method is by no means so happy or so complete as Scott's, because the people among whom they seek to interest us, have national characters totally different from our own-whereas those whose minds he exhibits as a stimulus to ours, are felt at once to be great kindred originals, of which our every-day experience shews us copies, faint indeed, but capable of being worked into stronger resemblance. If other poets should afterwards seek and collect their materials from the same field, they may perhaps be able to produce more finished compositions, but the honour of being the Patriarch of the National Poetry of Scotland, must always remain in the possession of Walter Scott. Nay, whatever direction the genius of his countrymen may take in future years, the benefit of his writings must ever be experienced in the great resuscitation of slumbering elements, which they have produced in the national mind. Perhaps the two earliest of his poems, the Lay of the Last Minstrel and Marmion, are the most valuable, because they are the most impregnated with the peculiar spirit of Scottish antiquity. In his subsequent poems, he made too much use of the common materials and machinery employed in the popular novels of that day, and descended so far as to hinge too much of their interest upon the common resources of an artfully constructed fable. In like manner, in those prose Tales-which I no more doubt to be his than the poems he has published with his name-in that delightful series of works, which have proved their author to be the nearest kinsman the creative intellect of Shakespeare has ever had-the best are those, the interest of which is most directly and historically national-Waverley and Old Mortality. The whole will go down together, so long as any national character survives in Scotland-and themselves will, I nothing question, prolong the existence of national character there more effectually, than any other stimulus its waning strength is ever likely to meet with. But I think the two I have mentioned, will always be considered as the brightest jewels in this ample crown of unquenched and unquenchable radiance. What Shakespeare has done for the civil wars of the two Roses, and the manifestations of national mind produced by the influence of the old baronial feuds-what the more than dramatic Clarendon has done for the great period of contest between the two majestic sets of principles, up on whose union, matured and tempered, the modern constitution of England is founded-the same service has been rendered by the author of these Tales, (whosoever he may be,) to the most interesting times in the history of the national mind of Scotland-the times, when all the various elements of her character, religious and political, were exhibited in their most lively fermentation of sharpness and vigour. As for the complaints which have been made of unfairness and partiality, in the views which he has given of the various parties-I think they are not only exaggerated, but altogether absurd. It is, indeed, very easy to see to which side the Poet's own early prejudices have given his mind a leaning-but I think it is no less easy to see that the romance of his predilections has been tempered and chastened by as fine a mixture of sober reflection and generous candour, as ever entered into the composition of any man of high and enthusiastic feeling. There is too much chivalry about the man, to allow of his treating his foes unfairly; and had he been really disposed to injure any set of men, he had weapons enough at his disposal, very different from any which even his detractors can accuse him of having employ |