lished; and, recited among the poets, it made, especially on their minds, an impression that proved an agency of poetic inspiration to them. Mr. Lockhart tells us that the casual recitation of "Christabel" in Scott's presence so "fixed the music of that noble fragment in his memory," that it prompted the production of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel."* It was a great lesson to the poets, in that it disclosed an unknown, or at least forgotten, freedom and power in English versification-a music the echoes of which are to be heard in the poems both of Scott and Byron. The grandeur of its imagery, too, moved the poets to whom it was made known, as in that sublime and familiar passage on a broken friendship:

"They stood aloof, the scars remaining,

Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;

A dreary sea now flows between ;

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,

Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been."

"Christabel" proved its influence over the poetry that followed, by the power with which both the natural and the supernatural were imaged in it; in the latter respect, particularly, Scott felt the power of the poem. There is probably nothing finer of its kind in poetry than those passages which tell of the wicked might of witchcraft in eye of the witch, who has assumed a beautiful human form: it is first felt as Christabel passes with her by the nearly extinct embers on the hall-hearth:

the

"They pass the hall that echoes still,

Pass as lightly as you will!

The brands were flat, the brands were dying,

Amid their own white ashes lying;

But when the lady passed, there came
A tongue of light, a fit of flame;
And Christabel saw the lady's eye,

And nothing else saw she thereby,

Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall,
Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall.”

And in that other passage, which shows the magic might of witchcraft stronger in the witch's eye as she fascinates her mute victim with it, the shrinking up of the eye, the sudden dilation again when the look of innocence is counterfeited once more, and Christabel's unconscious imitation of the serpent-look that fascinated and appalled her:

"A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy,

And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head-
Each shrank up to a serpent's eye;

And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread,

At Christabel she looked askance !

One moment--and the sight was fled!
But Christabel in dizzy trance,
Stumbling on the unsteady ground;
Shuddered aloud, with a hissing sound.
And Geraldine again turned round;
And like a thing that sought relief,
Full of wonder and full of grief,
She rolled her large bright eyes divine
Wildly on Sir Leoline.

The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone;
She nothing sees-no sight but one!

The maid devoid of guile and sin,
I know not how, in fearful wise,

So deeply had she drunken in

That look, those shrunken serpent eyes,
That all her features were resigned
To this sole image in her mind;

And passively did imitate

That look of dull and treacherous hate!

And thus she stood, in dizzy trance,
Still picturing that look askance
With forced, unconscious sympathy,
Full before her father's view,

As far as such a look could be

In eyes so innocent and blue!

And when the trance was o'er, the maid
Paused awhile, and inly prayed:
Then falling at the Baron's feet,
"By my Mother's soul do I entreat
That thou this woman send away!'
She said and more she could not say;
For what she knew she could not tell,
O'ermastered by the magic spell."

It is that description of the serpent-look of the witch's eyes that, being read in a company at Lord Byron's, so affected Shelley's sensitive fancy that he fainted.*

Along with the influence of this poem on the imagination of Walter Scott, there was blended the influence of his long-cherished and studious culture of the early minstrelsy, for which he laboured with patriotic as well as poetic zeal. The genius of Scott, thus wrought on, produced that series of poems which fills a large space in the poetic literature of the early part of this century. With much of Homeric animation, and with the pathos of Greek and British minstrel combined, he sung of the chivalry and the rude heroism of the olden time; and to those heroic lays there was given a popularity which was dimmed only by the sudden splendour of the speedy and

* In Moore's Life of Byron, vol. iv. p. 147, is the anecdote which I presume is referred to. Lord Byron was most earnest in his admiration of Christabel. His correspondence is full of it. "I won't have any one," he writes to Mr. Murray in 1816, "sneer at Christabel; it is a fine, wild poem." W. B. R.

more fervid popularity which was won by the genius of Byron.

There is nothing in literary biography finer than the composure, the magnanimity (rather let me call it) with which Scott, making up his mind that he was about to be supplanted in popular favour by a greater poet, tranquilly turned his genius to a new department of invention, in which, as it proved, no rival was to reach him. There is truth, too, in what Scott's biographer has said of this part of his career, that, "Appreciating, as a man of his talents could hardly fail to do, the splendidly original glow and depth of Childe Harold, Scott always appeared to me quite blind to the fact, that in the Giaour, in the Bride of Abydos, in Parisina, and, indeed, in all his early serious narratives, Byron owed at least half his success to clever, though perhaps unconscious, imitation of Scott, and no trivial share of the rest to the lavish use of materials which Scott never employed, only because his genius was, from the beginning to the end of his career, under the guidance of high and chivalrous feelings. of moral rectitude."*

This last remark recalls the account given of a conversation of Scott, toward the close of his life, which may be mentioned before I pass to the name of Byron. Not long before Sir Walter's death, a friend remarked to him that he must derive consolation from the reflection that his popularity was not owing to works which, in his latter moments, he might wish recalled. Scott remained silent for a moment, with his eyes fixed on the ground. "When he raised them," says the narrator, "as he shook me by

*Lockhart's Scott, vol. v. p. 31.

the hand, I perceived the light-blue eye sparkling with unusual moisture; he added, 'I am drawing near the close of my career. I have been, perhaps, the most voluminous author of the day, and it is a comfort to me to think that I have tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principle, and that I have written nothing which, on my death-bed, I should wish blotted."* In this utterance of dignified self-complacency, he stands justified by the story of his wondrous authorship. With regard to Scott's poetry, there are indications that, in the calmer judgment of posterity, the world is willing to restore a part, at least, of the fame it too quickly took away. It is only the other day that Landor, ranking Scott's poems with the classics, has said,

"The trumpet-blast of Marmion never shook

The walls of God-built Ilion; yet what shout
Of the Achaians swells the heart so high!"

In the concluding lecture I propose to proceed with the general considerations of the literature of this century-its chief productions and influences; among which I desire to speak of the character and influence of Lord Byron's poetry, the prose and poetry of Southey, the poetry of Wordsworth, the influence of Mr. Carlyle's writings, and also of some of the women who, both in prose and poetry, have adorned the literature of our times.

Lockhart's Scott, vol. x. p. 196.