"The cowls of Kilmarnock had spits and had spears, And lang-hafted gullies to kill cavaliers; But they shrunk to close heads, and the causeway was free At the toss of the bonnet of bonny Dundee ! Come, fill up my cup, &c. "He spurred to the foot of the proud castle-rock, And with the gay Gordon he gallantly spoke :'Let Mons Meg and her marrows speak twa words or three, For the love of the bonnet of bonny Dundee !' Come, fill up my cup, &c. "The Gordon demands of him which way he goes: Come, fill up my cup, &c. "There are hills beyond Pentland, and lands beyond Forth; If there's lords in the Lowlands, there's chiefs in the North: There are wild Dunnies wassals three thousand times three Will cry 'hoigh' for the bonnets of bonny Dundee ! Come, fill up my cup, &c. "There's brass on the target of barkened bull-hide; Come, fill up my cup, &c. "Away to the hills, to the caves, to the rocks, And tremble, false Whigs, in the midst of your glee: "He waved his proud hand, and the trumpets were blown, The kettle-drums clashed, and the horsemen rode on, Till on Ravelston's cliffs and on Clermiston's lee Come, fill up my cup; come, fill up my can For it's up with the bonnet of bonny Dundee !" It is curious to observe how, when beneath their enormous load Scott's mind began to fail, his memory clung to the ancient minstrelsy, although it lost its hold of some of his own compositions. On hearing the verses from "The Pirate," set to music, "Farewell! farewell! The voice you hear Has left its last soft tone with you; Its next must join the seaward cheer And shout among the shouting crew!" he said, "Capital words! Whose are they? Byron's, I suppose." But, on visiting the ruined castle of Douglas, he repeated his favourite of the old ballads,"The Battle of Otterburne;" and the closing stanza left him in tears :— My wound is deep; I fain would sleep; This deed was done at the Otterburne About the dawning of the day: Earl Douglas was buried by the bracken-bush, A more striking proof of the tenacity to the strains which had been familiarized to his ear in childhood occurred on his hopeless pilgrimage to Italy. There were pointed out to him the Lake of Avernus, the Temple of Apollo, the Lucrine Lake, Baiæ, Misenum, and the surrounding monuments: and what was the reply? The fragment of a Jacobite ditty. "I found," says his companion, "that something in the place had inspired recollections of his own beloved country and the Stuarts; for he immediately repeated, with a grave tone and with great emphasis, 'Up the craggy mountain and down the mossy glen, I could not help smiling at this strange commentary on my dissertation on the Lake of Avernus." There are many traits of Scott's character as a man, -especially in his calamitous years, many as a writer, the notice of which does not belong to this course of lectures. It is, however, not inappropriate that the existence of the last and the greatest of the Border Minstrels closed in the centre of that region which his genius has peopled with spiritual creations, and not far away from that spot where his young imagination was early fed with the traditions of Scottish song. LECTURE XII. Coleridge. Advantage of connecting critical with historical considerations Spenser and his age-Spirit of the French Revolution-Contrast between the American and the French Revolutions-Its influence over thought and action-Coleridge's "France"-Nature of lyrical poetry-Early developments of Coleridge's genius-His philosophy -His critical papers-His consciousness of his own poetical endowment His boyhood at Christ's Church Hospital-Monody on Chatterton-His love of nature-Ode on Dejection-Translations of Schiller's tragedies-" The Ancient Mariner". "Christabel"-Its metrical beauty-His epitaph. IN tracing the progress of English poetry from its early eras, I have sought in this course of lectures so to connect critical with historical considerations as to give, I trust, some assistance in forming an idea of the intellectual and moral altitude of each of the illustrious poets whose characters we have been contemplating. This has been attempted under a conviction that it was part of the duty which is resting upon me; for I regarded the process as wellnigh essential to a true appreciation of the genius of the poets. How, for instance, could there be a just, or at least an adequate, sense of the glory of that matchless allegory, "The Fairy Queen," if the student were not drawn to some knowledge of the age in which 88 Spenser flourished?—if I may apply such a word to a life closing early and in neglect and sorrow. Extraneous as history is to literature, it is the framework which is important to give due effect to the portraiture of men who have earned distinction in the annals of letters. It is thus that the proportions and colours are better realized. Fancy, for one moment, some one perusing the wonderful poem just alluded to,-that majestic fragment of Spenser's imagination; fancy it read with some confused and false notion that it was a production of the times of Charles II., that detested and opprobrious period of English history, which all the language of loathing I could heap upon it was not strong enough to stigmatize : and what a feeling of incongruity would come over the reader as he found himself following the spotless moral poet through the limitless land of Fairy! The poet, thus ignorantly misplaced, would seem as if he had alighted upon the wrong planet. But when you appropriate Spenser to his own age,—that thoughtful and adventurous age, philosophical and chivalrous, of whose representative men it might be said, as it was said of one of them, that they were so contemplative you could not believe them active, and so active you could not believe them contemplative place the poet, I say, in that age, and how true, how natural, is his position, and what a light is reflected on the character of his inspirations! Or, again, how almost inexplicable would be the production of the "Paradise Lost" in a generation unworthy of it, did we not consider the mighty ordeal through which Milton's mind had been passing in the times of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate! and how inadequately would the reader judge of the poetry of Pope, |