writing—the story of Perling Joan is touching, and that of the Glasgow shoemaker, who murders a guest, and goes on his way praying, and who dies praying for the hooting crowd around his scaffold, is not without its awed admirers.
Of Mr. Lockhart's "Spanish Ballads," a fellow-countryman and brother poet has said, that fine as were the original verses, they certainly lost nothing (as did the shield of Martinus Scriblerus) from being subjected to his modern furbishing; but that, on the contrary, what was tame he inspired, what was lofty he endowed with additional grandeur, while even the tender—as in the lay of "Count Alarcos and the Infanta Solixa"[1]—grew still more pathetic beneath his touch. Another fellow-countryman and brother poet—well versed in Border minstrelsy—admiringly recognises all the simplicity, and energy, and picturesque beauty, and more than the flow of the ballads of the Border, in these translations from the Spanish and Moorish. "The fine old Bible English into which they are rendered, gives the antique hue so natural and becoming in the old minstrels; all other translations fade away before them."[2] Mr. Hallam, too, always a cautious judge, has awarded no faint praise—that damning sentence of cautious judges—to these bold and buoyant lyrics.
We reckon it blessing rather than bane that our limits defy us to be prosy about that glorious piece of biography, the Life of Scott. It is far too interesting and valuable to be a present text of controversy, about the Ballantines "and a' that:" the man who reads such a book with fussy critical pretensions, should be required to name one poor half-dozen of biographies that equal it in matter and manner. The Life of Burns, again, is a pleasant compilation—vigorous in narrative, and set off with fit reflections, the germ of other and deeper ones, in the essays of Wilson and Carlyle.
Still more emphatically may we count ourselves happy in being without space to discuss the Editor of the Quarterly Review. One word, nevertheless, against the not unpopular impression of his "merciless" disposition, and "implacable" opposition to opponents. The personal characteristics foisted on him by certain scribblers, have been commonly identified with his editorial ideal—making up an austere man, haughty, reserved, recklessly satirical, and somewhat vindictive withal. Tom Moore could discriminate between editor and man, when he introduced Lockhart's name among "Thoughts on Editors:"
Alas, and must I close the list
With thee, my Lockhart, of the Quarterly,
So kind, with bumper in thy fist,—
With pen, so very gruff and tartarly.
Now in thy parlour feasting me,
Now scribbling at me from thy garret,—
Till 'twixt the two in doubt I be
Which sourest is, thy wit or claret.
