It may very readily be supposed that this is the story on which the very beautiful Scottish ballad of Auld Robin Gray is founded; though with a fine discrimination, Lady Mary Lindsay, leaving out the unpleasant parts of the narrative, has felicitously converted it from a tale of guilt and suffering to one of unmingled tenderness and beauty.
The circumstance throughout, even as connected with the ballad, bear too evidently the impress of truth to be the mere mental imaginings of any sentimental poet or poetess; and though, like the ancient legend of Gil Morrice, on which Home has founded his exquisite national tragedy, or the pathetic tale of Girolaino and Sylvestra, from which Barry Cornwall drew the finest of his dramatic scenes, “The Broken Heart,”—these circumstances now only appeal to our feelings in the lines to which the singing of Miss Stephens has added a more destirved celebrity; yet we see life, real life, and actual occurrence, in every stanza, most visibly and distinctly.
We believe there is no existing record of the time at which the ballad was composed; but from the authoress having died within the last year, though at a very advanced age, we may with certainty assign it to a date considerably posterior to the prose record, whose language
