judicious; for throughout, the reader is kept in interesting suspense as to the catastrophe; and when he at length arrives at it, he blames his own dulness that he could not earlier discover the mystery that hung round the person of Mador. The hunting expeditions in that age continued for many days amid the wilds and mountains, and it consisted of a cavalcade provided with all the necessaries of life, which could not be procured in the uninhabited country; the royal tent was pitched every night, surrounded by those of the nobility and attendants, with the appearance of a small encampment. For several days the chase had been continued, when on a sudden the King disappeared; his secret departure and return are thus mentioned: "The morning rose, but scarce they could discern "Another day came on, another still, And aye the clouds their drizzly treasures shed; And hooded every pine-tree's reverend head: The heavens seem'd sleeping on their mountain bed Sniff'd, whistling in the wind, and bounded to the glen. "The King was lost, and much conjecture past. Far to the west her pinken veil she cast; "The steeps of proud Ben-Glow the nobles scaled, The fleecy clouds that roll'd afar below, The hounds' impatient whine, the bugle's swell, The nobles found him pleased, nor farther strove to know." This division is extended to rather too great a length; independently of a long detail of the hunting, including some of the not very poetical names of the dogs and descriptions of the country, which possess considerable picturesqueness, a long harper's song is inserted, which must be totally unintelligible to all who are not masters of the rudest dialects of Scotland; besides this, is given a dispute among the knights upon "gospel faith and superstition's spell; after which, the hunt is terminated by the entrance of a mysterious stranger, who beckons the King away, for what purpose is never disclosed. The second Canto opens with a description of old Kincraigy, "a man of right ungainly courtesy," and "honest as a Highlander may be ;" and of his wife, "full of blithe jolliment and boisterous glee;" after which we are introduced to their daughter, the heroine. * "But O the lovely May, their only child, Was sweeter than the flower that scents the gale! Or with her maidens bear the milking pail; Her steps were haunted at the bught and penn; No youth was be, nor winsomest of men, But what was lovlier to the damsel's ken, He had wide lands, and servants at his call; "The beauteous May, to parents' will resign'd, It gave an ease and freedom to her mind, And wish, the anxious interval to kill; She listed wooer's tale with right goodwill; A May, in old Scottish ballads and romances, denotes a young lady, or maiden somewhat above the lower class. And she would jest, and smile, and heave the sigh; Leaving the hapless wight resolved forthwith to die." The day is wet, and Mador (the King in disguise) arrives, and without much ceremony takes shelter, and begins immediately to tune and scrape his violin, which is certainly not a very picturesque instrument, though Raphael may have placed it in the hands of Apollo presiding on Parnassus. The following stanzas, in which the King is represented as delighting the old dame and her daughter, while Kincraigy sits surly by, is liable to the same objection: it may be a true and humorous picture of a Scotch wandering fiddler, but it does not become the dignity of a king. "The minstrel strain'd and twisted sore his face, Beat with his heel, and twinkled with his eye; But still, at every effort and grimace, Louder and quicker rush'd the melody; Even old Kincraigy, of his spleen beguiled, Turn'd his dark brow aside, soften'd his looks and smiled. "When supper on the ashen board was set, The Minstrel, all unmask'd, jocosely came, A kindred name of theirs, well known to fame,- Such impudence in man, he ween'd, had not been found." The jolly Mador insinuates himself into the good graces of the canty dame, and by degrees creeps into the innocent warm heart of Ila. Having remained at Kincraigy's a day or two, making the falling rain an excuse, a fine day arrives, and he departs, Ila accompanying him to row him across the ferry. The whole day was consumed on this short journey, and what passed, the poet thus ambiguously relates: "O read not, lovers!-sure you may not think That Ila Moore by minstrel airs was won!-'Twas nature's cordial glow, the kindred link That all unweeting chains two hearts in one ! CRIT. REV. VOL. IV. August, 1816. T Then why should mankind ween the maid undone, Lean on bis breast, at tale of woe to weep, "OI have seen, and fondly blest the sight, The peerless charms of maiden's guileful freak? The smile of love half dimpling on the cheek; Of beauty's feigned sleep far, far outdoes them all! "O'er such a sleep the enamour'd Minstrel bung, On sweet restoring slumber so intent? Our Minstrel framed resolve I joy to tell; Then, glancing oft behind, they sped along the dew." Shortly afterwards, perhaps not thinking that he had made the matter sufficiently clear, he mentions other endearments that had passed between the maid and the minstrel. The third Canto speaks of Kincraigy expelled by Albert, and of his settlement in his miserable cottage. The description of Ila forsaken by her lover, taunted by her mo ther, and scowled upon by her father, is very touching, and the following song to her new-born infant, is as pathetic as any part of the poem : "Be still, my babe! be still!-the die is cast! But I will nurse thee kindly on my knee, O thy sweet eye will melt my wrongs to see! "If haggard poverty should overtake, And threat our onward journey to forelay, Wake half the night, and toil the live-long day; Of father far away, and mother all too young! "But O; when mellow'd lustre gilds thine eye, The mildew of the soul, the mark of shame! Thy father's far away, thy mother all too young!" Unable longer to sustain the intense agony arising from such complicated causes, she resolves to fly to the court of Scotland held at Strevline, or Stirling, with her unchristened child; there she hopes to hear tidings of its father. On her road she meets with a Palmer, more properly who ought to have been called a pilgrim, originally being "Lord of Stormont's fertile bound," and not living by casual charity on his penitential journey: but Mr. Scott has himself confounded these two characters, and probably Mr. Hogg, who follows his example, was not aware of any distinction. Ila, consistently with the superstitious dread of the times, fears that this Palmer is an evil spirit in disguise, with design to deprive her of her offspring unhallowed by any religious ceremony. During a storm, they take shelter for the night in a ruined hovel, and the relation of the manner in which it is spent, the fears of Ila, who imagines she sees elvish faces peeping from every ragged crevice, and the silent orisons of the Palmer, who seems inwardly to repent some hidden crime, is one of the most striking and wellmanaged pictures in the poem: the group of the lovely and trembling damsel, the innocent and sleeping infant, and the venerable Palmer, round a small fire which had been raised |