Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 - Various 8 стр.

And now, as the dancers are off the stage, and it is the more proper time for gravity and decorum, I feel that irresistible desire to be as wicked as possible a desire which I have heard you say tormented you in your childhood; for, whenever you were admonished to be remarkably good, you were invariably remarkably bad. So I yield to the temptation, and voluntarily, and with "malice prepense" throw myself into the wickedness of translating (somewhat modernizing I own) the "Tabooed" ode, in defiance of, and purposely to offend, the Parisian, or other editor or editors, who shall ever show themselves such incomparable ninnies as to omit that or any other ode of Horace. Accept the following.

"Vixi puellis nuper idoneus."

Not a word, Eusebius, I know what you are going to say,  no shame at all. You have all your life acquitted Horace; and if he never intended Chloe to have a whipping, you may be quite sure the little turn that I have ventured to give the affair, won't bear that construction; and there will be no occasion to ask the dimensions of the rod, as the ladies at the assize-town did of Judge Buller, requesting of him, with their compliments, to send them the measure of his thumb.

Why should I not attempt this rejected ode? Here goes for the honour of Lydia. "Kiss and be friends" be ever the motto to lovers' quarrels.

"Donec gratus eram tibi."

So this is the offending ode! Was the proposition to be constant not quite agreeable to the French editor? Or was he in Horace's probable condition, getting a little up in years? See you, it is a youthful rival, Juvenis, who troubles him. And Lydia takes care to throw in this ingredient, the "sweet age." He is not old Ornytus a hint of comparison with Horace himself but his son; indeed, he is hardly Juvenis, for she soon calls him her dear boy, as much as to say, "You are old enough to be his father!" She carries out this idea, too, seeming to say, "You may love Chloe I dare say you do; but, does Chloe love you? Whereas our passion is mutual."

Our poet, delightful and wise as he generally is, was not wise to match his wit against that of a woman, and an offended beauty. How miserably he comes off in every encounter! He would die, forsooth! once she would die twice over! There is a hit in his very liver! And as to the survivorship of Chloe, that she suggests, considering their ages, might be very natural but she doubts if her youth could survive should she die; though she even came to life again, a second time to die, it would be of no use. What could the foolish poet do after that? Nothing but make up the quarrel in the best way he might. He drops his ears, is a little sulky still most men are so in these affairs seldom generous in love. To pretend to be so is only to encroach on woman's sweet and noble prerogative, and to assume her great virtue. No man could keep it up long; he would naturally fall into his virile sulks. So Horace does not at once open his arms that his Lydia may fall into them but stands hesitatingly, rather foolish, his hands behind him, and puts forward the supposition If that graceless peace-maker. Lydia, on the contrary all love, all generosity, is in his arms at once; for he must at the moment bring them forward, whether he will for love or no, or Lydia would fall. It is now she looks into his very eyes, and only playfully, as quizzing his jealousy, reminds him of her Caläis, her star of beauty; thus sweetly reproving and as sweetly forgiving the temper of her Horace for he is her Horace still and who can wonder at that? She will bear with all will live, will die with him. I look, Eusebius, upon this ode as a real consolation to your lovers of an ambiguous and querulous age. Seeing what we are daily becoming, it is a comfort to think that, should such untoward persons make themselves disagreeable to all else of human kind, there will be, nevertheless, to each, one confiding loving creature, to put them in conceit with themselves, and make them, notwithstanding their many perversities, believe that they are unoffending male angels, and die in the bewildering fancy that they are still loveable.

I have little more to say, but that, having been lately in a versifying mood, I have set to rhyme your story of the cook and the lottery ticket; and herein I have avoided that malicious propensity of our numerous tellers of stories, whose only pleasure, as it appears to me, lies in the plunging the heroes and heroines of their tales into inextricable troubles and difficulties, and in continuing them in a state of perplexity beyond the power of human sufferance; and who slur over their unexpected, and generally ill-contrived escape, as a matter of small importance; and with an envy of human happiness, like the fiend who sat scowling on the bliss of Eden, either leave them with sinister intentions, or absolutely drive them out of the Paradise which they have so lately prepared for them.

I have lately been reading a very interesting, well conceived in many respects, and pathetic novel, which, nevertheless, errs in this; and I even think the pathos is injured by the last page, which is too painful for tenderness, which appears the object of the able author. A monumental effigy is but the mockery of all life's doings, which are thus, with their sorrows and their joys, rendered nugatory; and all that we have been reading, and are interested about, is unnecessarily presented to us as dust and ashes. Such is the tale of Mount Sorrel.

Perhaps, too, I might say of this, and of other novels of the same kind, that there is in them an unhealthy egotism; a Byronism of personal feelings; an ingenious invention of labyrinth meandering into the mazes of the mind and of the affections, in which there is always bewilderment, and the escape is rather lucky than foreseen. Such was not the mode adopted heretofore by more vigorous writers, who preferred exhibiting the passions by action, and a few simple touches, which came at once to the heart, without the necessity of unravelling the mismazes of their course. If Achilles had made a long speech in Elysium about his feelings, and attempted to describe them, when his question, if his son excelled in glory, was happily answered, we should have thought less of him for his egotism, and had much less perfect knowledge of the real man's heart and soul. Homer simply tells us, that he walked away, with great strides, greatly rejoicing. I can remember, at this moment, but one tale in which this style of descriptive searchings into the feelings is altogether justifiable Godwin's "Caleb Williams;" for there the ever instant terror, varying by the natural activity and ingenuity of the mind, which, upon the one pressing point, feverishly hurries into new, and all possible channels of thought, requires this pervading absolutism. It is the Erynnis of a bygone creed, in a renovated form of persecuting fatalism, brought to sport with the daily incidents and characters of modern life.

I do not wish to be tempted by this course of thought into lengthened criticism; which I should not have touched upon, had I not thought it proper to tell you that I have added a conclusion to your tale. Ever wishing a continuation of the happiness of two human beings, beyond that location in the story, where most spiteful authors leave them, the Church door.

I have been reading, too, over again two of Sir Walter Scott's novels, "Guy Mannering" and "Ivanhoe." How different they are, both in design and execution! The former, in all respects perfect the latter, in design common-place, and but little enlarged from the old ballad tales of Robin Hood, and histories of the Crusaders; very slovenly in diction, and lengthened out by tiresome repetitions; the same things being told in protracted dialogues which had been previously narrated in the historic course. Then there are very ill-timed interruptions, and wearisome disquisitions, just where they should not be. Yet are there passages of perfect excellence, that prove the master-hand of the author. The novel of "Ivanhoe" seems to resemble some of those plays which, though doubtful, are called Shakspeare's, because it is evident that the master-hand has passed over them, and left touches both of thought and character which justify the position which they enjoy. Rebecca is all in all. The other characters somewhat fail to interest. Ivanhoe himself says but little, and is in fact not much developed. We are disgusted, and unnecessarily, at every turn with Athelstane there was no occasion for making him this degraded glutton. It seems a clumsy contrivance to break off his marriage with Rowena; and surely the boast of his eating propensities, when he shows himself to his astonished mourners escaped from the death and tomb prepared for him, is unnatural, and throws a contempt and ridicule over the whole scene. Richard and Robin Hood (or Locksley) are not characters of Sir Walter's creation Richard is, we may suppose, truly portrayed. My friend S , Eusebius, who, while I was suffering under influenza, read these novels out to me, was offended at a little passage towards the end, where the author steps out of the action of his dramatic piece, to tell you that King Richard did not live to fulfil the benevolent promises he had a line or two before been making; and I entirely agree with S , and felt the unseemly and untimely intelligence as he read it. This would scarcely be justifiable in a note, but in the body of the work it shocks as a plague-spot on the complexion of health. This practice, too common in novelists, especially the "historical," becoming their own marplots, deserves censure. To borrow from another art, it is like marring a composition, by an uncomfortable line or two running out of the picture, and destroying the completeness. I know not if that fine scene, perhaps the most masterly in Ivanhoe, has ever been painted, where, after the defeat of De Bois-Guilbert, and after that Richard had broken in upon the court, the Grand Master draws off in the repose of stern submission his haughty Knights Templars. The slow procession finely contrasts with the taunting violence of Richard; and what a background is offered to the painter the variously moved multitude, the rescued Rebecca, and the dead (though scarcely defeated) Templar!

Sir Walter, although an antiquarian, was not perhaps aware that he was somewhat out in his chronology in connecting Robin Hood and his men with Richard the First. It is made very clear in an able essay in the Westminster Review, that Robin Hood's name and fame did not commence till after the defeat of Simon de Montfort in the battle of Evesham. In fact, Robin Hood was more of a political outlaw one of the outlawed, after that defeat, than a mere sylvan robber. Sir Walter Scott has taken advantage of the general belief, gathered from many of our old ballads, in an intercourse between Robin Hood and England's king. But according to the oldest of the ballads, (or rather poems, for it is too long for a ballad, and composed of many parts,) The Lyttel Geste of Robin Hood, this king of England was Edward the First; so that the existence of the "bold outlaw" is antedated by the author of Ivanhoe upwards of seventy years. This, however, does not affect the story, excepting to those who entertain the fond fancy, that when they read an historical novel they read history.1 Do you wonder, Eusebius, at my chronological learning? You well may; it must appear to you a very unexpected commodity. The truth is, my attention has been directed to this very matter by my antiquarian friend M'Gutch of Worcester, who not only pointed out to me the essay in the Westminster, but, finding my curiosity excited, sent me many of the ballads, Robin Hood's garlands, and The Lyttel Geste, together with an able introduction of his own to a new edition of the collection he is about to produce, with which you will be delighted, and learn all that is to be known; and it is more than you would expect to meet with about this "gentle robber."

S , to whom I read the foregoing remarks on Ivanhoe, said, I ought to do penance for the criticism. I left the penance to his choice; and, like a true friend, he imposed a pleasure; I do not say, Eusebius, that if left to myself I should have been a Franciscan. He took up Marmion, and read it from beginning to end. It is indeed a noble poem. Will not the day come, when Sir Walter's poems will be more read than his novels, good though they be?

In his poetry Scott always reminds me of Homer. There is the same energy ever working to the one simple purpose the same spontaneity and belief in its own tale; and diversity of character for relief's sake is common to both. In reading Homer we must discard all our school notions; we began to read with difficulty; the task was a task, though it was true we warmed in it the thread was broken a thousand times; and we too often pictured to ourselves the old bard in his gravity of beard and age not in that vigour, that freshness of manhood, which is conspicuous in both poems, at whatever age they were composed.

I have had the curiosity, Eusebius, to enquire of very many real scholars, who have professed to keep up their Greek after leaving the universities, if they have re-read Homer in Greek, and almost all have confessed that they had not. They read him in Pope and Cowper. Let them read him offhand, and fluently, continuously, as they do Marmion, or the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and I cannot but think they will be struck with the Homeric resemblance in the poems of Sir Walter Scott. Both great poets had, too, the same relish for natural scenery, the same close observation; did we not pass over such passages lightly, we should, I am persuaded, find in both the same nice discriminations in characters of outward scenes, that we do in those of men. In both there is the same kind of secret predominance of female character the same delicacy, tenderness, (a wondrous thing in the age of Homer, or rather, perhaps, showing we know nothing about that age, not even so much as we do about those ages which we choose to call dark.) It must, however, be noted, that Sir Walter Scott has limited himself to more confined fields. There is not the same room for genius to work in the production is, therefore, in degree less varied, and less complete; but is there not a likeness in kind? Is it too bold, is it merely fanciful, Eusebius, to say, too, that there is a something not dissimilar in the measures adopted by these ancient and modern poets. Homer possibly had no choice; but in the hexameter there is the greatest versative power. How different, for instance, are the first lines of the "Tale of Troy Divine," and the more familiar adventures of Ulysses. The ad libitum