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FEMALE PORTRAIT GALLERY, FROM SIR WALTER SCOTT.*[1]
BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE IMPROVISATRICE."
No. II.—Constance.
It is a curious thing, after years have elapsed, to go back upon the pages of a favourite author. Nothing shows us more forcibly the change that has taken place in ourselves. The book is a mental mirror—the mind starts from its own face, so much freshness, and so much fire has passed away. The colours and the light of youth have gone together. The judgment of the man rarely confirms that of the boy. What was once sweet has become mawkish, and the once exquisite simile appears little more than an ingenious conceit. The sentiment which the heart once beat to applaud has now no answering key-note within, and the real is perpetually militating against the imagined. It is a great triumph to the poet when we return to the volume, and find that our early creed was, after all, the true religion. Few writers stand this test so well as Sir Walter Scott. We read him at first with an eagerness impetuous as his own verse: years elapse, we again take up those living pages, and we find ourselves carried away as before. Our choice has changed, perhaps, as to favourite passages, but we still find favourites. Scott is the epic poet of England; he does for chivalry what Homer did for the heroic age. He caught it just fading into dim oblivion, living by tradition, veiled by superstition, uncertain and exaggerated; yet not less the chaos from whence sprang the present, which must trace to that morning checquered darkness, the acquisitions and the characteristics of to-day. What constitutes the great epic poet? his power of revivifying the past. It is not till a nation has gained a certain point in civilization that it desires to look back; but when action allows a breathing time for thought, and the mechanical and customary has succeeded to the adventurous and unexpected, then we desire to trace the Nile of our moral progress to its far and hidden fountains. It is this desire which is the inspiration of Walter Scott. From the dim waters he evokes the shining spirit, and from scattered fragments constructs the glorious whole. We cannot sympathize with the regret that he expresses in one of the exquisite introductions to "Marmion," when but for want of kingly countenance—
"Dryden, in immortal strain,
Had raised the Table Round again."
Dryden lived in an age when the political and moral standards were set at too low a water-mark for the high tides of poetry. With the most splendid and vigorous versification, with an energy of satire and wit that had the point of the dagger and the weight of the axe, Dryden was deficient in what Scott possessed. He would have lacked the picturesque which calls up yesterday, and the sentiment which links it with to-day. The machinery of guardian angels which he proposed is enough to show that the first design was a failure. It is a great poetical mis-
- ↑ * Continued from No. ccv., p.39
