Till on Ravelston's cliffs and on Clermiston's lee Come, fill up my cup; come, fill up my can For it's up with the bonnet of bonny Dundee !" It is curious to observe how, when beneath their enormous load Scott's mind began to fail, his memory clung to the ancient minstrelsy, although it lost its hold of some of his own compositions. On hearing the verses from "The Pirate," set to music,— "Farewell! farewell! The voice you hear Has left its last soft tone with you; Its next must join the seaward cheer And shout among the shouting crew!"— he said, "Capital words! Whose are they? Byron's, I suppose." But, on visiting the ruined castle of Douglas, he repeated his favourite of the old ballads,"The Battle of Otterburne;" and the closing stanza left him in tears : "My wound is deep; I fain would sleep; Take thou the vanguard of the three, This deed was done at the Otterburne About the dawning of the day: Earl Douglas was buried by the bracken-bush, A more striking proof of the tenacity to the strains which had been familiarized to his ear in childhood occurred on his hopeless pilgrimage to Italy. There were PILGRIMAGE TO ITALY. 87 pointed out to him the Lake of Avernus, the Temple of Apollo, the Lucrine Lake, Baiæ, Misenum, and the surrounding monuments: and what was the reply? The fragment of a Jacobite ditty. "I found," says his companion, “that something in the place had inspired recollections of his own beloved country and the Stuarts; for he immediately repeated, with a grave tone and with great emphasis, 'Up the craggy mountain and down the mossy glen, We canna gang a milking for Charlie and his men.' I could not help smiling at this strange commentary on my dissertation on the Lake of Avernus." There are many traits of Scott's character as a man, —especially in his calamitous years,—many as a writer, the notice of which does not belong to this course of lectures. It is, however, not inappropriate that the existence of the last and the greatest of the Border Minstrels closed in the centre of that region which his genius has peopled with spiritual creations, and not far away from that spot where his young imagination was early fed with the traditions of Scottish song. LECTURE XII. Coleridge. Advantage of connecting critical with historical considerations Spenser and his age-Spirit of the French Revolution-Contrast between the American and the French Revolutions-Its influence over thought and action-Coleridge's "France"-Nature of lyrical poetry-Early developments of Coleridge's genius-His philosophy -His critical papers-His consciousness of his own poetical endowment His boyhood at Christ's Church Hospital-Monody on Chatterton-His love of nature-Ode on Dejection-Translations of Schiller's tragedies-" The Ancient Mariner"—" Christabel”—Its metrical beauty-His epitaph. IN tracing the progress of English poetry from its early eras, I have sought in this course of lectures so to connect critical with historical considerations as to give, I trust, some assistance in forming an idea of the intellectual and moral altitude of each of the illustrious poets whose characters we have been contemplating. This has been attempted under a conviction that it was part of the duty which is resting upon me; for I regarded the process as wellnigh essential to a true appreciation of the genius of the poets. How, for instance, could there be a just, or at least an adequate, sense of the glory of that matchless allegory, "The Fairy Queen," if the student were not drawn to some knowledge of the age in which SPENSER AND HIS AGE. 89 Spenser flourished?-if I may apply such a word to a life closing early and in neglect and sorrow. Extraneous as history is to literature, it is the framework which is important to give due effect to the portraiture of men who have earned distinction in the annals of letters. It is thus that the proportions and colours are better realized. Fancy, for one moment, some one perusing the wonderful poem just alluded to,—that majestic fragment of Spenser's imagination; fancy it read with some confused and false notion that it was a production of the times of Charles II., that detested and opprobrious period of English history, which all the language of loathing I could heap upon it was not strong enough to stigmatize : and what a feeling of incongruity would come over the reader as he found himself following the spotless moral poet through the limitless land of Fairy! The poet, thus ignorantly misplaced, would seem as if he had alighted upon the wrong planet. But when you appropriate Spenser to his own age,—that thoughtful and adventurous age, philosophical and chivalrous, of whose representative men it might be said, as it was said of one of them, that they were so contemplative you could not believe them active, and so active you could not believe them contemplative place the poet, I say, in that age, and how true, how natural, is his position, and what a light is reflected on the character of his inspirations! Or, again, how almost inexplicable would be the production of the "Paradise Lost" in a generation unworthy of it, did we not consider the mighty ordeal through which Milton's mind had been passing in the times of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate! and how inadequately would the reader judge of the poetry of Pope, did he not remember the characteristics of those times, an age peculiarly of wits and freethinkers! Poetic inspiration is, indeed, one light, for it is light derived from heaven; but, like the starlight, it has its many magnitudes, its various phases in the cloudless ether or in the haze of the horizon "The stars pre-eminent in magnitude, And they that from the zenith dart their beams, Though half a sphere be conscious of their brightness, Are yet of no diviner origin, No purer essence, than the one that burns Like an untended watch-fire on the ridge Of some dark mountain, or than those which seem All are the undying offspring of one Sire." It has been my aim to show the poetry of each age shining in its own region of time and its own atmosphere; but, on bringing the course down to what may be considered contemporary literature, there is less occasion for historical illustration. One influence, however, requires to be noticed. I refer to the general agitation of Europe consequent to the French Revolution. The closing years of the last century were years of change. Things which had endured for ages were perishing, not by slow gradations of decay, but by quick and unlooked-for violence. Time-honoured institutions were not suffered to attain the limit of their natural existence and then to sink under the gradual accumulation of years, but were swiftly swept away by a new force. The clenched hand of prescriptive tyranny was forced to quit its grasp; and, |