Now hidden by the clustering brake,
Now lost amid the mountain lake,
Now clasping, with protective sweep,
Some mouldering castle's moated steep;
Till, issuing from the uplands brown,
Fair rolls each flood by tower and town;
The hills recede, and on the sight
Swell the bold rivers broad and bright.
The eye-the fancy almost fails

To trace them through their thousand vales,
Winding these Border hills among,
(The boast of chivalry and song)
From B*****t's banks of softest green
To the rude verge of dark Lochskene.-
Tis a heart-stirring sight to view,
Far to the westward stretching blue,
That frontier ridge, which erst defied

Th' invader's march, th' oppressor's pride;-
The bloody field, for many an age,

Of rival natious' wasteful rage;

In later times a refuge given

To exiles in the cause of Heaven."

We do not deny that this is somewhat pretty, but it is very common; the view is not ill painted, but it is the same as has been described a thousand times before, and quite as well. The author seems to think, that if he makes his verse of eight syllables, and introduces a sufficient number of names of Scottish places, with here and there a historical recollection, (no matter whether or not it be worth reviving,) he has given a true representation of the distinctive marks of the style of Walter Scott. We are any thing but fervent admirers of that gentleman's productions, but had the above quotation been in ten-syllable lines, with the names also changed, it would have been almost as much like Goldsmith's Traveller; and of that opinion the author himself appears to have been, for towards the end he falls as naturally as possible into a direct citation from it. In point of thought, it is doing, however, manifest injustice to the delightful author of the Traveller, whose great excellence, notwithstanding, was not originality of sentiment. But, besides this Epistle, we have a long piece called Wat o' the Cleugh, which it is obvious the author considered a very happy attempt, and which indeed has some merit-not, however, because it much resembles any production by Mr. Scott. The hero Wat is a military plunderer upon the mo

del of Deloraine, who, with a party, wishing to take Roxburg Castle by stratagem, compels an abbot and monks of a convent to lend them their cowls and other apparel in order to surprise it. This piece is in three cantos, but about as many stanzas will give a sufficient notice of it, for it is very little varied.

"Father, thou know'st our mortal foe
Of late has wrought us mickle woe,
Hath over-run the Border land,
With fire, with foray, and with brand;
That still their bands are facing north,
And wasting even the shores of Forth;
While their huge stores the castle fill
Of Roxburgh, deem'd impregnable:
Could that by force or fraud be won,
Quick from our country they must run.
Though all unequal be the strife,
To win that place, for death or life,
Here am I come, right joyfully;
But much-nay all, depends on thee.
Either with warriors thou must wend,
Their motions guide, their strife attend,-
Or teach to these, my friends, and me,
The whole cant of hypocrisy:
To con o'er chaplet, prayers to read,
To hand the chalice, book, and bead,-
Else as our leader thou art pledged,
For thou and thine art privileged.'

"In either case,' the abbot said,
And as he spoke he shook his head,--
In either case, Sir Knight, for me,
Full hard, I ween, the task will be.
Put off these weeds of warrior trim,
And don the cowl and sackcloth grim;
Thy panoply of steel resign,

That stark unyielding brigandine;

And when thou'rt clothed in weeds of woe,

Soon will I tell thee aye or no,

Whether, with scrap of creed and mass,
As genuine beadsman thou may'st pass.'

"Off went the cuishes and the greaves,
Jangled aloud the chained sleeves,
Down went the helm and plumage tall,
The corslet rattles on the wall,
And Wat, whose very meed was scathe,
He felt so light and free to breathe,

That swift as fire he flew upon
A friar of stupendous bone,

To reave his robes in grappling strife,—
Without a stir Wat hated life:

He caught the friar by the nape,
Who stared at first with ghastly gape;
But, prick'd by pain, enroused by spleen,
Or memory what he once had been,
He struck the chief a blow so rude,
It made him stagger where he stood,
While mouth and nose gush'd red with blood.

"The mountain warriors laugh'd outright,
The monks stood trembling with affright,
They knew not Wat's supreme delight:
Up to the sullen friar he came,
And ask'd his lineage and his name.
What boots it you?' he stern replied,
And flung his cumberous frock aside;
• Think'st thou I blench at mortal frown?
I'm neither come of thief nor loun;
And that is more, 'twixt you and I,
Than some can say without a lie.'"

In this piece, frequent mention is made of various parts of ancient armour, which are common not only to Mr. and Mr. Scott, but to all the minstrels and balladers, of whom Mr. Scott is himself an imitator, with improvements. Names of places and persons are also sufficiently numerous; and we have, besides, a whole stanza, of fifteen lines, of the appellations of water-fowl; but we look in vain for the vigorous and animated descriptions with which the Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, and even Rokeby, abound, and we grow tired of the heavy brutality of Wat before the end of the first canto.

The imitation of Mr. Hogg is called "The Gude Greye Katt," in the broad Scottish dialect, which will be unintelligible to most of our southern readers; it is, however, one of the most characteristic pieces in the volume: we have not room for more than half a dozen stanzas from the beginning.

"There wase ane katt, and ane gude greye katt,

That duallit in the touir of Blain,

And mony haif hearit of that gude katt,

That neuir shall heare agayn.

"Scho had ane brynd upon her backe,
And ane brent abone hir bree;
Hir culoris war the merilit heuis
That dappil the krene-herrye.
“But scho had that within her ee

That man may neuir declaire,
For scho had that within hir ee
Quhich mortyl dochtna beare.
"Sumtymis ane ladye sochte the touír,
Of rych and fayre beautye;
Sumtymis ane maukyn cam therin,
Hytchyng rycht wistfullye.

"But quhan they serchit the touir of Blain,
And socht it sayre and lang,

They fande nocht but the gude greye katt
Sittyng thrummyng at hir sang;

"And up scho raise, and pacit her wayis
Full stetlye oure the stene,

And streikit out hir braw hint-leg,

As nocht at all had bene."

In the foregoing extracts, we admit that a resemblance to the originals may be traced, and perhaps some will be of opinion that as much may be said of The Guerilla, which Mr. pretends to have received from Lord Byron: this is full of deep and bloody revenge by a Spaniard, for the violation of his mistress. Now, there is nothing unnatural in this story, and so far, we apprehend, unlike its original: the Guerilla is a man operated upon by human passions, for "revenge is wild justice;" but the heroes of the noble lord are neither men, nor beasts, nor demigods, but a sort of incongruous mixture of qualities belonging to all-the mere chimæra of his lordship's brain-having no existence but in its birth-place: at the same time, the power of his language, and the alternations of turbulence and tenderness, keep up the interest even for this nonentity, and almost reconcile us to his vices for the sake of his redeeming virtues. We can find nothing of this vigour, richness, or pathos, in the poem before us, which is laboured and lifeless-highly polished in many places, but it is the result of patient industry, not of delicacy in its original formation. The following stanzas are from the best part, where Alayni stabs his polluted mistress.

"Well may'st thou wail!' he said, in deepest tone;
That face I loved above all earthly thing!

But never more shall smile beam thereupon,
For thou art lost beyond recovering!

To life of scorn can thy young spirit cling,
To kindred and to friends a lothful stain,
A beacon set each lover's heart to wring?
may not be a momentary pain-

It

One penance undergone, and thou art pure again!'

"She look'd into his face, and there beheld
The still, unmoving darkness of his eye;
She thought of that could never be cancell'd,
And lay in calm and sweet benignity;
Down by her side her arms outstretched lie,
Her beauteous breast was fairer than the snow,-
And then, with stifled sob and broken sigh,
Its fascinating mould was heaving so,-

Never was movement seen so sweetly come and go!
"He drew his bloody poniard from his waist,
And press'd against her breast its point of steel;
No single boon she to his ear address'd;
Calm did she lie as one who did not feel!
No shiver once did agony reveal;

Scarce did she move a finger by her side,

Though her heart's blood around her did congeal:
With mild, but steady look, his face she eyed,
And once upon her tongue his name in whisper died.

"With gloomy mien, and unrelenting heart,
O'er her he hung, and watch'd her life's decay!
He mark'd the pulse's last convulsive start,
And the sweet breath in fetches waste away.
Just ere the last, these words she did
'Now all is past-unblameable I die.'
Then her pale lips did close no more for aye,

assay:

A dim blue haze set slowly o'er her eye,

And low on purpled couch that mountain flower did lie."

We have already observed, that The Poetic Mirror is divided into two portions,-not indeed by any mechanical arrangement of the articles, nor probably with any design on the part of the author: we have so far spoken of those productions which have at least some likeness in point of style to the writers proposed to be imitated: we now arrive at those which we consider only burlesques, amounting even to the vulgarity of mere parody, for no nearer could Mr. approach his original: his system is now changed; for finding how unequal he was to the task he had undertaken, if he followed up the plan on which he