covered. This is about to be put in execution, when Bruce, who perceived it from the ambush in which his party had been placed, suddenly sallies forth, and while one division of his men rescues the victim, another seizes the gate of the castle. In a few minutes the business is settled-Clifford slain, and Bruce once more in possession of the hall of his ancestors. This Canto is not distinguished by many passages of extraordinary merit; as it is, however, full of business, and comparatively free from those long rhyming dialogues which are so frequent in the poem, it is upon the whole spirited and pleasing. The scene in which Ronald is described sheltering Edith under his plaid, for the love which he bears to Isabel, is, we think, more poetically conceived than any other in the whole poem-and contains some touches of great pathos and beauty.

Having thus put Bruce in possession of his paternal hall, the poem pauses for about eight years! during which interval the poet desires us to believe that many things have taken place, and among others, that the mute page, having resumed the attire of her sex, has taken up her abode with Isabel, now a nun, in the convent of St Bride. In this retreat, days and months and years had passed away in calm seclusion, when news is brought to the convent, that Bruce had recovered the whole of Scotland from the hands of the English, with the exception of Stirling castle, the governor of which had entered into a stipulation for surrendering the fortress committed to his charge, unless, by a day fixed upon, the English should raise the siege. On the morning after the news arrived, Isabel takes an opportunity of informing Edith, that they must part. By the death and flight of her kindred, it seems that Edith was now heiress to all the lands of the house of Lorn; and Bruce, being naturally desirous of preventing so powerful a fief from devolving upon any person of equivocal fidelity, proposed renewing the long-suspended treaty of marriage between the houses of Lorn and Clan-Colla. In this politic wish, the king was still farther confirmed, by having observed, that since the hopes of Ronald had been closed on the side of Isabel, he had gradually. become sensible of the merits of Edith, and penitent for the cruelty, or at least for the imprudence, of his former conduct towards her. Under these circumstances Bruce had dispatched a messenger, acquainting Isabel with the prosperous state of his affairs, and requesting her to send Edith to him under the protection of a knight whom he had directed to take charge of her. The Maid of Lorn' of course makes many coy excuses; (as well she might, for the transaction was not remarkable for its delicacy;) they are all, however, overruled by the kind persuasion of Isabel, and Edith finally sets out, equipped in male attire, in order that she may have an opportunity of being an eye-witness of Ronald's remorse.

She

She arrives at the camp of Bruce on the eve of the battle of Bannockburn, which is described with considerable spirit. The event it is unnecessary to relate: as soon as the battle is terminated, Bruce issues orders for the celebration of the nuptials; whether they were ever solemnized it is impossible to say; as critics, we should certainly have forbidden the banns; because, although it is conceivable that the mere lapse of time might not have eradicated the passion of Edith, yet how such a circumstance alone, without even the assistance of an interview, could have created one in the bosom of Ronald, is altogether inconceivable. He must have proposed to marry her, merely from compassion, or for the sake of her money and lands, and upon either supposition, it would have comported with the delicacy of Edith to refuse his proffered hand.

Such is an outline of the story upon which the poem before us is founded; and in whatever point of view it be regarded, whether with reference to the incidents it contains, or the agents by whom it is carried on, we think that one less calculated to keep alive the interest and curiosity of the reader could not easily have been contrived. Of the characters, we cannot say much; they are not conceived with any great degree of originality, nor delineated with any particular spirit. Neither are we disposed to criticise with minuteness the incidents of the story; but we con ceive that the whole poem, considering it as a narrative poem, is projected upon wrong principles.

The story is obviously composed of two independent plots, connected with each other merely by the accidental circumstances of time and place. The liberation of Scotland by Bruce has not naturally any more connection with the loves of Ronald and the Maid of Lorn, than with those of Dido and Æneas; nor are we able to conceive any possible motive which should have induced Mr Scott to weave them as he has done into the same narrative, except the desire of combining the advantages of an heroical, with what we may call, for want of an appropriate word, an ethi cal subject; an attempt which we feel assured he never would have made had he duly weighed the very different principles upon which these dissimilar sorts of poetry are founded. This is a subject upon which we cannot now expatiate; we may however observe, that to engraft a domestic episode upon an heroical subject, is a very different thing from engrafting an heroical episode upon a domestic subject. When the leading object of the poet is to interest his reader in some great historical catastrophe, as this can only be brought about by the agency of individuals, of course it is impossible to suppose, but that in the progress of a long poem, frequent occasions must arise in which the reader will be called upon to sympathise with their particular disasters. Such occasions, however, are only incidental; they should grow out

of the poem, and in this case, when they do occur, the feelings which they will excite, merely pass through the mind, without heating the imagination, or greatly disturbing the curiosity with which it still looks forward to the general catastrophe. But when the interest of a poem is principally founded upon the fortunes of individuals as all novels and romances, whether in prose or verse, ought to be-nothing can be more contrary, we conceive, either to prudence or propriety, than to attach those fortunes to the fate of states and empires; because, when the imagination is filled with great events, we are always apt to calculate things in the gross, and, as common experience shews, to estimate the value of particular interests, not by themselves, but with reference to the importance which they possess, as items in the great account. Thus, had Mr Scott introduced the loves of Ronald and the Maid of Lorn as an episode of an epic poem upon the subject of the battle of Bannockburn, its want of connection with the main action might have been excused in favour of its intrinsic merit; but by a great singularity of judgment, he has introduced the battle of Bannockburn as an episode in the loves of Ronald and the Maid of Lorn. To say nothing of the obvious preposterousness of such a design, abstractedly considered, the effect of it has, we think, decidedly been to destroy that interest which either of them might separately have created; or if any interest remain respecting the fate of the ill-requited Edith, it is because at no moment of the poem do we feel the slightest degree of it, respecting the enterprise of Bruce.

We have now put our readers in possession both of the story upon which the poem is built, and of our opinions as to its merits. The many beautiful passages which we have extracted from it, combined with the brief remarks subjoined to each Canto, will sufficiently shew, that although the Lord of the Isles' is not likely to add very much to the reputation of Mr Scott, yet this must be imputed rather to the greatness of his previous reputation than to the absolute inferiority of the poem itself. Unfortunately, its merits are merely incidental, while its defects are mixed up with the very elements of the poem. But it is not in the power of Mr Scott to write with tameness; be the subject what it will, (and he could not easily have chosen one more impracticable,) he impresses upon whatever scenes he describes so much movement and activity he infuses into his narrative such a flow of life, and, if we may so express ourselves, of animal spirits, that without satisfying the judgment, or moving the feelings, or elevating the mind, or even very greatly interesting the curiosity, he is still able to seize upon, and, as it were, exhilarate the imagination of his readers, in a manner which is often truly unaccountable. This quality Mr Scott possesses in an admi

rable

rable degree; and supposing that he had no other object in view than to convince the world of the great poetical powers with which he is gifted, the poem before us would be quite sufficient for his purpose. But this is of very inferior importance to the public; what they want is a good poein, and, as experience has shewn, this can only be constructed upon a solid foundation of taste and judgment and meditation.

ART. II. Travels in South Africa, undertaken at the Request of the Missionary Society. By John Campbell, Minister of Kingsland Chapel. London. 1815.

WE

E shall not be classed among those who affect to despise or ridicule the labours of the missionaries; though we may sometimes have felt it necessary to hint at their failings. To the Baptist missionaries of India and China, the European world is indebted, in no small degree, for the extension of its knowledge of oriental literature: the philological labours of Carey and Marshman, and the translations of Ward and Morison, must always be considered as valuable monuments of great talent and perseverance not uselessly applied. On the literary works of men like these, self-taught and unpatronized, criticism would be employed with an ill grace, by dwelling on every little violation of taste in composition, or fault of expression; or by refusing to pardon any want of judgment in the selection of materials. To the Moravian missionaries, a considerable share of merit, though of a different kind is also due. Waving all pretensions to literature, their avowed object is, first to make the savage sensible of the benefits to be derived from the useful arts of civilized life; and afterwards to instil into his mind the divine truths of the Christian religion. A third kind of merit, varying in its nature and degree from either of the former, is likewise due to the Evangelical missionaries, who seem to have no other object in view than that of preaching Christ and Him crucified. Nor do we think that Mr. Campbell rates the services of these Gospel missionaries too high in claiming for them the merit of philanthropy, and a most exalted display of the power of Christian principles, when they consent to leave European society and retire to a gloomy wilderness, like that of southern Africa, merely to do good to its scattered and miserable inhabitants, from love to Jesus Christ and the souls of men. Cold and fastidious indeed must the heart of him be, who can witness unmoved the personal dangers and privations of every kind to which these Evangelical preachers voluntarily surrender themselves, for the sole purpose of instructing the lowest of the human species in the one thing needful. It were to be wished,

at the same time, that their zeal was tempered with a little more of worldly wisdom and human prudence than they sometimes exhibit. But these are qualities which the present publication, among many others, gives us reason to suspect are not always to be found even among the directors of the missions, and can hardly therefore be expected in their instruments.

The death of Doctor Vander Kemp, who superintended the African missions, and of whom we gave a brief account in our review of Lichtenstein's Travels, made it expedient in the opinion of the directors,

To request one of their own body, the Reverend John Campbell, to visit the country, personally to inspect the different settlements, and to establish such regulations, in concurrence with Mr. Read, and the other missionaries, as might be most conducive to the attainment of the great end proposed the conversion of the heathen, keeping in view at the same time the promotion of their civilization.'-(Adver. p. vi.) . Such readers of Mr. Campbell's book as may be led to expect something more than the conversion of the heathen,' will not consider the directors to have made the most happy choice of a minister. From his own narrative we have not been able to discover that he used any exertions, or indeed possessed any resources, for promoting the secondary object of his mission the civilization of the native Africans. We are not sure, indeed, that his talents at all suited the first and main object of the society. He seems to us to want zeal, which we always understood to be an indispensable ingredient in a Gospel missionary. On his arrival at the Cape of Good Hope in November, the spring of the year, he suffers himself to be diverted from his journey into the interior, till the sultry summer months should be over, as his constitution had been weakened by the tropical heats tropical heats on a passage to the Cape! In the interim, he prepares himself by short journies-little jaunts of pleasure, from the Cape to Stel lenbosch-to the Paarl-to Darkenstein-to Groene-Kloof; and on the 13th of February, the most sultry of the summer months, he sets out on his tour. This however is no affair of ours; but we really did expect that he would have employed the four months on the passage, and the three thus spent at the Cape, in acquiring some little knowledge of the Dutch language, which is the key to those of the people whom he was proceeding to convert.-No such thing even after a nine months journey, with companions who spoke little else than Dutch, he cannot give us a word of it correctly; and we fear, from this circumstance, that the many sermons which he preached to the Dutch, and Hottentots, and Coranas, and Booshuanas, and Namaquas, may, according to his own account, be set down as vox et preterea nihil. I preached,' says

he,