imitations, composed by persons of talent, was almost equally unfortunate to the original minstrel, by showing that they could overshoot him with his own, bow. In short, the popularity which once attended the School, as it was called, was now fast decaying.

Besides all this, to have kept his ground at the crisis when "Rokeby" appeared, its author ought to have put forth his utmost strength, and to have possessed at least all his original advantages, for a mighty and unexpected rival was advancing on the stage-a rival not in poetical powers only, but in that art of attracting popularity, in which the present writer had hitherto preceded better men than himself. The reader will easily see that Byron is here meant, who, after a little volitation of no great promise, now appeared as a serious candidate, in the "First two Cantos of Child Harold." I was astonished at the power evinced by that work, which neither the "Hours of Idleness," nor the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," had prepared me to expect from its author. There was a depth in his thought, an eager abundance in his diction, which argued full confidence in the inexhaustible resources of which he felt himself possessed; and there was some appearance of that labour of the file, which indicates that the author is conscious of the necessity of doing every justice to his work, that it may pass warrant. Lord Byron was also a traveller, a man whose ideas were fired by having seen, in distant scenes of difficulty and danger, the places whose very names are recorded in our bosoms as the shrines of ancient poetry. For his own misfortune, perhaps, but certainly to the high increase of his poetical character, nature had mixed in Lord Byron's system those passions which agitate the human heart with most violence, and which may be said to have hurried his bright career to an early close. There would have been little wisdom in measuring my force with so formidable an antagonist; and I was as likely to tire of playing the second fiddle in the concert, as my audience of hearing me. Age also was advancing. I was growing insensible to those subjects of excitation by which youth is agitated. I had around me the most pleasant but least exciting of all society, that of kind friends and an affectionate family. My circle of employments was a narrow one; it occupied me constantly, and it became daily more difficult for me to interest myself in poetical composition:

"How happily the days of Thalaba went by!"

Yet, though conscious that I must be, in the opinion of good judges, inferior to the place I had for four or five years held in letters, and feeling alike that the latter was one to which I had only a temporary right, I could not brook the idea of relinquishing literary occupation, which had been so long my chief diversion. Neither was I disposed to choose the alternative of sinking into a mere editor and commentator, though that was a species of labour which I had practised, and to which I was attached. But I could not endure to think that I might not, whether known or concealed, do something of more importance. My inmost thoughts were those of the Trojan Captain in the galley race,

"Non jam prima peto Mnestheus, neque vincere certo;
Quanquam 0!-sed superent, quibus hoc, Neptune, dedisti :
Extremos pudeat rediisse: hoc vincite, cives,

Et prohibete nefas."-ÆN. lib. v. 194.

["These two Cantos were published in London in March 1812, and immediately placed their author on a level with the very highest names of his age. The impression they created was more uniform, decisive, and triumphant, than any that had been witnessed in this country for at least two generations. I awoke one morning,' he says, and found myself famous.' In truth, be had fixed himself, at a single bound, on a summit, such as no English poet had ever before attained, but after a long succession of painful and comparatively neglected efforts."-Advertisement to BYRON's Life and Works, vol. viii.]

["I seek not now the foremost palm to gain;
Though yet but ah that haughty wish is vain!
Let those enjoy it whom the gods ordain:
But to be last, the lags of all the race!-
Redeem yourselves and me from that disgrace."

DRYDEN. ]

I

I had, indeed, some private reasons for my "Quanquam O!" which were not worse than those of Mnestheus. I have already hinted that the materials were collected for a poem on the subject of Bruce, and fragments of it had been shown to some of my friends, and received with applause. Notwithstanding, therefore, the eminent success of Byron, and the great chance of his taking the wind out of my sails, there was, I judged, a species of cowardice in desisting from the task which I had undertaken, and it was time enough to retreat when the battle should be more decidedly lost. The sale of "Rokeby,' excepting as compared with that of "The Lady of the Lake," was in the highest degree respectable; and as it included fifteen hundred quartos, ⚫ in those quarto-reading days, the trade had no reason to be dissatisfied. W. S.

"

ABBOTSFORD, April, 1830.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The scene of this poem is laid at Rokeby, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire, and shifts to the adjacent fortress of Barnard Castle, and to other places in that Vicinity. The Time occupied by the Action is a space of Five Days, Three of which are supposed to elapse between the end of the Fifth and beginning of the Sixth Canto. The date of the supposed events is immediately subsequent to the great Battle of Marston Moor, 3d July, 1644. This period of public confusion has been chosen, without any purpose of combining the Fable with the Military or Political Events of the Civil War, but only as affording a degree of probability to the Fictitious Narrative, now presented to the Public. 3

ROKEBY.

CANTO FIRST.

I.

The Moon is in her summer glow,
But hoarse and high the breezes blow,
And, racking o'er her face, the cloud
Varies the tincture of her shroud;

["George Ellis and Murray have been talking something about Scott and me, George pro Scoto,-and very right too. If they want to depose him, I only wish they would not set me up as a competitor. I like the man-and, admire his works to what Mr. Braham calls Entusymusy All such stuff can only vex him, and do me no good."-BYRON's Diary, Nov. 1813-Works, vol. ii. p. 259.]

[The 4to Edition was published in January, 1843.]

3["Behold another lay from the harp of that indefatigable minstrel, who has so often provoked the censure, and extorted the admiration of his critics; and who, regardless of both, and following every impulse of his own inclination, has yet raised himself at once, and apparently with little effort, to the pinnacle of public favour.

"A poem thus recommended may be presumed to have already reached the whole circle of our readers, and we believe that all those readers will concur with us in considering Rokeby as a composition, which, if it had preceded, instead of following, Marmion, and the Lady of the Lake, would have contributed, as effectually as they have done, to the establishment of Mr. Scott's high reputation. Whether, timed as it now is, it be likely to satisfy the just expectations which that reputation has excited, is a question which, perhaps, will not be decided with the same unanimity. Our own opinion is in the affirmative, but we confess that this is our revised opinion; and that when we concluded our first perusal of Rokeby, our gratification was not quite unmixed with disappointment. The reflections by which this impression has been subsequently modified, arise out of our general view of the poem; of the interest inspired by the fable; of the masterly delineations of the characters by whose agency the plot is unravelled; and of the spirited nervous conciseness of the narrative."-Quarterly Review, No. xvI.]

On Barnard's towers, and Tees's stream,'
She changes as a guilty dream,

When Conscience, with remorse and fear,
Goads sleeping Fancy's wild career.
Her light seems now the blush of shame,
Seems now fierce anger's darker flame,
Shifting that shade, to come and go,
Like apprehension's hurried glow;
Then sorrow's livery dims the air,
And dies in darkness, like despair.
Such varied hues the warder sees
Reflected from the woodland Tees,
Then from old Baliol's tower looks forth,
Sees the clouds mustering in the north,
Hears, upon turret-roof and wall,
By fits the plashing rain-drop fall, '
Lists to the breeze's boding sound,
And wraps his shaggy mantle round.

2

II.

Those towers, which in the changeful gleam
Throw murky shadows on the stream,
Those towers of Barnard hold a guest,
The emotions of whose troubled breast,
In wild and strange confusion driven,
Rival the flitting rack of heaven.
Ere sleep stern OSWALD's senses tied,
Oft had he changed his weary side,
Cómposed his limbs, and vainly sought
By effort strong to banish thought.
Sleep came at length, but with a train
Of feelings true and fancies vain,
Mingling, in wild disorder cast,
The expected future with the past.
Conscience, anticipating time,
Already rues the enacted crime,
And calls her furies forth, to shake

The sounding scourge and hissing snake;

While her poor victim's outward throes

Bear witness to his mental woes,
And show what lesson may be read

Beside a sinner's restless bed.

3

III.

Thus Oswald's labouring feelings trace
Strange changes in his sleeping face,
Rapid and ominous as these

With which the moonbeams tinge the Tees.
There might be seen of shame the blush,

There anger's dark and fiercer flush,
While the perturbed sleeper's hand
Seem'd grasping dagger-knife, or brand,
Relax'd that grasp, the heavy sigh,
The tear in the half-opening eye.
The pallid cheek and brow, confess'd
That grief was busy in his breast;
Nor paused that mood—a sudden start
Impell'd the life-blood from the heart:
Features convulsed, and mutterings dread,
Show terror reigns in sorrow's stead.
That pang the painful slumber broke, '
And Oswald with a start awoke. 2

IV.

He woke, and fear'd again to close
His eyelids in such dire repose;
He woke, to watch the lamp, and tell
From hour to hour the castle-bell.

[MS.-" Nor longer nature bears the shock,

That pang the slumberer awoke."]

[There appears some resemblance betwixt the visions of Oswald's sleep and the wakingdream of the Giaour:

"He stood.-Some dread was on his face.

Soon Hatred settled in its place;

It rose not with the reddening flush

Of transient Anger's hasty blush,
But pale as marble o'er the tomb,
Whose ghastly whiteness aids its gloom.
His brow was bent, his eye was glazed;
He raised his arm, and fiercely raised,
And sternly shook his hand on high,

As doubting to return or fly;

Impatient of his flight delay'd,

Here loud bis raven charger neigh'd

Down glanced that hand, and grasp'd bis blade;

That sound bad burst his waking dream,

As slumber starts at owlet's scream:

The spur hath lanced his courser's sides;

Away, away, for life he rides.

"Twas but a moment that he stood,

Then sped as if by death pursued,

But in that instant o'er bis soul,
Winters of memory seem'd to roll,
And gather in that drop of time,
A life of pain, an age of crime."

BYRON's Works, vol. ix. p. 157.

Or listen to the owlet's cry,

Or the sad breeze that whistles by,
Or catch, by fits, the tuneless rhyme
With which the warder cheats the time,
And envying think, how, when the sun
Bids the poor soldier's watch be done,
Couch'd on his straw, and fancy-free,
He sleeps like careless infancy.

* I have had occasion to remark, in real life, the effect of keen and fervent anxiety in giving acuteness to the organs of sense. My gifted friend, Miss Joanna Baillie, whose dramatic works display such intimate acquaintance with the operations of human passion, has not omitted this remarkable circumstance :

1

"De Montfort. (Off his guard.) 'Tis Rezenvelt: I heard his well-known foot. From the first staircase mounting step by step.

Freb. How quick an ear thou hast for distant sound!

I heard him not.

De Montfort looks embarrassed, and is silent.”

["The natural superiority of the instrument over the employer, of bold, unhesitating, practised vice, over timid, selfish, crafty iniquity, is very finely painted throughout the whole of this scene, and the dialogue that ensues. That the mind of Wycliffe, wrought to the utmost agony of suspense, has given such acuteness to his bodily organs, as to enable him to distinguish the approach of his hired bravo, while at a distance beyond the reach of common hearing, is grandly imagined, and admirably true to nature."-Critical Review.]

3

[MS.-"The cry was,-- Heringham comes post,

With tidings of a battle lost.'

As one that roused himself from rest,

His answer," etc.]