To warn the living maidens fair,
The loved of Heaven, the spirits' care,
That all whose minds unmeled remain
Shall bloom in beauty when time is gane.

With distant music, soft and deep,
They lull'd Kilmeny sound asleep;
And when she awaken'd, she lay her lane,

All happ'd with flowers, in the green-wood wene.
When seven lang years had come and fled,
When grief was calm, and hope was dead;
When scarce was remember'd Kilmeny's name,
Late, late in a gloamin' Kilmeny came hame!

When a month and a day had come and gane,
Kilmeny sought the green-wood wene;
There laid her down on the leaves sae green,
And Kilmėny on earth was never mair seen.
But O, the words that fell from her mouth
Were words of wonder and words of truth!
But all the lands were in fear and dread,
For they kendna whether she was living or dead.
It wasna her hame, and she couldna remain ;
She left this world of sorrow and pain

And return'd to the land of thought again! 9

Never was Fairy-land made to appear nearer to us, or suffused with lovelier colours. Had the Shepherd of Ettrick Glen earlier told to the world his vision of Kilmeny, Scott, with all his friendly prudence, would not have counsell'd the silencing of

the fond aspiring song.

Aware of such a potentiality within him, if seldom elsewhere developed to equal perfection, Hogg himself may be forgiven for soreness of heart at the wounding wisdom of worldly experience :

Blest be his generous heart for aye!
He told me where the relic lay:
Pointed my way with ready will,
Afar on Ettrick's wildest hill;
Watch'd my first notes with curious eye,
And wonder'd at my minstrelsy;
He little ween'd a parent's tongue
Such strains had o'er my cradle sung.
But when to native feelings true,
I struck upon a chord was new;
When by myself I 'gan to play,
He tried to wile my harp away.
Just when her notes began with skill,
To sound beneath the southern hill,
And twine around my bosom's core,
How could we part for evermore ?
'Twas kindness all-I cannot blame-
For bootless is the minstrel flame :

But sure a bard might well have known
Another's feelings by his own!

10

It was natural for him to fancy that in happier circumstances, with more sympathy from without, he had it in him to rank with his many illustrious contemporaries. Yet I am afraid that, if Kilmeny, though certainly no accident, stands alone among his works, the default was rather in himself than in others; that, if his soul held the germs of new Kilmenys, the will was wanting to endure in patience the pangs of bringing them forth, equipped to soar and sing.

The Poetical Works of James Hogg. Four vols. Edinburgh: Arch. Constable, 1822. Also: Poems and Life of the Ettrick Shepherd. New Edition. By the Rev. Thomas Thomson. London: Blackie, 1865. 1 The Gude Greye Katt (The Poetic Mirror).

2 Elegy (Miscellaneous Poems).

3 Poor Little Jessie (Songs).

4 The Auld Man's Fareweel to his Wee House (Miscellaneous Poems).

Blithe an' Cheerie (Songs).

• When the Kye comes Hame (Songs).

7 Tenth Bard's Preamble (The Queen's Wake).

Ibid., The Spectre's Cradle Song (Queen's Wake). • Thirteenth Bard's Song-Kilmeny (Queen's Wake). 10 Ibid., The Queen's Wake-Conclusion.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

1775-1864

but

A POET with greatness in him; who has written unforgettable things. Illustrious in prose as in verse; always a poet. As a poet, a success and a failure.

To begin with a theme by which he would himself have chosen to be judged-in his metempsychosis as a Greek poet he works miracles. Study Enaleos and Cymodameia, Pan and Pitys, Cupid and Pan, Europa and her Mother, Chrysaor, The Altar of Modesty. The outlines are exquisitely clear, never out of drawing; the grace, if sometimes marble-cold, is finely statuesque. Now and again, the warm, living, modern blood asserts itself in him; and the figures are suffused with pathos. Even then, if not Greek, neither are they crudely Gothic. The blend is beautifully tempered in The Hamadryad; in Peleus and Thetis; in the first part of Corythos; in the coquetting with her peasant wooer of the sweet wood-nymph, who, as any human maid, knew that

to play at love,

Stopping its breathings when it breathes most soft,

Is sweeter than to play on any pipe ; 1

and in that masterpiece, Iphigeneia and Agamemnon, with the final heroic tenderness of the victim :

An aged man now enter'd, and without

One word, stept slowly on, and took the wrist
Of the pale maiden. She lookt up, and saw
The fillet of the priest and calm cold eyes.
Then turn'd she where her parent stood, and cried
'O father! grieve no more; the ships can sail.' 2

In another as admirable, The Espousals of Polyxena, the melancholy deepens into remorseless tragedy; all is frankly Hellenic. It is not often that insular fancy runs insolently wild, as in Achilles and Helena on Ida. For the most part the self-restraint is as admirable as the vivacity. It distinguishes itself particularly in the brave repulse of temptations to measure ancient virtue by modern canons. Landor's sense of consistency is incorruptible by sentiment. He dismisses the ghost of Achilles with a legacy of vindictiveness against the House of Priam, without a word of pity for its child, his affianced, most innocent bride, whom

none

Heeded, tho' sinking as if into death.3

The same fidelity to artistic duty pervades the Acts and Scenes from Roman and modern history.

Occasionally, it may be admitted, he somewhat abuses his liberty when he is given or assumes a free hand, as in the tyrannicidal scene between Tyrrel and Rufus, and in the thrilling description of Beatrice Cenci's execution:

Men have been brave, but women have been braver ! 4

In general he keeps his footing firmly over medieval and classical quagmires. He does not pretend to set history right when, as if with intention, it has wrapt in darkness personalities like those of Count Julian and Queen Giovanna. Readers might sometimes wish that he had indulged a little at times in anachronistic sentimentality. We feel a shock, as in the presence of a cruel action, at the brutish exultation of King Henry, as he hears on Richmond Chase Anne Boleyn's 'knell from Paul's':

How sweetly that bell warbled o'er the water! 5

It must have required all even of his courage to print the