486 REVIEWS — ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 



seen the light, it is not pretended that there is any evidence of the two 

 ladies having had the slightest connection. No intercourse between 

 mutual friends, or relatives descended from either, is attempted to be 

 traced. The whole ground for so sweeping an inference is that certain 

 ballads, recovered from the same districts of Scotland, at various 

 periods during the eighteenth century, betray a correspondence of 

 thought, feeling and expression ; and also some unmistakeable traces 

 of modern interpolations in the style of the artificial verse of that age. 

 There are one or two additional points to be noted in reference to 

 the authoress of Hardyhmte. Lady Wardlaw, according to the nar- 

 rative of Percy, plaj^ed the part of a coy poetess, as others before and 

 since her time have done. " A suspicion arose that it was her own 

 composition. Some able judges asserted it to be modern. The lady 

 did in a manner acknowledge it to be so. Being desired to show an 

 additional stanza, as a proof of this, she produced the two last, begin- 

 ning with There's nae light, Sfc, which were not in the copy that was 

 first printed." This is very much of acounterpart to Lady Anne Lindsay's 

 proceedings about her " Auld Robin Gray," a far superior production 

 to Hardyknute ; but though Lady Anne composed a good many other 

 pieces, none of them approached her first happy hit. There is not 

 the slightest proof that Lady Wardlaw exhibited more than the usual 

 coyness of lady poets. Mr. Hepburn of Keith stated he was in the 

 house with her when she wrote her Norse poem. Several of her des- 

 cendants knew well about it, as George Chalmers tells, on the autho- 

 rity of Sir Charles Halket, in his Life of Allan Ramsay ; and Mr. 

 Chambers quotes and italicises the following passage : " Sir Charles 

 Halket and Miss Elizabeth Menzies concur in saying that Lady Ward- 

 law was a woman of elegant accomplishments, who ivrote other poems, 

 and practised drawing, and cutting paper with her scissors, and who 

 had much wit and humour, with great sweetness of temper." It is 

 manifest therefore that the mystery of the authorship of Hardyknute 

 was from the first no mystery to intimate friends, and to the Pitreavie 

 family circle. Moreover, whatever amount of secrecy the poetess en- 

 couraged during her lifetime, we see that her immediate descendants 

 exerted themselves to establish her claims to an authorship which they 

 regarded as reflecting honour alike on her and on themselves ; and 

 yet we are required to believe that while acknowledging, and even pro- 

 ducing metrical proofs in confirmation of her authorship of what Mr. 

 Chambers designates as "to modern taste, a stiff and poor composi- 



