His broad humour, too, is apt to degenerate into farce; nor is his wit always so felicitous or finished as are the efforts of his fancy and imagination.

Many of these remarks apply more specially to his prose than to his poetry. That, however, bears the broad impress of his benignant and buoyant genius, to a degree which, had his fictions never been written, would have preserved his name. It is throughout a natural outflow, without effort or ostentation; often careless, but never coarse; often loose, but never dull; resembling a lively, bickering, brattling mountain stream, at no time deep, but never drumly, and with frequent jets of power, flashes of brilliance, and rapids of passion. In Homeric vigour, the battle in "Marmion" has no modern competitor; and in a certain gay, chivalric grace, quite as unequalled (except in Chaucer and Dryden's fables) is the close of "The Lady of the Lake,”—a fact the more remarkable, that most happy closes in fiction and poetry, including that of the "Vicar of Wakefield," and many in Scott's own productions, degenerate into the insipid improbability of a fairy tale. "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" is, however, as a whole, his best poem. It reaches in parts almost creative power, and is sustained throughout with incredible energy. The poetry in his novels is in general admirable, alike in itself and in the mode and time of its introduction. His songs are only inferior to those of Burns; and the mottoes from "Old Plays" resemble planetary asteroids in their aërial as well as in their fragmentary character. Still, those critics, we think, greatly err who prefer him as a poet to Byron, although, taking him in the entire sphere of his literary achievements, he is the larger orb. He has produced no such compact and consummate masterpiece as "The Corsair;" no such long gush of high-wrought enthusiasm as the fourth canto of "Childe Harold; " no such exquisite dramatic poem as "Manfred " or "Cain;" and no combination, in a similar compass, of wit, sarcasm, poetry, passion, knowledge of human nature, interesting adventure, terse sentiment, and melting pathos, to be compared with "Don Juan." In sobriety, sweetness, health, and breadth he is as far superior to Byron as he is in moral senti

ment; but he is inferior in strength of soar, in eloquence, intensity, and eagle genius. It must be remembered, too, that Byron had performed all these marvellous things, and was dead, at an age when Scott had only written the first of his larger poems.

Still (setting Shakspeare, Homer, and, in a very different style of genius, Milton aside) Scott, as a whole, has been the foremost of authors. No one has so combined quantity with quality, health with force, simplicity with grandeur, catholicity of aim with ease and naturalness of execution; business-like directness and keen common sense with enthusiasm ; a pure morality, and sound religious feeling, with liberal impulses, a generous heart, a genial temperament, and a bold and unbounded imagination.

MARMION.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE present story turns upon the private adventures of a fictitious character; but is called a Tale of Flodden Field, because the hero's fate is connected with that memorable defeat, and the causes which led to it. The design of the Author was, if possible, to apprise his readers, at the outset, of the date of his story, and to prepare them for the manners of the age in which it is laid. Any historical narrative, far more an attempt at Epic composition, exceeded his plan of a Romantic Tale; yet he may be permitted to hope, from the popularity of THE LAY OF the Last MinstrEL, that an attempt to paiut the manners of the feudal times, upon a broader scale, and in the course of a more interesting story, will not be unacceptable to the public.

The poem opens about the commencement of August, and concludes with the defeat of Flodden, 9th September 1513.

INTRODUCTION TO CANTO FIRST.

TO WILLIAM STEWART ROSE, ESQ.

ASHESTIEL, Ettrick Forest.

NOVEMBER'S sky is chill and drear,
November's leaf is red and sear:
Late, gazing down the steepy linn,
That hems our little garden in,
Low in its dark and narrow glen,
You scarce the rivulet might ken,
So thick the tangled greenwood grew,
So feeble trilled the streamlet through:

Now murmuring hoarse, and frequent scen
Through bush and brier, no longer green,
An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,
Brawls over rock and wild cascade,
And, foaming brown with doubled speed,
Hurries its waters to the Tweed.
No longer Autumn's glowing red
Upon our Forest hills is shed;
No more, beneath the evening beam,
Fair Tweed reflects their purple gleam;
Away hath passed the heather-bell
That bloomed so rich on Needpath-fell;
Sallow his brow, and russet bare
Are now the sister-heights of Yare.
The sheep, before the pinching heaven,
To sheltered dale and down are driven,
Where yet some faded herbage pines,
And yet a watery sunbeam shines :
In meek despondency they eye
The withered sward and wintry sky,
And far beneath their Summer hill,
Stray sadly by Glenkiunon's rill:
The shepherd shifts his mantle's fold,
And wraps him closer from the cold;
His dogs no merry circles wheel,
But, shivering, follow at his heel;
A cowering glance they often cast,
As deeper moans the gathering blast.
My imps, though hardy, bold and wild,
As best befits the mountain child,
Feel the sad influence of the hour,
And wail the daisy's vanished flower;
Their Summer gambols tell, and mourn,
And anxious ask,--Will Spring return,

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And birds and lambs again be gay,
And blossoms clothe the hawthorn spray?

Yes, prattlers, yes. The daisy's flower
Again shall paint your Summer bower;
Again the bawthorn shall supply
The garlands you delight to tie;
The lambs upon the lea shall bound,
The wild birds carol to the round,
And while you frolic light as they,
Too short shall seem the Summer day.
To mute and to material things
New life revolving Summer brings;
The genial call dead Nature hears,
And in her glory reappears.
But oh my country's wintry state
What second spring shall renovate?
What powerful call shall bid arise
The buried warlike, and the wise;

The mind, that thought for Britain's weal,
The hand, that grasped the victor steel?
The vernal sun new life bestows

Even on the meanest flower that blows;
But vainly, vainly, may he shine,
Where Glory weeps o'er NELSON's shrine;
And vainly pierce the solemn gloom,
That shrouds, O PITT, thy hallowed tomb!
Deep graved in every British heart,
Oh never let those names depart!
Say to your sons,-Lo, here his grave,
Who victor died on Gadite wave;
To him, as to the burning levin,
Short, bright, resistless course was given;
Where'er his country's focs were found,
Was heard the fated thunder's sound,