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We differ likewise with Mr. Dunlap in the opinion which he advances, that it is not necessary for an actor to feel the sentiments he utters. Allowing what we please to mimickry, certainly the nearer the actor approaches to the character, the more complete must be the representation. On any other hypothesis there is no standard of ascertaing an actor's merit. The very necessity which the hero of the stage labours under to mimic the character he assumes is a complete surrender of the question. If he deceive us in proportion as the counterfeit passion resem bles truth, how great must be his power where truth itself is substituted for the countertfeit.

Mr. Dunlap is unable to satisfy his mind on the question whether his hero served in the British army during our revolutionary war. On the one hand Cooke never boasted of his exploits, but during the hours of his ebriety when he was given to romancing, and on the other he spoke of these transactions with a perspicuity of detail hardly to be expected to be derived from books, and more especially by one of his habits of tumultuous and irregular reading. Certainly this is an unpardonable omission on the part of his biographer to pass over so important an incident so slightly. Mr. D. had ample means of obtaining this intelligence, and this renders the omission on his part the more inexcusable. We have heard of an author who undertook to write the memoirs of the duke of Marlborough, and unfotunately forgot that he was a general.

Rokeby: a poem by Walter Scott. Boston; Published by Bradford and Reed. 1813.

The following observations, it will be readily perceived, are the produc tion of no ordinary mind. Although we profess ourselves to be among the most ardent admirers of Mr. Scott's genius, and disposed to regard with an eye of much less rigour his poetical heresies, yet neither our wishes, as lovers of polite literature, nor our duty as journalists will permit us to refuse a distinguished place to an essay so ingenious and elegant.

To assert the instability of popular opinion, would be to use a truth so trite, it is obvious to all; but the consequent variations of taste being less apparent, do not engage so much of our attention. To follow this fluctuating faculty in its progress through

the several ages since the revival of letters, and amid all the material and mental objects it embraces, might be a curious philosophical disquisition, but unsuited to the length of the present article, and the nature of this journal. Such disquisition, however, would be far from mere idle speculation or amusing reverie. This salutary lesson, among others, might be drawn from it; that if writers possess the high privilege of ruling pub#lic opinion, there is always a sort of re-action in that public, which gives law, in its turn, to its former sovereigns. Hence those who have been led by a love of novelty, or turn for paradox, to introduce strange systems either of sentiment or style, have been compelled to continue from necessity what they commenced from caprice. The public was pleased with the peculiarity, and its author obliged-perhaps against his recovered sense-to persevere, or forfeit his popularity. The coarse conceits, and licentious jestings of the mob of gentlemen in king Charles's days, might have originated in the momentary wish of pleasing the monarch or amusing the circle. Effusions of the moment, they were intended, perhaps, with the moment to terminate. At least there appears to have been nothing like settled systematic design upon the interests of society. But given to the world, and become the order of the day, the public taste once regaled with the stimulating banquet, would be satisfied with no other. This appetite, first injudiciously excited, may be said to have afterward "made the meat it fed on;" since its demands were such, that we must in charity suppose the original caterers had reason to regret their imperious popularity. In our own time, indeed, we have little reason, to apprehend any inroads on social morals. Such attempts would be frowned into extinction, not only by the mass of mankind, but by those portions of it who are emphatically

the makers of manners." The fashion, fortunately for us, is usually on the side of virtue. But from perversions of our literature we have more to dread, because from these we are far less secure; and these, though secondary, will not be deemed of trivial import, by any who consider the close affinity of justness of action, with propriety of expression-the delicate but indissoluble tie which connects refinement of taste with correctness of character. Let it not be forgotten that the same elegant essay.

ist who first successfully inculcated purity of morals, had also the glory of rescuing the poems of Milton from their partial oblivion, and recommending them to the notice of his country.

These remarks will not, it is hoped, be considered a digression from the head of this article. Nothing, surely, which treats of variety, popularity, or novelty, can be irrelative to the subject of Mr. Scott. This gentleman is generally styled the founder of a new school of poetry, but the title is not strictly applicable. The works of Mr. Scott are, in fact, a revival of the carly English Poems, commonly called ballads; a collection of the best specimens from which, was published some years since by the late Dr. Percy; who on this account is by Mr. Scott somewhere acknowledged "the father of this species of poetry." To one kind of originality, however, the author of "The Lay" appears fairly entitled. We know of no other poet who, writing in his own person, and for his own time, ever entertained the strange conceit of collecting and localizing in his works, all the colloquial barbarisms, and provincial phrases, which were scattered amongst the wildest class of the wildest people, at a distant and even disgusting period of their national history. The works of Macpherson, and the wonderful, fragments of Chatterton, it is true, were written in an ancient dialect; but they were designed to pass for antiques, and the diction was hence perfectly suitable to the date of their supposed authors. Both Chatterton and Macpherson would have ridiculed the project of publishing in their own name works of this kind, as equal in absurdity to that of stamping our present coin with the impression which was current three hundred years back. This absurdity is so palpable, that while we admit as high proof of Mr. Scott's powers, his being able to make the public forget it; we cannot look on this forgetfulness as equally honourable to that public. We have no dislike to the ancient ballad-writing. It was perfect in its season; and had it no other merit, would be of inestimable value for the evidence it affords, that poetry, in some form or other, is natural to man. But the lullaby that charmed us in our cradle, would be childish and harsh to our maturer ear, and after so much talent and labour have been employed in bring ing forward and perfecting our language, to retrograde in this

way is to treat our benefactors with ingratitude by rejecting their

way

toils as unnecessary.

doubt

An apologist for Mr. Scott's manner, has lately considered all wishes at altering it to be quite as unreasonable as to exact "our exchanging the weapons to which we have been trained, and which The we prefer, for the cumbrous armour of our ancestors." metaphor, however ingenious, is applicable only in illustrating the opposite opinion to that intended by the author. It is this exchange of our accustomed weapons for the cumbrous armour of our ancestors, which is the very fault alledged against Mr. Scott. We have warriors introduced to us in the nineteenth century who are gauntleted and glaived after the fashion of their predecessors in the age of chivalry. All this in the literal sense is very proper. We must not be understood to express any of the propriety of adapting the costume of personages in poems, as in paintings, to the time of their supposed existence, not to that of the publication. But though this may with propriety be allowed to drapery, it is not as to language, for the best of all reasons, because it would be unintelligible. We can recognise James V to be king of Scotland, notwithstanding his bonnet and doublet should be very unlike those his present majesty of both kingdoms might probably wear, if he chanced to visit Holyrood. But we cannot so readily recognise the character of such terms as "stalwort," gramarge," &c. without reference to a glossary, an act which changes a poetic entertainment, to the drudgery of a school exercise. Had Gray incorporated with his "Descent of Odin,” particular phrases from the Norse tongue, the description might have been very grand, but to most readers very mysterious; or had the narrator of Madoc's enterprises, celebrated his hero in the Welsh idiom, our admiration had hardly been retained at hearing hur was born in Gwyneth, hur was voyaged to Aztlan, but the sublime must have yielded to the ludicrous.

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In the last poem of Mr. Scott, we are happy to see less of the obsolete, we think, than in its predecessors. The period it represents is also nearer to our own times, being that of the civil wars between Charles I and Cromwell. We had intended a sketch of the plot, but relinquished it as superfluous, since the public curiosity will have anticipated any analysis. In both the

plan and execution of the poem, its readers will perceive many of the characteristic beauties and defects of its author. The old objection which was urged against his former works, of a sameness of characters amongst them all, applies with still greater force to the present, with the single exception of Wilfrid. In Bertrand, the real hero of the piece, we discover every trait of Rhoderic Dhu, but his love. Redmond reminds us of the Graeme; Matilda is the transcript of Ellen. Of these latter, not only the natures, but the situations are similar. Both are forced to the alternative, either of sacrificing the life of a father, or, renouncing the lover they prefer for a marriage with the one to whom they are adverse. De Wilton, in "Marmion," is left for dead on the field of battle, and his end so undoubted, that when met upon the heath he is supposed an apparition; and the horror of the encounter completely unnerves his potent adversary. In this poem, the assassin of Mortham considered he had "made all sure.” « "Twas then I fired my petronel, "And Mortham, steed and rider fell; "One dying look he upward cast,

"Of wrath and anguish-'twas his last."

Yet is this chieftain afterward resusicated, and his appearance excites the same ghostly apprehensions which had before been so effectual in the case of Marmion. Here, indeed, the visitation is even more opportune, as it interposes in the very last event of things, like Mr. Lewis's castle-spectre, for the pious purpose of preventing bloodshed. The heroes have not only the same general resemblance in character, but in person. We see a familylikeness in their forms and features. Mr. Scott seems to have no idea of a warrior who is not broad-shouldered, high-chested, dark-browed, with mighty arms, and gigantic stature; and did we use no other measure but his for heroes, we must be tempted to disbelieve there ever was such a being as Alexander the great, or William of Orange, or Bonaparte..

If invention, either in character, situation, or incident, be essential to form the perfect poet, it will not be too much to say that Mr. Scott has not yet attained this point of consummation. His scenery, and events, have little diversity-his dramatic personæ never change. Knights, barons, minstrels, pages, warders;

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