VII. The Method of the Divine Government, Physical and IX. Report of the Trial of Professor John W. Webster, in- dicted for the murder of Dr. George Parkman, before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, holden at Boston on Tuesday, March 19, 1850. Phono- graphic Report, by Dr. James W. Stone. Boston, 1850, X. The History of Christianity in India, from the Com- mencement of the Christian Era. By the Rev. James Hough, M.A.., late Chaplain to the East India Company at Madras. 4 vols. London, 1839-1845. 2. India and India Missions. By the Rev. Alexander Duff, D.D., Church of Scotland Mission. Edinburgh, 3. The History of the Church of England in the Colonies and Foreign Dependencies of the British Empire. By the Rev. James Anderson, Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen; Perpetual Curate of St. George's Chapel, Brighton. 2 vols. London and Brighton, 4. Handbook of Bengal Missions, in Connexion with the 556 THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW. MAY, 1850. ART. I.-Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers. By WILLIAM EDMONSTOUNE AYTOUN, Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University of Edinburgh. 1849. WE have delayed our notice of Mr. Aytoun's book in the hope that some of our contemporaries would have relieved us from a disagreeable duty. In this we have been disappointed; for although a number of them have published reviews of it, they have confined themselves to a slight skirmish with its general sentiment, leaving untouched the positive assertions as to matter of fact, which have startled the public with the intimation, that until this modern Daniel came to judgment we had never known some of the most important points in the history of the seventeenth century. There is thus no help for us. We are bound to examine a book of such lofty pretensions; and our readers will have at least one enjoyment, in seeing how a very clever man may, in his desire to say something very striking and paradoxical, say things very foolish, and write himself down as Dogberry wanted it. The task which he has undertaken is the hardest we have ever seen a literary man attempt. The labours of Hercules were as nothing to it. 66 Every man can say B to a battledore, and write in praise of virtue and the seven liberal sciences, thresh corn out of full sheaves, and fetch water out of the Thames. But out of dry stubble to make an after-harvest, and a plentiful crop without sowing, and wring juice out of a flint, that is Pierce a God's name, and the right trick of a workman."* To prove that Charles was a "Royal Martyr," and that Argyle was an "archfiend," was perhaps not so difficult; VOL. XIII. NO. XXV. * Nash. A but it is some time before the untrained gaze of an educated Scotsman can be brought to bear upon the dazzling "glory" which encircled Montrose" as he took his way to heaven," or the pious sanctity which we are now told lay in the hearts of Claverhouse and Sharp. Yet there are things in this book that the world will not willingly let die. The ballad on Flodden field will take its place in the first rank of ballad poetry in the English language, written as it is with the true fire and inspiration-with genuine pathos and delicacy of taste-O si sic omnes! The phosphoric brilliancy and nerve of style in those which follow, in vain cover the folly of the thought; the politico-religious declaimer has done injustice to the genius of the poet. It certainly is painful to find such versatility of talent consumed in sentimental verses on obsolete extravagance, or in the resurrection of scenes and people whose history the world would rather wish to bury in oblivion. The great names of virtue and religion are strangely misapplied; and, little studied in the theory of moral perceptions, the author introduces us to a new reading of some of the most notorious events of Scottish history, and a new application to them of the first rules of moral justice. Such high things as these never stand in the way when it is necessary to conduct the metaphor of the moment to a felicitous issue. The poet has, moreover, found out new constellations, which have shot to their station in the heavens, and he worships them; and thus it is that with his head elevated aloft, and gazing among the stars, he has overlooked present comforts for past chivalry, of which he sings the requiem in a burst of forced and metaphorical conceits. The arts that polish life, the inventions that accommodate, the manufactures that enrich it, and the commerce which brings together the commodities of all countries, are poor substitutes, he says, for the glorious times when the Stuarts had their own. But the author, besides lamenting, can also administer a rebuke. He speaks of the profanity of one of the most pious and best of the Presbyterian historians; and his remarks almost have the unction of a man who is quite serious in what he says, and who speaks as if he felt it. At the same time, when we find the name of the Deity and of our Saviour occurring whenever it is necessary to fill up the line, and put into the mouths of the Highland robbers who followed the heels of Claverhouse or Montrose, we must be pardoned if we cannot accept a rebuke from Mr. Aytoun upon such a theme. He would purge his book of much offensive matter, if he struck out epithets which are in the bad taste of the forcible-feeble school. Two-thirds of the volume are composed of what appear to be intended as historical introductions to the Ballads. When we Mr. Aytoun's deep melancholy. 3 first read these, we imagined they were to be interpreted upon the same principle as the Ballads themselves, in which extraordinary stories are, with the view of heightening their piquancy and flavour, put into lofty words, but without the slightest intention on the author's part that his readers should believe them. The introductions, therefore, were set down as only intended as stowage or ballast,-serving the useful purpose of increasing the volume, and the consequent emoluments of the publisher. As for the stories in the Ballads, they could be interpreted-consistently with the author's sobriety and sanity-only upon the hypothesis of holding that he was laughing all the time he appeared so grave, and was exercising upon our feelings the Rhetoric of which he is the Professor, merely with the view of practice. For the purposes of poetic fiction, therefore, and in order more fully to enjoy the luxury of this sad agony, the public were quite willing that Mr. Aytoun should depose from the pedestals of their fame the great men who have made his country illustrious. It was of no consequence to his readers that his Ballads were devoted to the purpose of celebrating the virtues of Claverhouse, or Mackenzie, or Sharp, or Daniel Good, or Jack Sheppard. The public had for their money a quantity of rhymes, each line of which was of the true number of feet; and the last word of each jingled with the last of the line preceding. Nay, it was even diverting to see the brave language of grievance translated into the cant of a foolish sentimentality. It seems that this theory was an entire illusion, and that while it was thought that the woes depicted in these exquisite Ballads were only those of poetical distress, the author all the time really had his finger in his eye, and was weeping in downright earnest : "By Heavens! he'll hate him everlastingly The rhetorical flourishes are really intended as the outpourings of a desolate and broken heart grieving over the degeneracy of the times, and the extinction of the Stuarts; and so he sings: "The olden times have passed away, And weary are the new, The fair white rose has faded From the garden where it grew." All the veneration for kings, and princes, and persons of gen le lineage, for the virtues of a race, and the glorious days of the old chivalry, were quite genuine, and not a base imitation |
