegomen to the Heart of Mid Lothian.