LETTER XXXVI. WALTER SCOTT, Esq. Lichfield, March 7, 1805. DEAR Sir,-It is not easy for me to express how poignant my sense of the literary obligations with which you have honoured me. The Lay of the Last Minstrel valuably enhances those highprized treasures. My last letter to you, in August 1803, written while a competent share of health was mine, and while hope and peace were inmates of my bosom, was closed and sent away beneath the sudden death which tore from me health, and peace, and every earthly hope. Indispensable business pressing upon my attention, and claiming my exertion when my shocked soul needed rest, probably brought on, by degrees, the present excess of a malady to which I have been subject these many past years;-a dizziness of head, in more or less degree, always upon me, and which has, since the 25th of October last, increased with dangerous force, amounting to sudden paroxysms, in which all the surrounding objects seem falling into chaos. These paroxysms are brought on by every attempt to stoop my head to read or write with any continuance. Thus am I obliged to employ an amanuensis for my letters, and to procure a friend to read to me audibly whatever I wish to peruse; nor can I sustain, without danger, a continued attention, and still less a chain of intense thinking. By this strange mysterious malady, which medicine has tried to combat in vain, the remnant of my days is destined to a gloomy suspension of every intellectual industry. And now, to exchange this comfortless theme for one on which genius has poured his animating lustre The Lay of the Last Minstrel. The introduction is beautifully simple, and its last page is conceived with the utmost felicity of imagination. I am no less charmed with the sixth stanza of the first canto, though its excellence is of a different nature-a military exhibition, which distinctly pourtrays the preparation for feudal war. Its second and third couplet are sublime ;-but if I proceed to remark every varied beauty of which I am susceptible in this fine work, my comments will prove scarcely less extensive than the work itself. Yours and Burns' poetic journies transcend those of every other poet, by the concisely-descriptive mention of local objects, which make the reader pass the ground with you progressively, so that were it his purpose to take the same road identically, he might find his way without any other guide. The twenty-seventh stanza happily adverts to a darling song of my youth. Oh that you could hear sung as I have often heard, "My sheep I've neglected, I've lost my sheep-hook ;" -but the lips that so sweetly and emphatically expressed the charming air, adapted by the late Dr Arne to those elegant words, are closed in eternal silence. Other voices may be as fine, the skill and fancy of other singers as distinguished; but for all the graces and powers of touching expression, nor man nor woman ever sung as Saville sung. I inclose an epitaph which I wrote for him a month after his instant vanishing for ever. It is engraven on an elegant monument in Lichfield cathedral, designed by Sir Nigel Gresley; the last tribute of my almost life-long friendship. All who knew Mr Saville acquit the marble of flattery. Let sorrow, however, no longer seduce me from my purposed theme. The two closing stanzas of this canto vie in touching and picturesque beauty with the proem to the work. VOL. VI. I lately saw a review-criticism upon your exquisite moon-light picture of Melrose-Abbey, which so divinely opens the second canto. The censure falls upon that architectural appropriation by which it is happily distinguished from every other description of every other ruined abbey. That circumstance attaches to it what appears to me a great excellence, viz. when the poetic muse in some degree conveys to us the elements of other sciences, by delineation of some of their appearances, powers, and effects; together with the use of their technical terms. Hence the rules of painting and the laws of heraldry, and of the mechanic arts, of natural history and of astronomy, are presented to the mind of the reader through the delightful medium of verse, and poetry is enabled to instruct while she charms. The Paradise Lost, and Darwin's Botanic Garden possess this excellence, for which one of the periodical censors blames your picture of Melrose Abbey. It must, however, be confessed, that it is not thus that a bard obtains the praise of reviewers, or, through their praise, acquires speedy popularity. Professional critics and common readers have but little appetite for compositions which abound in allusive knowledge. They turn from such poetry to that which merely amuses, or terrifies, or feeds the malig nance of human nature towards others, by satire or by religious denunciation; but it is not for these that genius consumes the midnight oil. When I was at Bristol last summer, a lady said to me, 66 My son is of Merchant Taylor's school. He has there a friend and schoolfellow, not yet sixteen, who has been employed by one of the review editors to write strictures for his work, on your Memoirs of Dr Darwin." Such are often the presumptuous deciders on new publications. The mention of that work tempts me to express my hope that yourself and Mr Mackenzie received the copy destined for each. To you, in literary interchange, that present "Is as the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf You have disclosed the dead wizard with much sublimity; and lovely and exhilarating is the fresh, cool, morning landscape, which relieves the mind after the horrors of the spell-guarded tomb. And ah, how truly sweet and original is your description of Margaret; of the trembling speed with which she attires, descends, and speeds to the bower! Will you forgive me if I confess, that your |