of comments teeming with humour, and of historic weight.  The general introduction gives us a general survey of the graphic pictures of Border quarrels, their simple violence and simple cunning.  It enters, for instance, with grave humour into the strong distinction taken in the debatable land between a “freebooter” and a “thief,” and the difficulty which the inland counties had in grasping it, and paints for us, with great vivacity, the various Border superstitions.  Another commentary on a very amusing ballad, commemorating the manner in which a blind harper stole a horse and got paid for a mare he had not lost, gives an account of the curious tenure of land, called that of the “king’s rentallers,” or “kindly tenants;” and a third describes, in language as vivid as the historical romance of Kenilworth, written years after, the manner in which Queen Elizabeth received the news of a check to her policy, and vented her spleen on the King of Scotland.

So much as to the breadth of the literary area which this first book of Scott’s covered.  As regards the poetic power which his own new ballads, in imitation of the old ones, evinced, I cannot say that those of the first issue of the Border Minstrelsy indicated anything like the force which might have been expected from one who was so soon to be the author of Marmion, though many of Scott’s warmest admirers, including Sir Francis Doyle, seem to place Glenfinlas among his finest productions.  But in the third volume of the Border Minstrelsy, which did not appear till 1803, is contained a ballad on the assassination of the Regent Murray, the story being told by his assassin, which seems to me a specimen of his very highest poetical powers.  In Cadyow Castle you have not only that rousing trumpet-note which you hear in Marmion, but the pomp and glitter of a grand martial scene is painted with all Scott’s peculiar terseness and vigour.  The opening is singularly happy in preparing the reader for the description of a violent deed.  The Earl of Arran, chief of the clan of Hamiltons, is chasing among the old oaks of Cadyow Castle,—­oaks which belonged to the ancient Caledonian forest,—­the fierce, wild bulls, milk-white, with black muzzles, which were not extirpated till shortly before Scott’s own birth:—­

    “Through the huge oaks of Evandale,
      Whose limbs a thousand years have worn,
    What sullen roar comes down the gale,
      And drowns the hunter’s pealing horn?

    “Mightiest of all the beasts of chase
      That roam in woody Caledon,
    Crashing the forest in his race,
      The mountain bull comes thundering on.

    “Fierce on the hunter’s quiver’d band
      He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow,
    Spurns, with black hoof and horn, the sand,
      And tosses high his mane of snow.

    “Aim’d well, the chieftain’s lance has flown;
      Struggling in blood the savage lies;
    His roar is sunk in hollow groan,—­
      Sound, merry huntsman! sound the pryse!”