BEYIEWS — BOTHWELL. 511 



necessity of recording our decided disapproval : on the " Typical Sys- 

 tems of Nature and Eevelation. " We abstain from further com- 

 ment in the mean time ; but earnestly hope that the able and (gen- 

 erally) judicious authors will revise the chapter referred to, and that 

 future editions of so valuable a production as that which we have 

 had under review, will be purged from the only considerable ble- 

 mish which the work, in its present state, exhibits. 



G. P. Y. 



Bothwell : A Poem in six parts. By W. Edmondstoune Aytoun, 

 D. C. L., Author of "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, &c," W. 

 Blackwood and Sons. Edinburgh and London, 1856. 

 Leaves of Grass. Brooklyn, New York, 1855. 



In the works named above we have two not unmete representa- 

 tives of the extremes of the Old and of the New "World poetic ideal : 

 "Bothwell," the product of the severely critical, refined, and ultra- 

 conservative author of the "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers;" and 

 "Leaves of Grass," the wild, exuberant, lawless offspring of "Walt 

 "Whitman, a Brooklyn Boy, " One of the Boughs !" 



The historical poem has been heralded by rumor with her hundred 

 tongues; and expectation has been whetted by anticipations naturally 

 suggested by the promise of a work destined for posterity, from the 

 caustic pen already glittering in the "Bon Graultier" ranks, and 

 trenchant in the satiric pages of " Firmilian ; a Spasmodic Tragedy." 

 He who has lashed, with such biting keenness, the poets and the 

 critics of his day ; and laughed to scorn, alike the metaphysical poet- 

 ics of an "In Memoriam," the morbid tristness of "A Life-drama," 

 the transcendental theosophy of a " Eestus," and all the vagaries of 

 a Carlyle, a Buskin, or a G-ilfillan : must be assumed to offer some- 

 thing which he, at least, believes to approach more nearly the true 

 requisites of poetic perfection. More than one of the dramatis per- 

 sona? of " Firmillian" have a character for critical reprisals, not over- 

 looked by the caustic author of that "spasmodic tragedy ;" yet here he 

 enters the lists, and, doffing all quaint humor and satiric guise, he 

 gravely flings down his knightly gauge of battle, as if he had never 



sported with the mummers, and made game of the literary guild of 



modern cavaliers. 



The hero of Professor Aytoun's " Bothwell," is that grim Scottish 



Baron, the murderer of Darulry, and the ravisher of the unhappy 



Mary of Scotland : in himself dark enough for all the shadow that 



