REVIEWS ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 



4Sl 



the somewliat mouotonous re-adaptation of certain borrowed formulae, 

 due perhaps as frequently to the promptings of the transcriber, as to the 

 treacherous memory of the reciter, or the limited invention of the origi- 

 nal minstrel; while to the Lady Wardlaws, and other collectors given to 

 versification, may very safely be ascribed such stanzas as unraistakeably 

 betray the style of their own time. Take, for example the following 

 stanzas in Scott's version of The Young Tamlane, in which the hero 

 describes to his lady love, how he and others who have been spirited 

 away, deport themselves in Fairyland : 



Our shapes and size -we can convert 



To either large or small ; 

 An old Qut-shell 's the same to us 



As is the lofty hall. 



We sleep in rose-buds soft and sweet, 



We revel in the stream ; 

 We wanton lightly on the wind, 



Or glide on a sunbeam. 



And all our wants are well supplied, 



From every rich man's store, 

 Who thankless sins the gifts he gets, 



And vainly grasps for more. 



The first two verses belong in their ideas to the class of sylphs and 

 gnomes which Pope's "Rape of the Lock" had introduced into 

 fashionable drawing rooms ; while the last stanza has not only the 

 cadence, but the very mode of thought rendered familiar to all, by 

 Goldsmith's beautiful ballad. But to conclude therefore, as Mr. 

 Chambers seems inclined to do, that the whole ballad belongs to the 

 Pitreavie mint, is to confound styles as dissimilar as ever sufficed, by 

 their contrast in form and ideas, to betray the admixture of old and 

 new materials. 



Again, Mr. Chambers, having given full play to his newly developed 

 literary scepticism, proceeds in the following fashion to demolish in 

 like manner the claims to antiquity of any more recently recovered 

 ballads : 



" It is now to be remarked of the ballads published by the succes- 

 sors of Percy, as of those which he published, that there is not a 

 particle of positive evidence for their having existed before tlie eight- 

 teenth century. Overlooking the one given by Kamsay in his Tea-taMe 



