484 REVIEWS — ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 



future Burnses might have pondered over her productions, with end- 

 less regret that the names of their authors were 'buried among the 

 wreck of things that were.' 



" If there be any truth or force in this speculation, I shall be per- 

 mitted to indulge in the idea that a person lived a hundred years before 

 Scott, who, with his feeling for Scottish history and the features of 

 the past generally, constructed out of these materials a similar roman- 

 tic literature. In short, Scotland appears to have had a Scott a hundred 

 years before the actual person so named. And we may well believe 

 that if we had not had the first, we either should not have had the 

 second, or he would have been something considerably different, for, 

 beyond question. Sir Walter's genius was fed and nurtured on the 

 ballad literature of his native country. From his Old Mortality and 

 Waverley, back to his Lady of the Lake and Marmion ; from these to 

 his Lay of the Last Minstrel ; from that to his Eve of St. John and 

 Glenfinlas ; and from these, again, to the ballads which he collected, 

 mainly the produce (as I surmise) of an individual precursor, is a 

 series of steps easily traced, and which no one will dispute. Much 

 significance there is, indeed, in his own statement, that Hardylcnute 

 was the first poem he ever learned, and the last he should forget. Its 

 author — if my suspicion be correfct, — was his literary foster-mother, 

 and we probably owe the direction of his genius, and all its fascinating 

 results, primarily to her." 



Such are the terms with which Mr. Robert Chambers closes his 

 bold and ingenious onslaught on the accepted epochs and authorships 

 of the romantic Scottish Ballads. We doubt not the inquiry he has 

 thus originated, will be well sifted by friend and foe, ere it is allowed 

 to rest. Nor need the controversy kindle Scottish zeal into undue 

 heat ; for after all, the question is only whether our national romantic 

 ballads were written by a Scottish Lady, some hundred and forty years 

 ago, or by nameless Scottish minstrels of earlier centuries. 



That Elizabeth, Lady Wardlaw is the authoress of Hardyhiute we 

 fully believe, whatever fragmentary relics derived from an earlier age 

 may have suggested the theme, and controlled its form. That she 

 was one peculiarly fitted to become such a gatherer, and transmuter of 

 imperfect traditional song and ballad literature, as characterised the 

 Scottish collectors of the eighteenth century, may also be afiirmed 

 with much probability ; and consequently that her hand may be more 

 or less traceable in a whole series of romantic ballads is far from un- 



