strel and Marmion are the first, and perhaps the best of his works.

Mr. Wordsworth is the most original poet now living. He is the reverse of Walter Scott in his defects and excellences. He has nearly all that the other wants, and wants all that the other possesses. His poetry is not external, but internal; it does not depend on tradition, or story, or old song; he furnishes it from his own mind, and is his own subject. He is the poet of mere sentiment. Of many of the lyrical ballads and sonnets, it is not possible to speak in terms of too high praise, for their originality and pathos. The "Hart-Leap Well" is a favorite poem with Mr. Hazlitt. We have not space for its insertion here.

The Lake School of poetry, to which Mr. Wordsworth belongs, had its origin in the French Revolution, about the time of which English poetry had degenerated into the most trite, insipid, and mechanical of all things, in the hands of the followers of Pope and the old French school of poetry. From the impulse of that revolution, poetry rose at once from the most servile imitation and tamest commonplace to the utmost pitch of singularity and paradox. The change in the belles-lettres was as complete, and to many persons as startling, as the change in politics, with which it went hand in hand. According to the prevailing notions, all was to be natural and new. Nothing that was established was to be tolerated. All the commonplace figures of poetry, tropes, allegories, personifications, with the whole heathen mythology, were instantly discarded; a classical allusion was considered as a piece of antiquated foppery; rhyme was looked upon as a relic of the feudal system, and regular metre was abolished along with regular government. A singularly affected simplicity prevailed in dress and manners, in style and sentiment. Something new and original, no matter whether good, bad, or indifferent, whether mean or lofty, extravagant or childish, was all that was aimed at, or considered as compatible with sound philosophy and an age of reason. The paradox they set out with was, that all things are by nature equally fit subjects for poetry; or that, if there is any preference to be given, those that are the meanest and most unpromising are the best, as they hav the greatest scope for the unbounded stores of thought and fancy in the writer's own mind, and for a display of originality and invention.

LADY OF THE LAKE.

XIII.

As the tall ship, whose lofty prow
Shall never stem the billows more,
Deserted by her gallant band,
Amid the breakers lies astrand;
So, on his couch, lies Roderic Dhu!
And oft his fever'd limbs he threw
In toss abrupt, as when her sides
Lie rocking in th' advancing tides,
That shake her frame to ceaseless beat,
Yet can not heave her from her seat;
Oh! how unlike her course at sea!
Or his free step on hill and lea!
Soon as the minstrel he could scan,
-"What of the lady? of my clan?
My mother?-Douglas?-tell me all!
Have they been ruin'd in my fall?
Ah, yes! or wherefore art thou here?
Yet speak-speak boldly-do not fear."
(For Allan, who his mood well knew,
Was choked with grief and terror too.)

Who fought? who fled?-Old man, be brief: Some might, for they had lost their chief. Who basely live ?-who bravely died?" "O, calm thee, chief!" the minstrel cried, "Ellen is safe."-"For that, thank Heaven! "And hopes are for the Douglas given; The Lady Margaret too is well, And, for thy clan-on field or fell, Has never harp of minstrel told Of combat fought so true and bold; Thy stately pine is yet unbent, Though many a goodly bough is rent."

"

XIV.

The chieftain rear'd his form on high,
And fever's fire was in his eye;
But ghastly, pale, and livid streaks
Checker'd his swarthy brow and cheeks.
Hark, minstrel! I have heard thee pla
With measure bold, on festal day,
In yon lone isle-again where ne'er
Shall harper play, or warrior hear!
That stirring air that peals on high,
O'er Dermid's race our victory.

Strike it! and then (for well thou canst),
Free from thy minstrel spirit glanced,
Fling me the picture of the fight,
When met my clan the Saxon might."

*

XV.

BATTLE OF BEAL AN DUINE.

The minstrel came once more to view
The eastern ridge of Ben-venue,
For, ere he parted, he would say,
Farewell to lovely Loch Achray.
Where shall he find, in foreign land,
So lone a lake, so sweet a strand!
There is no breeze upon the fern,
No ripple on the lake,

Upon the eyrie nods the erne,

The deer has sought the brake;
l'he small birds will not sing aloud,
The springing trout lies still,
So darkly glooms yon thunder cloud,
That swathes, as with a purple shroud,
Benledi's distant hill.

Is it the thunder's solemn sound

That mutters deep and dread,
Or echoes from the groaning ground
The warrior's measured tread?
Is it the lightning's quivering glance
That on the thicket streams,
Or do they flash on spear and lance
The sun's retiring beams?

I see the dagger-crest of Mar,

There breathed no wind their crests to shake,
Or wave their flags abroad;

Scarce the frail aspen seem'd to quake,
That shadow'd o'er their road.
Their va'ward scouts no tidings bring,

Can rouse no lurking foe,

Nor spy a trace of living thing,

Save when they stirr'd the roe;

The host moves like a deep sea-wave,
Where rise no rocks its pride to brave,
High swelling, dark, and slow.
The lake is pass'd, and now they gain
A narrow and a broken plain,
Before the Trosach's rugged jaws;
And here the horse and spearman pause,
While, to explore the dangerous glen,
Dive through the pass the archer inen.

XVII.

At once there rose so wild a yell
Within that dark and narrow dell,
As all the fiends, from heaven that fell,
Had peal'd the banner cry of hell!
Forth from the pass in tumult driven,
Like chaff before the wind of heaven,
The archery appear:

For life! for life! their flight they ply-
And shriek, and shout, and battle cry,
And plaids and bonnets waving high,
And broadswords flashing to the sky,
Are maddening in the rear.

Onward they drive in dreadful race,
Pursuers and pursued;

Before that tide of flight and chase,
How shall it keep its rooted place,

The spearmen's twilight wood?

-"Down, down," cried Mar, "your lances down'
Bear back both friend and foe !"

Like reeds before the tempest's frown,
That serried grove of lances brown
At once lay level'd low!

And closely shouldering, side by side,
The bristling ranks the onset bide.

*

"rofessor Wilson ranks Scott far above Byron, in point c genius. His remarks, in substance, are as follows:

We shall never say that Scott is Shakspeare; but we shall say that he has conceived and created-you know the meaning of these words-a far greater number of characters of real living, flesh-and-blood human beings-and that more naturally, truly, and consistently, than Shakspeare, who was sometimes transcendently great in pictures of the passions; but out of their range, which surely does not comprehend all rational being, was-nay, do not threater to murder us-a confused and irregular delineator of humai. life. The genius of Sir Walter Scott, it will not be denied

is pretty national, and so are the subjects of all his noblest works, be they poems, or novels and romances by the author of "Waverley." Up to the era of Sir Walter, living people had some vague, general, indistinct notion about dead people mouldering away to nothing centuries ago, in regular kirk-yards and chance burial-places, "mang muirs and mosses many O," somewhere or other in that difficultly distinguished and very debateable district called the Borders. All at once he touched their tombs with a divining rod, and the turf streamed out ghosts. Some in woodman's dresses-most in warrior's mail-green archers leaped for* with yew bows and quivers, and giants stalked, shaking spears. The gray chronicler smiled, and, taking up his pen, wrote in lines of light the annals of the chivalrous and heroic days of auld feudal Scotland. The nation then, for the first time, knew the character of its ancestors; for those were not spectres-not they, indeed-nor phantoms of the brain-but gaunt flesh and blood, or glad and glorious; baseborn cottage-churls of the olden time, because Scottish, became familiar to the love of the nation's heart, and so to its pride did the high-born lineage of palace kings. His themes in prose or numerous verse are still "knights, and lords, and mighty earls," and their lady-loves-chiefly Scottishof kings that fought for fame or freedom-of fatal Flodden and bright Bannockburn-of the Deliverer. If that be not national to the teeth, Homer was no Ionian, Tyrtæus not sprung from Sparta, and Christopher North a Cockney. Let Abbotsford, then, he cognomened by those that choose ir, the Ariosto of the Iorth-we shall continue to call him plain, simple, immortal Sir Walter.

There is a long catalogue of other poets, of more or less note, for an account of whom we can, with great pleasure, only refer to Chambers's "History of English Literature," from which we have freely selected and copied, in making out these sketches and selections. To the same work would we refer the student for satisfactory and able record of the Prose-writers of Great Britain, that have flourished since the beginning of English literature.