1831.3 Crotchet Castle. 406 



wiser or better to make them think, to make them ever think of thinking 1 ; 

 they are both precisely alike : nuspiam, nequaquam, nuttibi, nullimodis. 



Lady Clarinda. Very amusing 1 , however. 



The Rev. Dr. Folliott. Very amusing, very amusing. 



Mr. Chainmail. My quarrel with the northern enchanter is, that he has 

 grossly misrepresented the twelfth century. 



The Rev. Dr. Folliott. He has misrepresented every thing, or he would not 

 have been very amusing. Sober truth is but dull matter to the reading-rabble. 

 The angler who puts not on his hook the bait that best pleases the fish, may sit 

 all day on the bank without catching a gudgeon. 



Mr. Peacock, in this extract, blames the Waverley Novels for not 

 being, what their author never intended they should be. Political we 

 say nothing of moral truths in a professed work of fiction, are as irre- 

 levant as puns in a sermon. We neither expect them, nor desire them. 

 Character, incident, and description these are the true staples of 

 romance : and in these Sir W. Scott abounds to profusion. In these he 

 rivals " all but Shakspeare's name below." Who can forget his Fergus 

 Mac Ivor bis Bradwardine his Rob Roy his Tony Fire-the-faggot 

 his Die Vernon his Flora and his Dalgetty ? Who does not thrill 

 at the recollection of his dead smuggler in the Cave of- Derncleugh 

 his account of the battle between Bothwell and Burleigh of the last 

 moments of Meg Merrilies of the conflagration of Front de Bceuf's 

 Castle ? Who does not tread the greensward in fancy with Gurth, the 

 Saxon herdsman breathe the mountain air with Rob Roy at the Clachan 

 of Aberfoyle and grow mellow with Dalgetty at Sir Duncan's Castle 

 of Ardvoirlich ? These are characters and descriptions never, <( while 

 memory holds her seat/' to be forgotten. They have taken a hold of 

 the national mind, that no after-changes in the national literature will 

 ever have power to affect. The stamp of eternity is on them. They 

 are imperishable as nature herself. Still, wondrous enchanter as he is, 

 Sir Walter Scott is, in many respects, surpassed by not a few of his 

 coternporary novelists. In depth of thought, and acute analysis of the 

 springs of human passion, he is far very far inferior to Godwin ; in 

 stern masculine energy he must be content to rank below the author of 

 Anastasius ; in the elevated tone of his morality he is not to be com- 

 pared with Ward ; still less with Mr. Peacock himself, in the breadth 



and richness of his humour. But it is in his variety in his invention . 



in the lavish fertility of his incidents, that he claims the superiority over 

 all his cotemporaries. He is not one, but Legion. He has not done one 

 thing well, but every thing. His genius has the true Midas power, and 

 transmutes all that it touches into gold. As Johnson observed of Gold- 

 smith, so may we say with more propriety of Scott, nullum tetigit quod 

 non ornamt. May he write a hundred more novels, and may we survive 

 to read them ! 



Returning from this digression, we proceed with more satisfaction to 

 our author's summary criticism on modern poetry. It is true to the 

 life : . 



Mr. Chainmail. The poetry which was addressed to the people of the dark 

 ages, pleased in proportion to the truth with which it depicted familiar images, 

 and to their natural connection with the time and place to which they were 

 assigned. In the poetry of our enlightened times, the characteristics of all 

 seasons, soils, and climates may be blended together, with much benefit to 

 the author's fame as an original genius. The cowslip of a civic poet is always 



