than the shadowy but graceful outline: Scott has worked out his creation truly and severely. The Pages in the old drama are entirely poetical creations; they occupy the debatable ground between the fanciful and the existing; they belong exclusively to the romantic in literature. They could only have been fancied when poetry delighted to hold love a creed as well as a passion. The heart called up the ideal to redeem the real, and an attachment was elevated by disinterestedness and moral beauty. There is none of this high-toned imagination in the classic fictions. Women were then considered as articles of property. The
"Seven lovely captives of the Lesbian line,
Skill'd in each art, unmatch'd in form divine"—
with whom Agamemnon seeks to propitiate the wrath of Achilles—hold an inferior place to the "twice ten vases of refulgent gold"—or to the twelve race-horses destined to form part of the offering. Achilles, though he protests that he loves the "beautiful captive of his spear," not only parts with her, but, what would almost have been worse to a woman, parts with her without an adieu, and she is received again in silent indifference. She departs without a farewell, and returns without a welcome. Briseïs, however, loses ground in our sympathy, by her lamentation over the body of Patroclus:—
