A sad farewell of grass and green leaved tree,
The haunts of childhood doomed no more to see.
Through winding paths, that never saw the sun,
Where Eildon hides his roots in caverns dun,
They pass, the hollow pavement, as they go,
Rocks to remurmuring waves that boil below;
Silent they wade, where sounding torrents lave
The banks, and red the tinge of every wave;
For all the blood, that dyes the warrior's hand,
Runs through the thirsty springs of Fairy-land.
Level and green the downward region lies,
And low the ceiling of the fairy skies;
Self-kindled gems a richer light display
Than gilds the earth, but not a purer day.
Resplendent crystal forms the palace wall;
The diamond's trembling lustre lights the hall :
But where soft emeralds shed an umbered light,
Beside each coal-black courser sleeps a knight;
A raven plume waves o'er each helmed crest,
And black the mail, which binds each manly breast,
Girt with broad faulchion, and with bugle green-
Ah! could a mortal trust the fairy queen!
From mortal lips an earthly accent fell,

And Rhymer's tongue confessed the numbing spell :
In iron sleep the minstrel lies forlorn,

Who breathed a sound before he blew the horn.

So Vathek once, as Eastern legends tell,
Sought the vast dome of subterranean hell,
Where ghastly, in their cedar biers enshrined,
The fleshless forms of ancient kings reclined,
Who, long before primæval Adam rose,
Had heard the central gates behind them close,
With jarring clang the ebon portals ope,
And, closing, toll the funeral knell of hope.

A sable tapestry lined the marble wall,

And spirits cursed stalked dimly through the hall:

There, as he viewed each right hand ceaseless prest,
With writhing anguish, to each blasted breast,
Blue, o'er his brow, convulsive fibres start,
And flames of vengeance eddy round his heart;
With a dire shriek, he joins the restless throng,
And vaulted Hell returned his funeral song *.

Mysterious Rhymer! doomed by fate's decree
Still to revisit Eildon's lonely tree,

Where oft the swain, at dawn of hallow-day,
Hears thy black barb with fierce impatience neigh!
Say, who is he, with summons strong and high
That bids the charmed sleep of ages fly,

Rolls the long sound through Eildon's caverns vast,
While each dark warrior rouses at the blast,
His horn, his faulchion, grasps with mighty hand,
And peals proud Arthur's march from Fairy-land?
Where every coal-black courser paws the green,
His printed step shall evermore be seen :
The silver shields in moony splendour shine-
Beware, fond youth! a mightier hand than thine,
With deathless lustre, in romantic lay,

Shall Rhymer's fate, and Arthur's fame display †.

* The beautiful and romantic history of the caliph Vathek, though it occasionally betray the vestiges of European embellishments, is, in the ground-work, of oriental origin, and is understood to have been founded on certain MSS formerly in the collection of Edward Wortley Montague. The cast of the story in itself, the manners and allusions which pervade it, and the appropriate sublimity of the close, independent of the evidence in the notes, which might have been greatly augmented, indicate plainly, that it is not a fiction of the West. Leyden.

† Alluding to Mr. Walter Scott, the editor of the Minstrelsy of the Scotish Border, and of Sir Tristrem, the supposed production of Thomas Lermont.

Not only were the supposed preternatural circumstances attending the life of Thomas of Ercildoune founded on oriental magic and superstition; but his principal production in his capacity of poet, the very curious and celebrated metrical romance of Sir Tristrem, appears to have drawn much of its imagery from a similar source. This antique manuscript, lately discovered by Mr. Ritson in the library of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, and now just published by Mr. Scott, besides many valuable pictures of ancient manners, and much picturesque description, displays the usual accompaniments which so forcibly characterize the fictions of the West during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Sir Tristrem, for instance, slays a dragon and many giants; and his adventures with the fair Isoude have their origin in the operation of a potent drug.

With the close of the thirteenth century expired this wonder-working prophet of the North, whose memory and predictions were long revered and listened to in Scotland with all the awe and enthusiasm due to a being of superior nature,

The ensuing age was not less attracted by, nor cherished with less ardour, the splendid fables of the East, whose geography and literature became every day better known through the persevering zeal of travellers. The travels of Hai

thon, a king of Armenia, who had explored the most remarkable countries of the East, and having turned monk at Cyprus, published his marvellous adventures about 1310, became extremely popular; and in 1322, Sir John Mandeville, seized with an irresistible desire of visiting countries so renowned in history and romance, commenced a pilgrimage into the East which occupied thirty, four years; and having visited Scythia, Armenia, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Media, Mesopotamia, Persia, Chaldea, and China, on his return wrote his Itinerary in Latin, French, and English, the title of the English, which is the most comprehensive edition, being The Voiage and Travailes of Sir John Maundeville, Knight, which treateth of the Way of Hierusaleme and of the Marveyles of Inde, with other Ilands and Countryes.

The travels of Mandeville must have proved highly interesting to his contemporaries; as, independent of adventures and incidents sufficiently strange though true, his credulity has led him frequently to narrate for facts* the stories which were current in the regions he passed through, however wild or preternatural. His book, in short,

* It should be observed, however, that Sir John sometimes prefaces his most incredible stories with the expressions, "thei seyne," or "men seyn," "but, I have not sene it," &c.

includes a collection of oriental tales; and the coincidences between his marveyles and those which occur in many parts of the Arabian Nights have been pointed out in a very ingenious and amusing manner by the late Mr. Hole. Addison has, in No 254 of the Tatler, ridiculed with infinite humour the propensities of Sir John towards the marvellous, though the incident on which he founds his raillery is not discoverable, I apprehend, in the pages of the worthy knight. It is in some measure true,"however, that we read the "Voiage and Travaile" of Sir John "with as much astonishment as the travels of Ulysses in Homer, or of the Red-cross knight in Spenser. All is enchanted ground, and fairy-land *."

The fourteenth century is remarkable for the production of collections of tales, which assume a dramatic form, and a species of unity as subservient to a particular event. The compilations of Simeon Seth, and of Piers Alfonse were on the contrary mere unconnected narratives; and it is to Boccacio, who finished his Decamerone about the year 1360, that we owe the first specimen of a dramatic series. This elegant Italian supposes that ten young persons of both sexes retired from Florence during the plague of 1348 to a beautifully situated villa in the country. In this *Tatler, No 254.