"The strong argument by which alone the general opinion has been hitherto supported, is, that the author, an avowed friend and eulogist of the great House of Douglas, must necessarily be an enemy of the reigning family, and willing to depress or insult the character of James II., as the enemy of his friends and patrons. To this we allow its full weight; and if we could find in the piece, from beginning to end, any thing peculiarly allusive to the person of James II., or the events of his reign, we are ready to admit that, arguing a priori, we should be apt to recognize such allusion as a libel on that prince, and as being a very natural appendage or corollary to a panegyric on the House of Douglas. If the poem had satirized pride or violence in oppression and abusion of power, as such faults would have corresponded with the charges which the Douglas faction had brought against the King: Or, suppose that James had been a Polish monarch, called to the throne by the suffrages of the nobles over whom he is afterwards accused of tyrannizing, the parable of the Howlat in his borrowed feathers would have been applicable, and the catastrophe of the apologue would have conveyed a striking inuendo. But James II. came to a hereditary throne in the ordinary course of succession; and owed his sovereignty neither to the compassion and patronage of the "Pape," nor to
