feature before our eyes, and impress us with an irresistible conviction of their reality.

little too much like the hero of a fairy tale, and the structure and contrivance of the story, in general, would bear no small affinity to that meritorious and edifying class of compositions, was it not for the nature of the details, and the quality of the other persons to whom they relate-who are as real, intelligible, and tangible beings as those with whom we are made familiar in the course of the author's former productions. Indeed they are very apparently the same sort of people, and come here before us again with all the recommendations of old acquaintance. The outline of the story is soon told. The scene is laid among the Elliots and Johnstons of the Scottish border, and in the latter part of Queen Anne's reign; when the union then newly effected between the two kingdoms, had revived the old feel

The Antiquary is, perhaps, on the whole, less interesting-though there are touches in it equal, if not superior, to any thing that occurs in either of the other works. The adventure of the tide and night storm under the cliffs, we do not hesitate to pronounce the very best description we ever met with,-in verse or in prose, in ancient or in modern writing. Old Edie is of the family of Meg Merrilees, a younger brother, we confess, with less terror and energy, and more taste and gaiety, but equally a poetical embellishment of a familiar character; and yet resting enough on the great points of nature, to be blended without extravagance in the transactions of beings so perfectly natural and thoroughly alive that no suspicion can be en-ings of rivalry, and held out, in the general tertained of their reality. The Antiquary himself is the great blemish of the work,-at least in so far as he is an Antiquary ;-though we must say for him, that, unlike most oddities, he wearies us most at first; and is so managed, as to turn out both more interesting and more amusing than we had any reason to expect. The low characters in this book are not always worth drawing; but they are exquisitely finished; and prove the extent and accuracy of the author's acquaintance with human life and human nature.-The family of the fisherman is an exquisite group throughout; and, at the scene of the funeral, in the highest degree striking and pathetic. Dousterswivel is as wearisome as the genuine Spurzheim himself: And the tragic story of the Lord is, on the whole, a miscarriage; though interspersed with passages of great force and energy. The denouement which connects it with the active hero of the piece, is altogether forced and unnatural.--We come now, at once, to the work immediately before us.

The Tales of My Landlord, though they fill four volumes, are, as yet, but two in number; the one being three times as long, and ten times as interesting as the other. The introduction, from which the general title is derived, is as foolish and clumsy as may be; and is another instance of that occasional imbecility, or self-willed caprice, which every now and then leads this author, before he gets afloat on the full stream of his narration, into absurdities which excite the astonishment of the least gifted of his readers. This whole prologue of My Landlord, which is vulgar in the conception, trite and lame in the execution, and utterly out of harmony with the stories to which it is prefixed, should be entirely retrenched in the future editions; and the two novels, which have as little connection with each other as with this ill-fancied prelude, given separately to the world, each under its own denomination.

The first, which is comprised in one volume, is called "The Black Dwarf"-and is, in every respect, the least considerable of the family-though very plainly of the legitimate race and possessing merits, which, in any other company, would have entitled it to no Blight distinction. The Dwarf himself is a

discontent, fresh encouragement to the partizans of the banished family. In this turbulent period, two brave, but very peaceful and loyal persons, are represented as plodding their way homewards from deer-stalking, in the gloom of an autumn evening, when they are encountered, on a lonely moor, by a strange misshapen Dwarf, who rejects their proffered courtesy, in a tone of insane misanthropy, and leaves Hobbie Elliot, who is the successor of Dandie Dinmont in this tale, perfectly persuaded that he is not of mortal lineage, but a goblin of no amiable dispositions. He, and his friend Mr. Earnscliff, who is a gentleman of less credulity, revisit him again, however, in daylight; when they find him laying the foundations of a small cottage in that dreary spot. With some casual assistance the fabric is completed; and the Solitary, who still maintains the same repulsive demeanour, fairly settled in it. Though he shuns all society and conversation, he occasionally administers to the diseases of men and cattle; and acquires a certain awful reputation in the country, half between that of a wizard and a heaven-taught cow-doctor. In the mean time poor Hobbie's house is burned, and his cattle and his bride carried off by the band of one of the last Border foragers, instigated chiefly by Mr. Vere, the profligate Laird of Ellieslaw, who wishes to raise a party in favour of the Jacobites; and between whose daughter and young Earnscliff there is an attachment, which her father disapproves. The mysterious Dwarf gives Hobbie an oracular hint to seek for his lost bride in the fortress of this plunderer, which he and his friends, under the command of young Earnscliff, speedily invest; and when they are ready to smoke him out of his inexpugnable tower, he capitulates, and leads forth, to the astonishment of all the besiegers, not Grace Armstrong, but Miss Vere, who, by some unintelligible refinement of iniquity, had been sequestered by her worthy father in that appropriate custody. The Dwarf, who, with all his misanthropy, is the most benevolent of human beings, gives Hobbie a fur bag full of gold, and contrives to have his bride restored to him. He is likewise consulted in secret by Miss Vere, who is sadly distressed, like all other fictitious camsels, by

her father's threats to solemnise a forced upon the monument of the slaughtered Presbyte marriage between her and a detestable ba- rians; and busily employed in deepening, with h ronet, and promises to appear and deliver chisel, the letters of the inscription, which announc her, however imminent the hazard my ap of futurity to be the lot of the slain, anathematized ing, in scriptural language, the promised blessings pear. Accordingly, when they are all ranged the murderers with corresponding violence. A blue for the sacrifice before the altar in the castle bonnet of unusual dimensions covered the grey hairs chapel, his portentous figure pops out from of the pious workman. His dress was a large oldbehind a monument, when he is instantly fashioned coat, of the coarse cloth called hoddinrecognised by the guilty Ellieslaw, for a cer- grey, usually worn by the elder peasants, with waistcoat and breeches of the same; and the whol tain Sir Edward Mauley, who was the cousin suit, though still in decent repair, had obviously and destined husband of the lady he had af-seen a train of long service. Strong clouted shoes terwards married, and who had been plunged studded with hob-nails, and gramoches or leggins into temporary insanity by the shock of that made of thick black cloth, completed his equip fair one's inconstancy, on his recovery from ment. Beside him, fed among the graves, a pony, which he had allowed Mr. Vere to retain the the companion of his journey, whose extreme white ness, as well as its projeecting bones and bollow greatest part of the property to which he suc-eyes, indicated its antiquity. It was harnessed in ceeded by her death; and had been supposed the most simple manner, with a pair of branks, and to be sequestered in some convent abroad, hair tether, or halter, and a sunk, or cushion of when he thus appears to protect the daughter straw, instead of bridle and saddle. A canvass of his early love. The desperate Ellieslaw at pouch hung round the neck of the animal, for the purfirst thinks of having recourse to force, and pose, probably, of containing the rider's tools, and any thing else he might have occasion to carry with calls in an armed band which he had that him. Although I had never seen the old man beday assembled, in order to favonr a rising of fore, yet, from the singularity of his employment, the Catholics-when he is suddenly surround- and the style of his equipage, I had no difficulty in ed by Hobbie Elliot and Earnscliff, at the recognising a religious itinerant whom I had often head of a more loyal party, who have just heard talked of, and who was known in various parts of Scotland by the name of Old Mortality. overpowered the insurgents, and taken posWhere this man was born, or what was his session of the castle. Ellieslaw and the Ba-real name, I have never been able to learn, nor are ronet of course take horse and shipping forth the motives which made him desert his home, and of the realm; while his fair daughter is given adopt the erratic mode of life which he pursued, away to Earnscliff by the benevolent Dwarf; known to me except very generally. He is said to who immediately afterwards disappears, and have held, at one period of his life, a small moorland farm; but, whether from pecuniary losses, or seeks a more profound retreat, beyond the domestic misfortune, he had long renounced that reach of their gratitude and gaiety. and every other gainful calling. In the language of Scripture, he left his house, his home, and his kindred, and wandered about until the day of his death-a period, it is said, of nearly thirty years. ast regulated his circuit so as annually to visit the "During this long pilgrimage, the pious enthusi graves of the unfortunate Covenanters, who suffered by the sword, or by the executioner, during the reigns of the two last monarchs of the Stuart line. These tombs are often apart from all human habitwanderers had fled for concealment. But whereve ation, in the remote moors and wilds to which the they existed, Old Mortality was sure to visit them, when his annual round brought them within his reach. In the most lonely recesses of the mountains, the moorfowl shooter has been often surprised to find him busied in cleaning the moss from defaced inscriptions, and repairing the emblems of the grey stones, renewing with his chisel the halfdeath with which these simple monuments are usually adorned.

The other and more considerable story, which fills the three remaining volumes of this publication, is entitled, though with no great regard even to its fictitious origin, "Old Mortality;"-for, at most, it should only have been called the tale or story of Old Mortality -being supposed to be collected from the information of a singular person who is said at one time to have been known by that strange appellation. The redacteur of his interesting traditions is here supposed to be a village schoolmaster; and though his introduction brings us again in contact with My Landlord and his parish clerk, we could have almost forgiven that unlucky fiction, if it had often presented us in company with sketches, as graceful as we find in the following passage, of the haunts and habits of this singular personage. After mentioning that there was, on the steep and heathy banks of a lonely rivulet, a deserted burying ground to which he used frequently to turn his walks in the evening, the gentle pedagogue proceeds

"One summer evening as, in a stroll such as I have described, I approached this deserted mansion of the dead, I was somewhat surprised to hear sounds distinct from those which usually soothe its solitude, the gentle chiding, namely, of the brook, and the sighing of the wind in the boughs of three gigantic ash trees, which mark the cemetery. The clink of a hammer was, upon this occasion, distinctly heard; and I entertained some alarm that a march-dike, long meditated by the two proprietors whose estates were divided by my favourite brook, was about to be drawn up the glen, in order to sub. stitute its rectilinear deformity! or the graceful winding of the natural boundary. As I approached I was agreeably undeceived. A old man was seated

44

As the wanderer was usually to be seen beat on this pious task within the precincts of some country churchyard, or reclined on the solitary and the blackcock with the clink of his chisel and tombstone among the heath, disturbing the plover mallet, with his old white pony grazing by his side, he acquired, from his converse among the dead, the popular appellation of Old Mortality."

Vol. ii. pp. 7-18.

The scene of the story thus strikingly introduced is laid-in Scotland of course-in those disastrous times which immediately preceded the Revolution of 1688; and exhibits a lively picture, both of the general state of manners at that period, and of the conduct and temper and principles of the two great parties in pol tics and religion that were then engaged in unequal and rancorous hostility. There are no times certainly, within the reach of authen tic history, on which it is more painful to look

The author before us has done all this, we think; and with admirable talent and effect: and if he has not been quite impartial in the management of his historical persons, has contrived, at any rate, to make them contribute largely to the interest of his acknowledged inventions. His view of the effects of great political contentions on private happiness, is however, we have no doubt, substantially true; and that chiefly because it is not exaggerated-because he does not confine himself to show how gentle natures may be roused into heroism, or rougher tempers exasperated into rancour, by public oppression,-but turns still more willingly to show with what ludicrous absurdity genuine enthusiasm may be debased, how little the gaiety of the light

back-which show a government more base | else of it than that such events took place in and tyrannical, or a people more helpless and its course. Few men, in short, are historical miserable: And though all pictures of the characters-and scarcely any man is always, greater passions are full of interest, and a or most usually, performing a public part. lively representation of strong and enthusiastic The actual happiness of every life depends emotions never fails to be deeply attractive, far more on things that regard it exclusively, the piece would have been too full of distress than on those political occurrences which are and humiliation, if it had been chiefly engaged the common concern of society; and though with the course of public events, or the record nothing lends such an air, both of reality and of public feelings. So sad a subject would importance, to a fictitious narrative, as to connot have suited many readers-and the author, nect its persons with events in real history, we suspect, less than any of them. Accord- still it is the imaginary individual himself that ingly, in this, as in his other works, he has excites our chief interest throughout, and we made use of the historical events which came care for the national affairs only in so far as in his way, rather to develope the characters, they affect him. In one sense, indeed, this and bring out the peculiarities of the individu- is the true end and the best use of history; als whose adventures he relates, than for any for as all public events are important only as purpose of political information; and makes they ultimately concern individuals, if the inus present to the times in which he has placed dividual selected belong to a large and comthem, less by his direct notices of the great prehensive class, and the events, and their transactions by which they were distinguished, natural operation on him, be justly representthan by his casual intimations of their effects ed, we shall be enabled, in following out his on private persons, and by the very contrast adventures, to form no bad estimate of their which their temper and occupations often ap- true character and value for all the rest of the pear to furnish to the colour of the national community. story. Nothing, indeed, in this respect is more delusive, or at least more woefully imperfect, than the suggestions of authentic history, as it is generally- —or rather universally written -and nothing more exaggerated than the impressions it conveys of the actual state and condition of those who live in its most agitated periods. The great public events of which alone it takes cognisance, have but little direct influence upon the body of the people; and do not, in general, form the principal business, or happiness or misery even of those who are in some measure concerned in them. Even in the worst and most disastrous times-in periods of civil war and revolution, and public discord and oppression, a great part of the time of a great part of the people is still spent in making love and money-in social amuse-hearted and thoughtless may be impaired by ment or professional industry-in schemes for worldly advancement or personal distinction, just as in periods of general peace and prosperity. Men court and marry very nearly as much in the one season as in the other; and are as merry at weddings and christenings- It is this, we think, that constitutes the great as gallant at balls and races-as busy in their and peculiar merit of the work before us. It studies and counting houses-eat as heartily, contains an admirable picture of manners and in short, and sleep as sound-prattle with of characters; and exhibits, we think, with their children as pleasantly-and thin their great truth and discrimination, the extent and plantations and scold their servants as zeal- the variety of the shades which the stormy ously, as if their contemporaries were not fur- aspect of the political horizon would be likely nishing materials thus abundantly for the to throw on such objects. And yet, though Tragic muse of history. The quiet under- exhibiting beyond all doubt the greatest poscurrent of life, in short, keeps its deep and sible talent and originality, we cannot help steady course in its eternal channels, unaf- fancying that we can trace the rudiments of fected, or but slightly disturbed, by the storms almost all its characters in the very first of the that agitate its surface; and while long tracts author's publications.-Morton is but another of time, in the history of every country, seem, edition of Waverley ;-taking a bloody part in to the distant student of its annals, to be dark-political contention, without caring much about ened over with one thick and oppressive cloud of unbroken misery, the greater part of those who have lived through the whole acts of the tragedy will be found to have enjoyed a fair average share of felicity, and to have been much less impressed by the shocking events of their day than those who know nothing

the spectacle of public calamity, and how, in the midst of national distraction, selfishness will pursue its little game of quiet and cunning speculation-and gentler affections find time to multiply and to meet!

the cause, and interchanging high offices of generosity with his political opponents.Claverhouse has many of the features of the gallant Fergus.-Cuddie Headrigg, of whose merits, by the way, we have given no fair specimen in our extracts, is a Dandie Dinmont of a considerably lower species;-and even

On the other point, also, we rather lear to the side of the author. He is a Tory, we think, pretty plainly in principle, and scarcely disguises his preference for a Cavalier over a Puritan: But, with these propensities, we think he has dealt pretty fairly with both sides-especially when it is considered that though he lays his scene in a known crisis of his national history, his work is professedly a work of fiction, and cannot well be accused of misleading any one as to matters of fact. He might have made Claverhouse victorious

the Covenanters and their leaders were shadowed out, though afar off, in the gifted Gilfillan, and mine host of the Candlestick. It is in the picture of these hapless enthusiasts, undoubtedly, that the great merit and the great interest of the work consists. That interest, indeed, is so great, that we perceive it has even given rise to a sort of controversy among the admirers and contemners of those ancient worthies. It is a singular honour, no doubt, to a work of fiction and amusement, to be thus made the theme of serious attack and defence upon points of historical and theologi-at Drumclog, if he had thought fit-and necal discussion; and to have grave dissertations written by learned contemporaries upon the accuracy of its representations of public events and characters, or the moral effects of the style of ridicule in which it indulges. It is difficult for us, we confess, to view the matter in so serious a light; nor do we feel much disposed, even if we had leisure for the task, to venture ourselves into the array of the disputants. One word or two, however, we shall say, before concluding, upon the two great points of difference. First, as to the author's profanity, in making scriptural expressions ridiculous by the misuse of them he has ascribed to the fanatics; and, secondly, as to the fairness of his general representation of the conduct and character of the insurgent party and their opponents.

As to the first, we do not know very well what to say. Undoubtedly, all light or jocular use of Scripture phraseology is in some measure indecent and profane: Yet we do not know in what other way those hypocritical pretences to extraordinary sanctity which generally disguise themselves in such a garb, can be so effectually exposed. And even where the ludicrous misapplication of holy writ arises from mere ignorance, or the foolish mimicry of more learned discoursers, as it is impossible to avoid smiling at the folly when it actually occurs, it is difficult for witty and humorous writers, in whose way it lies, to resist fabricating it for the purpose of exciting smiles. In so far as practice can afford any justification of such a proceeding, we conceive that its justification would be easy. In all our jest books, and plays and works of humour for two centuries back, the characters of Quakers and Puritans and Methodists, have been constantly introduced as fit objects of ridicule, on this very account. The Reverend Jonathan Swift is full of jokes of this description; and the pious and correct Addison himself is not a little fond of a sly and witty application of a text from the sacred writings. When an author, therefore, whose aim was amusement, had to do with a set of people, all of whom dealt in familiar applications of Bible phrases and Old Testament adventures, and who, undoubtedly, very often made absurd and ridiculous applications of them, it would be rather hard, we think, to interdict him entirely from the representation of these absurdities; or to put in force, for him alone, those statutes against profaneness which so many other people have been allowed to transgress, in their hours of gaiety, without censure or punishment.

body could have found fault with him. The insurgent Presbyterians of 1666 and the subsequent years, were, beyond all question, a pious, brave, and conscientious race of men— to whom, and to whose efforts and sufferings, their descendants are deeply indebted for the liberty both civil and religious which they still enjoy, as well as for the spirit of resist ance to tyranny, which, we trust, they have inherited along with it. Considered generally as a party, it is impossible that they should ever be remembered, at least in Scotland, but with gratitude and veneration-that their sufferings should ever be mentioned but with deep resentment and horror-or their heroism, both active and passive, but with pride and exultation. At the same time, it is impossible to deny, that there were among them many absurd and ridiculous persons-and some of a savage and ferocious characterold women, in short, like Mause Headrigg— preachers like Kettledrummle-or desperadoes like Balfour or Burley. That a Tory novelist should bring such characters prominently forward, in a tale of the times, appears to us not only to be quite natural, but really to be less blameable than almost any other way in which party feelings could be shown. But, even he, has not represented the bulk of the party as falling under this description, or as fairly represented by such personages. He has made his hero-who, of course, possesses all possible virtues-of that persuasion; and has allowed them, in general, the courage of martyrs, the self-denial of hermits, and the zeal and sincerity of apostles. His representation is almost avowedly that of one who is not of their communion; and yet we think it impossible to peruse it, without feeling the greatest respect and pity for those to whom it is applied. A zealous Presbyterian might, no doubt, have said more in their favour, with out violating, or even concealing the truth;but, while zealous Presbyterians will not write entertaining novels themselves, they cannot expect to be treated in them with exactly the same favour as if that had been the character of their authors.

With regard to the author's picture of their opponents, we must say that, with the excep tion of Claverhouse himself, whom he has invested gratuitously with many graces and liberalities to which we are persuaded he has no title, and for whom, indeed, he has a foolish fondness, with which it would be absurd to deal seriously-he has shown no signs of a partiality that can be blamed, nor exhibited

many traits in them with which their enemies' palliation: and the bloodthirstiness of Dalzell, have reason to quarrel. If any person can and the brutality of Lauderdale, are repreread his strong and lively pictures of military sented in their true colours. In short, if this insolence and oppression, without feeling his author has been somewhat severe upon the blood boil within him, we must conclude the Covenanters, neither has he spared their opfault to be in his own apathy, and not in any pressors; and the truth probably is, that never softenings of the partial author;-nor do we dreaming of being made responsible for hisknow any Whig writer who has exhibited the torical accuracy or fairness in a composition baseness and cruelty of that wretched gov- of this description, he has exaggerated a little ernment, in more naked and revolting de- on both sides, for the sake of effect-and been formity, than in his scene of the torture at carried, by the bent of his humour, most frethe Privy Council. The military executions quently to exaggerate on that which afforded of Claverhouse himself are admitted without the greatest scope for ridicule.

(February, 1818.)

Rob Roy. By the author of Waverley, Guy Mannering, and The Antiquary. 12mo. 3 vols. pp. 930. Edinburgh: 1818.

THIS is not so good, perhaps, as some others | ed-the same dramatic vivacity-the same of the family;-but it is better than any thing deep and large insight into human natureelse; and has a charm and a spirit about it and the same charming facility which distinthat draws us irresistibly away from our graver guish all the other works of this great master; works of politics and science, to expatiate and make the time in which he flourished an upon that which every body understands and era never to be forgotten in the literary history agrees in; and after setting us diligently to of our country. read over again what we had scarce finished reading, leaves us no choice but to tell our readers what they all know already, and to persuade them of that of which they are most intimately convinced.

One novelty in the present work is, that it is thrown into the form of a continued and unbroken narrative, by one of the persons principally concerned in the story-and who is represented in his declining age, as detailSuch, we are perfectly aware, is the task ing to an intimate friend the most interesting which we must seem to perform to the greater particulars of his early life, and all the recolpart of those who may take the trouble of ac-lections with which they were associated. companying us through this article. But there may still be some of our readers to whom the work of which we treat is unknown;-and we know there are many who are far from being duly sensible of its merits. The public, indeed, is apt now and then to behave rather unhandsomely to its greatest benefactors; and to deserve the malison which Milton has so emphatically bestowed on those impious persons, who,

-"with senseless base ingratitude, Cram, and blaspheme their feeder." -nothing, we fear, being more common, than to see the bounty of its too lavish providers repaid by increased captiousness at the quality of the banquet, and complaints of imaginary fallings off-which should be imputed entirely to the distempered state of their own pampered appetites. We suspect, indeed, that we were ourselves under the influence of this illaudable feeling when he wrote the first line of this paper: For, except that the subject seems to us somewhat less happily chosen, and the variety of characters rather less than in some of the author's former publications, we do not know what right we had to say that it was in any respect inferior to them. Sure we are, at all events, that it has the same brilliancy and truth of colouring the same gaiety of tone, rising every now and then into feelings both kindly and exalt

We prefer, upon the whole, the communications of an avowed author; who, of course, has no character to sustain but that of a pleasing writer-and can praise and blame, and wonder and moralise, in all tones and directions, without subjecting himself to any charge of vanity, ingratitude, or inconsistency. The thing, however, is very tolerably managed on the present occasion; and the hero contrives to let us into all his exploits and perplexities, without much violation either of heroic modesty or general probability;-to which ends, indeed, it conduces not a little, that, like most of the other heroes of this ingenious author, his own character does not rise very notably above the plain level of mediocrity-being, like the rest of his brethren, a well-conditioned, reasonable, agreeable young gentleman-not particularly likely to do any thing which it would be very boastful to speak of, and much better fitted to be a spectator and historian of strange doings, than a partaker in them.

This discreet hero, then, our readers will probably have anticipated, is not Rob Roythough his name stands alone in the title-but a Mr. Francis Osbaldistone, the only son of a great London Merchant or Banker, and nephew of a Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone, a worthy Catholic Baronet, who spent his time in hunting, and drinking Jacobite toasts in Northumberland, some time about the year