The admixture of the impossible, or rather unnatural, with the probable, in every work of invention, intended to impress the idea of real action, is utterly fatal to its purposed end. In a tale or romance, whose object exclusively is to excite the imagination or amuse the fancy, any deviations from the possible or natural course of things, or any excursions into visionary and unreal worlds, are admissible; for the mind comes to the perusal of the work to be surprised or enlivened, and not informed or improved; entertainment, and not truth, is the expected repast; and extravagances which contradict all experience, and characters which outrage all probability, are legitimate adjuncts, because reason not being called upon to exercise its calculations, fancy alone remains the arbitress of what is right and proper, and readily allows any "wild work" or "misjoined forms," which may heighten her enjoyment, or gratify her eccentric taste. But much more rigid are the laws which must regulate every fictitious narrative, whose drift it is to produce the illusion of actual occurrences. Here, probability is indispensable; for reason, understanding, and experience, are the umpires: and, whatever revolts the one, or shocks the other, or contradicts the third, dissipates, in a moment, the charm of an admitted reality; and destroys the pleasure which the semblance of truth had excited in the mind. The author falls into the error denounced by Horace, by at once offending his reader, and sinking his own credit: "Aut in avem Procne vertatur, Cadmus in anguem : Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi.” "If a bird's feathers I see Progne take; The fool that shews me such a silly sight." Coleman. under But the incongruities in the description of "the White Lady" are to the full as monstrous as the introduction of such an appears agent into such a work. She such dissimilar forms, that we are utterly at a loss to conceive, clearly, of her essence or figure; now, an object of more senses than one; and now impalpable, and almost invisible: now, a substance, and again an evanescence, melting into "thin air:" now gliding through the sky, and skimming o'er the earth; and now penetrating, with a mortal hero in her hand, through its crust, and descending into glittering palaces, in the centre of the globe. Nothing, certainly, but the combination of "a French fairy tale with a dull German romance," could have produced such an anomaly. The Euphuist, also, Sir Pierce Shafton, is (as it has been justly observed) a mere nuisance throughout: nor can any incident be called to mind, in an unsuccessful farce, more utterly absurd and pitiable, than the remembrance of "tailorship" that is supposed to be conjured up in the mind of this chivalrous person by the presentment of the fairy's "bodkin" to his eyes. There is something ineffably poor at once, and extravagant, in the idea of a solid silver implement being taken from the hair of a spiritual and shadowy being, for the sage purpose of making an earthly coxcomb angry to no end-while our delight at this happy imagination is not a little heightened by reflecting that it is all the time utterly unintelligible how the mere exhibition of a lady's bodkin could remind any man of a tailor in his pedigree; or be thought to import such a disclosure to the spectators. * The moral tendency, however, of the knight's character is improving. His good feeling makes amends for his absurdity. Affectation is forgotten, or forgiven, when associated with such high principles of honour, generosity, and affection, as he displays in his conduct to "the Maid of the Mill." It ought, also, to be recollected, that, as far as "the White Lady" is concerned, the Author appears to have been sensible of the imperfections of "the Monastery," and the degradation of his powers in weaving such a woof of puerilities; since in "the Abbot, which immediately succeeded this novel, and is connected with it, he "struck out the whole machinery of the White Lady," under the conviction that the public taste gives little encouragement to those legendary superstitions, which formed the delight, alternately, and the terror, of our predecessors.”+ *Edin. Rev. No. Ixxiii. p. 204. + Introductory Epistle to the Abbot, p. 2.. Historical Illustrations OF THE MONASTERY AND ABBOT. THE actual state of the southern parts of Scotland, both ecclesiastical and civil, at the epoch of the "Monastery" and "Abbot,” fully bears the Author out in his representation of the jeopardy and alarm of the Monastic Order, and of the insolence and violence of Julian Avenel, his retainers and dependants. The Protestant doctrines had found their way into Scotland shortly after the establishment of the Reformation in England; and had made a deep impression on the Earl of Arran, (the then regent,) who, for a time, both professed the doctrines, and encouraged the preachers, of the new faith. Alarmed, how |