lowed the course of the poet alluded to, and never more than in the tale before us. With the exception of giving and receiving some rather discomposing shocks with a long pole, Ivanhoe does not do or say any thing which excites in us a very refined as well as powerful interest in him. We are scarcely allowed to see his face, much less to estimate his character; for we find him either cased in iron or smothered in bed-clothes; and when we have admitted that he was a good tilter, and had a marvellous seat on horseback, we find that, absolutely, we can say no more, The same sort of summary of Malcolm Græme's merits was, we have heard, given by a good old lady-" He was a bonny lad, and a good swimmer." Rowena, thrown into the scale of all her predecessors,-saving always the incomparable Jeany Deans, would still leave a true heroine uncompounded; and the aggregate would strike the beam, weighed against the solitary Rebecca, who is not the heroine, goes unrewarded, and is left unhappy and unlamented. But the truth is, the author needs no heroes, and really intends none. His work is a picture, more than a narrative; the whole is presented to the eye at once; every figure takes its importance from the prominence of its form, strength of its action, and vividness of its colouring; and the spectator, while he is delighted with the combined effect, is left-and it is a great privilege-to choose his own favourites from the group. The author, too, gives the reader's discrimination additional exercise, to deter mine the question, which of the characters is most powerfully drawn, as well as which is the most amiable and deserving, For it does not always hold of characters in fiction as of governments, that "That which is best administer'd is best." Where all the characters, with a few exceptions, are powerfully and distinctively imagined, it is difficult to particularise. The general features of the ruder but honester Anglo-Saxon are well contrasted with those of the Norman, at once the dandy and tyrant of the period. The actual Saxons, again, are quite distinct in their individual qualities from each otherthe proud, prejudiced, but honest Cedric, from the easy Athelstane, who has grown fat in possession, but whose bravery no ease can diminish; and both of them, again, from Ivanhoe, who is altogether Norman, and a specimen of the link which began to unite the races into a compound of higher character and greater power, than either would have singly reached. The ruffian group of Norman Lords and Knights, Priors, Templars, Preceptors, and Grand Masters, is exquisite. All are proud, insolent, cruel, avaricious, and profligate; yet all are brave; and to their selfish impatience of regal control, unmixed with a jot of patriotism, it must be confessed, we owe the great charter of our liberties! Still the deep, designing Fitzurse is distinct from the careless, joyous De Bracy; and the brutal, gigantic Front-deBoeuf from the more polished but equally selfish Bois-Guilbert. Yet there is something about them all of splendid and great and gorgeous, which rivets the eye to the spectacle. If it is not a tale of Ivanhoe, it is less so of Richard the Lion-hearted. Although he rides a very critical joust or two, and beats down a castle gate, it is his bodily strength we are called to admire ; added to a few touches of his easy, careless, generous temper. For Richard" himself again," we must direct our readers to Madame Cottin's beautiful novel of " Mathilde." Robin Hood and his followers cannot fail to delight every reader. Freebooting was then held no crime. These bold yeo men were less guilty than the lords of the land, inasmuch as their prey was of less value, and their oppressions infinitely more limited. Nay, their way of life was the result of the tyranny on a greater scale, of their superiors. We are not, therefore, embarrassed in our admiration of their generosity and honour, and the singular romance of their free and jovial lives, or in prizing even in these banditti that same high character, which, proper.y cherished and directed, entitles the bold yeoman to the name and rank of his country's pride." Wamba is not a very great fool. The Jew is a portrait to the life, and most poetically marks the times. We think Prince John on the one hand, and Rebecca on the other, the chefd'œuvres of the piece. We have already commented on the lineaments and masterly relief of the portrait of John. We are almost tempted to say, that Shakespeare never shewed the master's hand more powerfully. If we should be asked, what variety of tyrant would be most likely to endanger his own power with a high-spirited people; we should say, not so much a severe but steady ruler, as a senseless capricious insulting despot; precisely a prince who should play the part John did in the lists and banquet at Ashby. In the whole range of fictitious composition, we hold Rebecca unsurpassed. She is in moral as well as personal beauty a matchless creature. Her every step is grace-her every look benevolence-her every word wisdom and eloquence-her every action kindness of heart or grandeur of soul- the very Hebrew maid of Byron "She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies, If our feelings are tried, it is that this gentle maiden, with more of nature's nobility than belonged in aggregate to all the other characters in the tale, must be sacrificed in the degradation of her unhappy race; and after all the throbs of interest and thrills of emotion which she is the means of giving us, be flung aside, when she has served her purpose, "to point a moral, and adorn a tale," without a sigh for her self-devotion, or future destiny. We were angry when this exquisite creature was kneeling to a comparative cypher, and lavishing her costly gifts and all her eloquent generosity upon her. The reader's concern will still follow Rebecca, and oftener, we feel assured, will he think in retrospect of Granada than of Rotherwood. With an author of such sway it is bold to find fault; yet we condemn the story of Athelstane's resurrection, as quite extravagant, although humorously told. Nor do we see so much benefit to the denouement of the fable, in either the sentiments or actions of Ulrica, as to remove the blot of the extreme improbability of that very unpleasant person's character. The hag is powerfully described; but that hag never could once have been the child of the Saxon lord of the Castle; nor would she, even if she had, have been permitted for one month to survive her beauty, and hatch treason and vengeance against the Norman tyrant of Torquilstone. There is throughout the tale the author's wonted eloquence, and high, free, striking style; there is too his well-known carelessness, and absolute refusal to stoop to the irksome task of revising what he has written. Ridiculous enough inconsistencies happen in every fresh chapter, from this; although they are in very small matters. But these faults are now so inveterate, that to take notice of them will soon come to be felt as uncivil as it is hopeless; and much on a footing with charging the author, if it were so, with squinting, stammering, or being deaf in one or both of his ears. We do not believe that the author has overcharged his picture of the impudent profligates who disgraced the priesthood in the darkest periods of Popery. We are aware that sneers and profanations of sacred things are put by the author in their mouths; but in these times we feel a repugnance to deal with such verba jactantia, even to reprobate them. Did not the author burst forth, in many a transcendant passage, with all the truly beautiful and grand of Holy Writ, we should not know what to think of the ease with which he makes his imaginary reprobates ridicule its sacred truths, in a sort of ready-made slang with which he furnishes them! Many a powerful page of the same author we hope yet to read, and never can find fault with the exposure of hypocrisy; but, without trying him by the present, or any one, singly, of his works, we shall content ourselves with calling upon him for some sign of his belief, that the clerical character may really be what it ought to be-ra tional, useful, pious, humble, and sincere; were it for nothing more than that the first genius of the age may not be quoted to their mobs, as good authority, by the demagogues of the day; who have so marked an interest, and act so unceas ingly in fartherance of it, to vilify and slander the shepherds, as the surest way to seduce the flocks into their own pernicious folds. ART. V.-The Life of Andrew Melville, containing Illustrations of the Ecclesiastical and Literary History of Scotland, during the latter part of the Sixteenth and beginning of the Seventeenth Century; with an Appendix, consisting of Original Papers. By THOMAS M'CRIE, D.D. Minister of the Gospel, Edinburgh. 2 vols. 8vo. Blackwood. Edinburgh. 1819. We now confidently trust, that we shall at last know something with certainty of the ancient literary history of this portion of the island; and we cannot be too forward to acknowledge, that, for the most interesting and authentic part of this knowledge, we are indebted to the meritorious, and almost inestimable services of the biographers of John Knox, George Buchanan, and Andrew Melville. Twenty or thirty years ago, few people imagined it to be worth their while to inquire at any of those fountains of information which have lately yielded so copious a supply; and if any one entertained particular curiosity with regard to the education of our earliest and most eminent scholars, he might as well have searched the fabulous chronicles of England, as solicited the inspection of the annals of our universities. He might have found something in Holinshed, not very satisfactory or sure, but less mortifying than absolute ignorance; whereas, if he had called for original documents, he would have found some difficulty in ascertaining where or what they were. Thus, when the Earl of Buchan published his life of John Napier, of logarithmic memory, he told his readers, that the time of that great philosopher's matriculation could not be ascertained, as the books of his university ascended no higher than the beginning of the last (the seventeenth) century; and his Lordship was therefore reduced to the necessity of constructing a chronological computation, on the basis of some vague expressions in the preface to " Napier's Plain Discovery of the Revelation." The hypothesis, however ingenious, does not exactly tally with the fact; and we are now led to believe, that the books now ascend two hundred years higher than they did at the date of that publication, having probably been in a course of retrogression ever since, or, rather, having fallen into hands capable of decyphering them. Not much more satisfactory was the intelligence obtained by Mr. Chalmers for insertion in his notices of Buchanan; but Dr. Irving has had the good fortune to elicit a far more minute and correct detail of facts from the sources which had been previously explored to little purpose. All this may, in a great measure, be ascribed to the attention which has of late years been paid to our public records. But no slight share of the merit must be referred to the zeal and activity of a few private individuals, who, anxious to enlarge the boundaries of historical truth, spare neither pains, nor expence, nor time, in treasuring up and comparing the unpublished memorials of past ages. The work before us, like its predecessor, the "Life of Knox," contains so many particulars, hitherto unrevealed, and sheds so many important lights upon the most interesting passages of our national history, that we cannot refrain from expressing our wonder at the exertions of the author; and our gratitude for the fund of instruction and entertainment which he has afforded us. No one who has not trodden in similar paths of investigation, can form an estimate of the difficulties which he must have encountered, and the patience which he has exercised; and no one, who is not already well acquainted with the amount of our histories on the same topics, can imagine in how many points the present work rectifies inveterate mistakes, and illustrates what might have been expected to lurk for ever in impenetrable obscurity. Before, however, stating our opinions of its peculiar merits, we shall attempt a sketch of the life of the remarkable person, whose name holds so prominent a station in the transactions of the church of Scotland. ANDREW MELVILLE, the youngest of nine sons* of Richard * All the sons were liberally educated, and several of them were highly distinguished. In the opinion of the celebrated Robert Bruce, Roger, a citizen of Dundee, would have proved the most singular man in Europe, if he had enjoyed the advantages of his brother Andrew. He died in his 60th year, in 1592,-and the writer of his epitaph seems to have had the same opinion as Bruce Mutata studiis animi si sorte vacasset ; |